Science & TechnologyS


Robot

Carnegie Mellon researchers turns arm skin into touchpad with creepy new technology


RT
Fri, 06 May 2016 01:00 UTC
Skintrack
© Via YouTube/Future Interfaces Group
Navigating mobile devices through your skin is not a sci-fi gimmick anymore, thanks to US researchers and their new device called SkinTrack, which takes the concept literally, using skin as a touchpad.

The Future Interfaces Group, a research lab at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks that your arm ought to be something more than just a body part. And all it takes is a ring on your finger and a smartwatch on your wrist.

SkinTrack, a wearable device revealed Thursday, consists of two pieces of hardware - a ring and a sensor band that communicate with each other via high-frequency electrical signals and electrodes. Gierad Laput, a CMU graduate student and one of the researchers, said SkinTrack works on a similar principle to that of cell towers triangulating signals to figure out a phone's location.

When the ring emits a signal, it spreads across the skin and the wristband picks it up through electrodes installed inside, turning the arm or hand into a touchpad or a sensor keypad. One of its especially cool and useful features is that the system is not obstructed by clothes.


Comment: "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment . . . It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time." - George Orwell's 1984

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Bizarro Earth

Jacuzzi of Despair: Scientists discover inhospitable super-salty brine lake at bottom of the Gulf of Mexico

Eric Niiler
D News
Thu, 05 May 2016 11:00 UTC
brine lake gulf mexico, jacuzzi of despair
© Temple University
Scientists have found an alien, inhospitable world not in the far reaches of the galaxy, but on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico -- about a day's boat ride from New Orleans. Dubbed the "Jacuzzi of Despair," this pool of super-salty brine kills any unfortunate creature that happens to wonder in -- mainly benthic crabs, amphipods and an occasional fish.

The circular pool -- about 100 feet in circumference and about 12 feet deep -- lies nearly 3,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. It contains water that is four or five times saltier than the surrounding seawater. As a result, the brine is so dense that it sits on the bottom, forming an underwater cauldron of toxic chemicals that include methane gas and hydrogen sulfide that doesn't mix with surrounding seawater.

The brine pool -- and a nearby flowing brine river -- were formed as normal seawater seeped into cracks in the seabed, mixed with the region's subsurface salt formations, then were forced up by methane gas percolating from the seafloor.

"It was one of the most amazing things in the deep sea," said Erik Cordes, associate professor of biology at Temple University who discovered the site along with several colleagues, and published a report on the findings in the journal Oceanography. "You go down into the bottom of the ocean and you are looking at a lake or a river flowing. It feels like you are not on this world."
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Bizarro Earth

Silent slow-slip seismic events can rupture shallow faults resulting in large, tsunami-generating earthquakes


Phys.org
Thu, 05 May 2016 00:00 UTC
seismic zones new zealand
© GNS Science/Laura Martin A graphic illustrating seismic zones and activity in New Zealand. The figure on the bottom right shows the horizontal and vertical movement caused by a slow slip event
Research published in the May 6 edition of Science indicates that slow-motion earthquakes or "slow-slip events" can rupture the shallow portion of a fault that also moves in large, tsunami-generating earthquakes. The finding has important implications for assessing tsunami hazards. The discovery was made by conducting the first-ever detailed investigation of centimeter-level seafloor movement at an offshore subduction zone.

"These data have revealed the true extent of slow-motion earthquakes at an offshore subduction zone for the first time," said Laura Wallace, a research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics who led the study.

An international team of researchers from the U.S., Japan and New Zealand collaborated on the research. The Institute for Geophysics is a research unit of The University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences.

The world's most devastating tsunamis are generated by earthquakes that occur near the trenches of subduction zones, places where one tectonic plate begins to dive or "subduct" beneath another. Using a network of highly sensitive seafloor pressure recorders, the team detected a slow-slip event in September 2014 off the east coast of New Zealand. The study was undertaken at the Hikurangi subduction zone, where the Pacific Plate subducts beneath New Zealand's North Island.
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Magnify

What stopped our genetic code from evolving 3 billion years ago? Scientists examine mystery of life's 'evolutionary limit'

Ryan O'Hare
Daily Mail
Wed, 04 May 2016 04:18 UTC
Genetic Code DNA
© Getty Images/3D4Medical.com
While life on Earth is constantly evolving, the genetic code which drives it all remains frozen, using the same components in the same way as it did billions of years ago.

At some point in the planet's history, the evolution of our genetic machinery reached a plateau which put the brakes on any further development of the code.

Now scientists believe the stalled evolution may be down to limitations in the way DNA is translated to make proteins.

A team of geneticists in Spain focused on a molecule called transfer RNA (tRNA).

This shuttles the building blocks of proteins to the assembly line so they can be linked together in the correct order.

When the intricate system of the genetic code was described by Francis Crick in the 1960s, the Nobel Prize winning scientist called it a 'frozen accident'.
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Solar Flares

Star's spin so fast it's shifting its magnetic field, sunspots appear at the poles

Russ Swan
Daily Mail
Wed, 04 May 2016 12:00 UTC
Zeta Andromeda
© Roettenbacher et al.A distant star has been seen to spin so fast that its magnetic field erupts from its poles rather than around its equator (marked in dark red). This fast spin is an expected feature of binary stars, but its strange magnetic field has not been seen before on such a star as Zeta Andromeda.
A distant star has been seen to spin so fast that its magnetic field erupts from its poles rather than around its equator. This fast spin is an expected feature of binary stars, but its strange magnetic field has not been seen before on such a star as Zeta Andromeda. Despite being so distant that its image occupies less than a pixel on telescope sensors, astrophysicists have been able to map the star's sunspots to track its magnetic field.

On our sun, sunspots form where the magnetic field is much stronger than normal, around its centre. They never appear at the poles, and only appear between around 40° north and 40° south latitudes.
Mapping Distant Star Systems

Zeta Andromeda is 180 light-years away, meaning it is smaller than a pixel on a telescope sensor. How then do astronomers map the position of sunspots on the star?

The Doppler method allows them to observe how the wavelengths of light emitted as the star rotates are squeezed and stretched, like the way an ambulance siren changes note as it passes. By making Doppler observations simultaneously with several telescopes, far more detail can be revealed than with even the largest single instrument.

Recent advances in telescope technology mean this interferometry technique, pioneered by radio astronomers, can now be applied to visible and near-infrared light observations.

The astronomers used the Chara array at Mount Wilson, which consists of six one-metre telescopes and is the world's highest angular resolution telescope at these wavelengths.
Zeta Andromeda is a binary star in the constellation Andromeda, and lies about 180 light-years away. It is 16 times more massive than our own sun, and spins at 40 km per second - 20 times faster than the sun.
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Question

Nothing to hide? Google's DeepMind highly secretive about its plans for healthcare data


New Scientist
Wed, 04 May 2016 00:00 UTC
google DeepMind health data
© Christof Stache/AFP/GettyAre you sure you’ve nothing to hide?
Google's subsidiary DeepMind could use our health data to diagnose disease sooner. If it was more open, we might be happier to let it go ahead

There is an apocryphal story in technology circles: Google and Facebook could do things with our data that would make our heads spin, but they don't because it would freak everyone out.

Apocryphal it may be, but data companies do not have to do much to freak us out. Some people will be extremely unnerved by our revelation that Google's subsidiary DeepMind has access to healthcare data from three UK National Health Service hospitals (see "Revealed: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data"). People who use the hospitals now know that DeepMind has intimate - albeit anonymised - details of their medical history, including HIV status, past drug overdoses and abortions.

It doesn't help that DeepMind is very unwilling to talk about what it wants to do with this data. If it were more open, there would arguably be less room for freaking out. The data is a gold mine: by digging into it, the company could build powerful tools to diagnose disease sooner. Indeed, for some medical practitioners who are used to working with such data, this is a non-story. It already happens all the time.

Comment: Revealed: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

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Robot

The ReAnima Project - Dead could be brought 'back to life'

Sarah Knapton
The Telegraph, UK
Tue, 03 May 2016 12:15 UTC
Coma Patient
© GettyScientists believe that a combination of therapies could stimulate regeneration.
A groundbreaking trial to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of dead people, has won approval from health watchdogs.

A biotech company in the US has been granted ethical permission to recruit 20 patients who have been declared clinically dead from a traumatic brain injury, to test whether parts of their central nervous system can be brought back to life.

Scientists will use a combination of therapies, which include injecting the brain with stem cells and a cocktail of peptides, as well as deploying lasers and nerve stimulation techniques which have been shown to bring patients out of comas.

The trial participants will have been certified dead and only kept alive through life support. They will be monitored for several months using brain imaging equipment to look for signs of regeneration, particularly in the upper spinal cord - the lowest region of the brain stem which controls independent breathing and heartbeat.

The team believes that the brain stem cells may be able to erase their history and re-start life again, based on their surrounding tissue - a process seen in the animal kingdom in creatures like salamanders who can regrow entire limbs.

Dr Ira Pastor, the CEO of Bioquark Inc. said: "This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime.

"We just received approval for our first 20 subjects and we hope to start recruiting patients immediately from this first site - we are working with the hospital now to identify families where there may be a religious or medical barrier to organ donation.

"To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.

"We hope to see results within the first two to three months."
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Cell Phone

WhatsApp privacy boost sets scene for new encryption conflicts


Sputnik
Tue, 03 May 2016 22:55 UTC
WhatsApp
Messaging service WhatsApp has activated end-to-end encryption for one billion users: the technology will make it impossible for any party (including WhatsApp itself) to access a user's messages.

If for instance authorities were to request WhatsApp (or its parent company Facebook) to turn over the activity of a suspected criminal, the companies would not be technically able to comply.
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Bug

Brain scans show insects have a form of consciousness

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Tue, 26 Apr 2016 15:24 UTC
ants
Insects have a form of consciousness, according to a new paper that might show us how our own began.

Brain scans of insects appear to indicate that they have the capacity to be conscious and show egocentric behaviour, apparently indicating that they have such a thing as subjective experience.

And those same scans could show the true origins of consciousness in humans other animals - working towards solving one of the deepest mysteries of human experience.

The study - written by Andrew B Barron and Colin Klein, and published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences - worked by taking detailed scans of the neurological systems of insect brains, and compared them with those of insects.

They found that in both, consciousness appeared to be associated with the "midbrain". That part of the brain is the ancient core of the brain, which supports awareness for us and apparently for insects, too.
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Chalkboard

DNA study finds Ice Age Europeans predominantly had dark complexions and brown eyes


RT
Tue, 03 May 2016 15:19 UTC
cavemen
© interkcol / Instagram
A new study has revealed previously unknown details about early Ice Age Europeans, including fluctuations in their eye color and complexion. The research paints a picture of a dramatic history of mass migrations spanning thousands of years.

A paper titled "The genetic history of Ice Age Europe," was published by Nature Journal on May 2. Researchers used new techniques to analyze 51 samples of degraded DNA from ancient remains to shed light on over some 40,000 years of prehistory.

The study concluded that the genes of Ice Age Europeans show prevailing dark complexions and brown eyes. The evidence also revealed that blue eyes appeared 14,000 years ago at most, while pale skin spread across the continent some 7,000 years ago. Both were brought in by migration from the Near East.

Another big find was that different groups of Europeans were descended from a single founder population between 37,000 years ago and 14,000 years ago. During the period, Neanderthal ancestry in Europeans was in decline, likely due to natural selection.
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