Scientists have successfully grown miniature brains in labs. These brains, the equivalent of that of a nine-week-old fetus, come from embryonic stem cells or adult skin cells. RT's Erin Ade takes a look at the potential uses of this mini medical breakthrough. We'll give you a hint: It's not for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Researchers at Harvard University have created the first noninvasive brain-to-brain interface (BBI) between a human and a rat.
Simply by thinking the appropriate thought, the BBI allows the human to control the rat’s tail. This is one of the most important steps towards BBIs that allow for telepathic links between two or more humans which is a good thing in the case of friends and family, but terrifying if you stop to think about the nefarious possibilities of a fascist dictatorship with mind control tech.
In recent years there have been huge advances in the field of brain-computer interfaces, where your thoughts are detected and “understood” by a sensor attached to a computer, but relatively little work has been done in the opposite direction (computer-brain interfaces).
This is because it’s one thing for a computer to work out what a human is thinking (by asking or observing their actions), but another thing entirely to inject new thoughts into a human brain.
To put it bluntly, we have almost no idea of how thoughts are encoded by neurons in the brain. For now, the best we can do is create a computer-brain interface that stimulates a region of the brain that’s known to create a certain reaction such as the specific part of the motor cortex that’s in charge of your fingers.
We don’t have the power to move your fingers in a specific way that would require knowing the brain’s encoding scheme but we can make them jerk around.
Which brings us neatly onto Harvard’s human-mouse brain-to-brain interface. The human wears a run-of-the-mill EEG-based BCI, while the mouse is equipped with a focused ultrasound (FUS) computer-brain interface (CBI). FUS is a relatively new technology that allows the researchers to excite a very specific region of neurons in the rat’s brain using an ultrasound signal.
The main advantage of FUS is that, unlike most brain-stimulation techniques, such as DBS, it isn’t invasive. For now it looks like the FUS equipment is fairly bulky, but future versions might be small enough for use in everyday human CBIs. (See: Real-life Avatar: The first mind-controlled robot surrogate.)
With the EEG equipped, the BCI detects whenever the human looks at a specific pattern on a computer screen. The BCI then fires off a command to rat’s CBI, which causes ultrasound to be beamed into the region of the rat’s motor cortex that deals with tail movement.
As you can see in the video below, this causes the rat’s tail to move. The researchers report that the human BCI has an accuracy of 94%, and that it generally takes around 1.5 seconds for the entire process from the human deciding to look at the screen, through to the movement of the rat’s tail.
In theory, the human could trigger a rodent tail-wag by simply thinking about it, rather than having to look at a specific pattern but presumably, for the sake of this experiment, the researchers wanted to focus on the FUS CBI, rather than the BCI.
Moving forward, the researchers now need to work on the transmitting of more complex ideas, such as hunger or sexual arousal, from human to rat. At some point, they’ll also have to put the FUS CBI on a human, to see if thoughts can be transferred in the opposite direction.
Finally, we’ll need to combine an EEG and FUS into a single unit, to allow for bidirectional sharing of thoughts and ideas. Human-to-human telepathy is the most obvious use, but what if the same bidirectional technology also allows us to really communicate with animals, such as dogs?
There would be huge ethical concerns, of course, especially if a dictatorial tyrant uses the tech to control our thoughts but the same can be said of almost every futuristic, transhumanist technology. (Extremetech)
NASA has released a new concept video that animates its ambitious plan, called the Asteroid Retrieval
Mission, to snag an asteroid and then send a manned spacecraft to sample it, all between the years 2018 and 2021.
The new video’s theme music is as dramatic as the political debate over NASA’s future that the mission has furnished, dividing congress along partisan lines over just how much the government is willing to spend on a plan that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has called one to “protect our home planet” and that Republican congressman Steven Palazzo has deemed a “costly and complex distraction.”
NASA’s new video shows the final bookend of its proposed mission, beginning with the launch of a manned Orion capsule toward an asteroid that a robotic capture vehicle has already bagged up out in space.
In the video, Orion hurtles through a space landscape stylized in celestial blues and purples in a trip that takes
just nine days, thanks to a quick tour around the moon and a little help from its gravity. Once at the asteroid, Orion attaches to the robotic capture vehicle so that the team can exit the craft to sample and photograph the snagged asteroid, wrapped up in white material, like a bubble-wrapped gift. It takes ten more days for Orion to return to Earth, parachuting into the ocean.
In the video, the plan is neat and simple, going off without a hitch. But in Congress, there have been quite a few hitches.
In July, the House’s Science, Space and Technology committee voted 22 Republicans to 17 Democrats to bar NASA from going ahead with its asteroid mission, pegging the agency’s plan as vague, romantic, and overall lacking merit.
“While the committee supports the Administration’s efforts to study Near Earth Objects, this proposal lacks in details, a justification or support from the NASA own advisory bodies,” said Steven Palazzo, Chair of the Space Subcommittee (R-MS), in a statement from his office. “Because the mission appears to be a costly and complex distraction, this bill prohibits NASA from doing any work on the project and we will work with appropriators to ensure the agency complies with this directive.”
Instead, the House bill makes a visit to the moon, not an asteroid, a pit stop in a goal that has bipartisan support: ferrying humans to Mars. The bill also scales down NASA’s budget, offering just $16.8 billion for the fiscal year 2014. The president had asked for $17.7 billion, $100 million of which would go to the asteroid retrieval mission.
Still, the Democratic-controlled Senate has floated a separate bill proposing $18.1 billion in funding for NASA. That bill does not address the asteroid mission, but gives NASA the open language – and the funds – to do what it wishes.
NASA announced its asteroid retrieval mission in April, just a month after a meteor exploded above Siberia, injuring about 1,500 people. NASA’s telescopes had not seen the meteor coming, since the agency’s programs are largely focused on monitoring larger objects, and the event rung like an eerie alarm bell signaling just how vulnerable the planet is to the objects ringing the sun. As of June, NASA had tallied about ten thousand Near Earth Objects – asteroids and comets that come within 28 million miles of Earth’s orbit – though it has said that, at least so far as it knows, none of the objects are on an impact trajectory toward Earth.
NASA is still reviewing the some 400 responses it received to the Asteroid Challenge it issued in June in a call for the public to submit its asteroid-wrangling knowhow and to help NASA out. The agency plants to host a workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 to discuss those proposals and possibilities for incorporation into its mission design.
Chinese inventor Tao Xiangli built the home-made robot, named "The King of Innovation", out of scrap metal and electronic wires that he bought from a second-hand market. Tao completed his creation in less than a year, with costs of production and living expenses amounting to 300,000 yuan ($49,037). However, the robot, which measures 2.1 metres (6.9 feet) in height and 480 kg (1058 lbs) in weight, turned out to be too tall and heavy to walk out of the front door of his house. It can perform simple movements with its hands and legs and also mimic human voices.
Every 11 years or so, the sun does something quite profound — its magnetic field completely swaps polarity. This event occurs at the peak of the solar cycle, heralding the mid-point and the most active phase of Solar Cycle 24.
“It looks like we’re no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal,” said solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University in a NASA news release. “This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.”
Solar astronomers have been keeping a close eye on the magnetic conditions in the lowest regions of the sun’s atmosphere, measuring its magnetic field strength and direction. “The sun’s polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle,” said solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also of Stanford University.
Hoeksema and Scherrer work at Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories on the planet that is capable of acquiring solar magnetograms. Wilcox has been monitoring the sun’s polarity since 1976, seeing in three “grand reversals” from three solar cycles. This will be its fourth and excitement is mounting, especially as we’re only a few months away from complete reversal.
Simmering Solar Views from SDO.
The solar cycle ebbs and flows over an approximate 11 year period. From “solar minimum” to “solar maximum,” our nearest star’s internal magnetic field gets wound up by the sun’s differential rotation. Differential rotation means that the sun rotates faster at the equator than it does at the poles, dragging the magnetic field — like an elastic band — that is embedded in the superheated plasma. As the sun approaches solar max (as it is now) the magnetic field is at its most stressed, causing magnetic arcs to be forced from the solar interior and into the lower corona.
It is during this period that space weather is at its most ferocious, creating beautiful aurorae at the Earth’s poles caused by an intensified solar wind blasting energetic particles into the Earth’s magnetosphere. Also, this is a period of intensified flare and CME activity, potentially damaging satellites and interfering with communications on the ground.
A visible marker of the progression of the solar cycle is the appearance of sunspots — dark blemishes in the sun’s photosphere, marking the location of active regions and potential sites of magnetic eruptions.
So, as we experience solar maximum, the sun’s interior reaches a tipping point in its magnetic polarity, signified by a magnetic field weakening. When the field does switch polarity, it’s not just a local event. The sun’s magnetic field projects from the sun and sweeps throughout the sun’s environment — the heliosphere. As the field flips inside the sun, so does the interplanetary magnetic field, causing the magnetic field and associated electric “current sheet” to ripple and warp.
Although the underlying reasons for the solar cycle are yet to be understood, Hoeksema and Scherrer know what’s going to happen next.
“The sun’s north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up,” says Scherrer. “Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of Solar Max will be underway.”
Image: A NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory image of the multimillion degree plasma of the sun, plus lines depicting the paths of the magnetic field originating from the sun’s interior. Credit: NASA/SDO
The US is set to launch its next mission to Mars in November and the spacecraft has already arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space agency NASA said.
A US Air Force C-17 cargo plane delivered the Lockheed Martin Corp.-built Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft from the Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado Friday, Xinhua reported.
"Over the weekend, the (MAVEN project) team confirmed the spacecraft arrived in good condition. They removed the spacecraft from the shipping container and secured it to a rotation fixture in the cleanroom," NASA said in a statement Monday.
In the next week, the team will re-assemble components previously removed for transport. Further checks prior to launch will include software tests, spin balance tests, and test deployments of the spacecraft's solar panels and booms, NASA said.
According to NASA, the mission will be dedicated to surveying the upper atmosphere of Mars in an effort to understand the role that the loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the climate of Mars.
MAVEN is scheduled to lift off in November to begin a 10-month voyage to Mars. It has a 20-day launch period that opens Nov 18.
