By surgically rearranging the nerves that normally connect to the lost limb, physicians have developed an intuitive way for amputee patients to control a robotic arm.
Todd Kuiken and colleagues at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago first reported the technique in a single patient in 2007, and now they have tested it in several other patients. The patients could all successfully control the advanced prosthetic, which features motorized shoulders, elbows, wrists and hands. They could move the arm in space, mimic hand motions, and pick up a varietyt of objects, including a water glass, a delicate cracker, and a checker rolling across a table. (Three patients are shown using the arm in the video below.) The findings are reported today in Journal of the American Medical Association.
The motorized arm prostheses most commonly used today co-opt existing shoulder movements to control the hand, elbow or wrist on the limb. These devices can be frustrating and slow: the user must consciously contract those muscles to trigger a movement, and only one movement can be performed at a time.
Kuiken has developed an entirely new kind of interface. Using a surgical procedure called targeted muscle reinnervation, surgeons transfer nerves that previously carried signals to the amputated limb to muscles in the chest and upper arm. The rerouted nerves then grow into the muscles, which contract when the patient thinks about moving the lost limb. Those signals are read by sensors on the prosthetic limb and translated into movement.
Three patients who have undergone the surgery tested a prototype arm under development by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program (see video below). They could reliably control the device within just two weeks.
"The speed as well as accuracy of the movements represent substantial improvements over previous myoelectric systems," writes Gerald Loeb, a physician and scientist in the department of biomedical engineering and neurology at the University of Southern California, in an accompanying editorial. "Even more important, however, is the ease with which patients learned to perform tasks requiring coordinated motion in more than one joint."
Kuiken and colleagues are working on adding sensory feedback to the system by transplanting nerves that once carried sensory signals from the amputated arm to the brain. This kind of feedback is especially important in determining, for example, how much force to use to grab a glass without breaking it. The researchers have already shown that patients who have had this nerve transplanted can feel sensations in the chest from the lost hand. They eventually aim to add sensors to the prosthetic fingers, which could translate tactile information to transplanted nerves, making the patient feel as if they had a real hand.
Dude, I was just using this type of thing in class as evidence that we MIGHT see full brain-computer interface at some point in the future. This is the first step, and apparently we've already taken it.
Just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, the prosthesis isn't just attached to muscles from the chest and shoulder, right? It actually receives nerve impulses and translates them into data and then movement?
From what I got out of it the nerves were actually attached to shoulder muscles and the prosthetic arm read the muscle movements produced when the person attempted to move their missing limb.
Maybe it's a little bit of a hack, but it's cool in that the patient doesn't have to learn new ways of moving the limb. They just send the same impulses they always did.
Yes, THAT is awesome. I just wish that we had clear-cut examples of brain-computer interfaces already. I REALLY want to be able to upload my consciousness before I die.
3D "holographic" display from the USC graphics lab, pretty goddamned amazing if you ask me, can't wait til they perfect this and we all have full 3D displays of our own.
I would think danger would be described as the possibility of bodily injury that may lead to death or mental injury that may lead to emotional scarring.
But once you're dead (in the Christian worldview) nothing can pose any danger to you ever again, since your existence is totally fixed. You're either in eternal unthinking bliss in heaven or eternal useless pain in hell. Danger becomes irrelevant, since nothing ever can possibly change in any way.
Globe-straddling weapons megacorp BAE Systems is pleased to announce that it has inked a deal with the US Navy to build a new electromagnetic hypercannon.
"This EM Railgun contract is a continuation of BAE Systems’ dedication to delivering advanced technology for tomorrow's Sailors,” said Jim Schoppenhorst, BAE veep in charge of selling stuff to the (US) navy.
The $21m deal will see BAE's recently acquired American operations build a new and more powerful prototype railgun for the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The US naval boffinry operation has already demo'd a record-breaking 10 megajoule magnocannon (see the vid), but it wants more.
Specifically, the ONR wants a 64-megajoule hypervelocity job, able to lob its projectiles 200 miles or more and have them arrive still going at Mach 5-plus.
These irresistible magnetic thunderbolts would be very hard to defend against, perhaps restoring the surface warship to its lost dominion over the seas and coastal areas of the world. (Surface warships are pretty much the only mobile systems which might be able to supply enough electricity to run a combat-grade railgun.)
Perhaps more relevantly to the USN - whose dominance of the oceans is not, after all, in much doubt at the moment - there would be logistic benefits. The shells would be solid metal, delivering their violence kinetically rather than explosively, and there would likewise be no need for the dangerous chemical propellants (gunpowder) used in today's cannon.
Shipping munitions about, keeping them in date, avoiding them catching fire and so on are all big issues for modern navies. Harassed supply chiefs would much prefer to be dealing merely with inert projectiles and extra supplies of fuel for the ship's powerplant.
As the ONR note, "one of the greatest potential advantages for the Railgun program is the safety and logistics aspect".
The new prototype magnocannon is expected to start shooting in 2011.
And there's a video too. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the future of killing from 200 miles away with a hunk of metal traveling at mach 5. Ya know, for peace.
New polyurethane film works when exposed to sunlight
By Eric Bland
updated 5:09 p.m. CT, Thurs., March. 12, 2009
The next time your car is keyed, park it under a ray of sunshine. If your car is coated in a new polyurethane film developed by scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi, the scratch will be gone in an hour.
The research is detailed in the current issue of the journal Science.
"We have developed a new macromolecule," said Marek Urban, who, along with Biswajit Ghosh, wrote the paper. "When the polymer is damaged and exposed to sunlight, it is capable of repairing itself, and could be applied to many systems."
The new coating is 99.99 percent standard polyurethane, a material found in a wide range of products, including hard plastic and soft foams. The remaining 0.01 percent is either a four-molecule oxetane ring or a long rod of chitosan. Chitosan is closely related to chitin, the tough material found in the shells of lobsters and crabs.
When the polyurethane is damaged, a ring of oxetane is also ripped open. Breaking the surface of the polyurethane also allows ultraviolet light to enter the scratch, which breaks apart a rod of chitosan.
The broken chitosan rods and oxetane rings then bond with each other across the damaged area, dragging the two sides together to eliminate the scratch. If the polyurethane coating is left in the sun, a scratch heals itself in an hour.
Scientists say that the reaction only takes place when the surface is damaged, and that it should be should be able to repair most scratches indefinitely. But since the material is so new, they haven't been able to conduct long-term tests.
Long-term testing will be necessary before the coating makes it into any commercial products. If approved, however, the coating could be used for a wide range of materials.
"You can make it whatever color you want, just add pigments" said Urban. Car paint is "the first applications that comes to mind, but you can think of electronics, phones, iPods, etc."
The beauty of the new coating, according to Craig Hawker at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is that since it is made from a derivative of chitin, it is environmentally friendly.
"The use of renewable materials is a centrally important selling point," said Hawker. "And the novel use of UV as a trigger for healing is extremely versatile."
No, that'll never work! the sun is already a big giant explosion. We'd never be able to do anything big enough to have an effect. We have to set off the bombs here and cause some sort of blackout by filling the sky with ash or something.
Then we just gotta build some sort of undergound stronghold and spend all our time looking for "the one" who is obviously some poor sap we will expect to defeat the robots all by himself.
A former Microsoft CTO and an astrophysicist who worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative are collaborating on a system that kills mosquitoes with lasers to prevent the spread of malaria.
By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
March 16, 2009 03:45 PM
"Starwars Mosquito Defense System," a commercial spoof about an anti-mosquito laser system, launched the careers of Dutch video makers Simon and David Groen in 2005. It can still be seen on YouTube.
As if to demonstrate the axiom that truth is stranger than fiction, the pair's satire is now being developed as a serious research project by some of the scientists who actually participated in the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, derisively known as "Star Wars."
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the project has been dubbed "WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction." It aims to kill mosquitoes with lasers to prevent the spread of malaria, which mosquitoes can transmit.
The anti-mosquito laser system is being funded by Intellectual Ventures, a company run by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s former CTO.
In an essay in Seed Magazine last month, Myhrvold wrote, "Our current approaches to combat the disease are low-tech: bed nets, sold or freely given; spraying or soaking bed nets in insecticide; spraying and draining water in breeding sites. Although these approaches work, they could work better with new technology."
While at Microsoft, Myhrvold reported to Bill Gates, who, through the Gates Foundation, has made significant funding contributions to the fight against malaria.
To the delight of cynics who relish the association of Microsoft and bugs, Gates, at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference in February, released several mosquitoes into the audience as part of a speech against malaria, quipping, "There is no reason only poor people should have the experience."
The idea for the WMD system was proposed in 2007 by astrophysicist Lowell Wood, who worked on the SDI and with atomic bomb scientist Edward Teller.
Wood is working with Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist who used to work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and other researchers to develop their anti-mosquito laser system. They hope to be able to deploy the system to shield villages against mosquitoes.
"The original notion came up in discussion between Lowell Wood and Nathan Myhrvold," said Kare, program manager at Intellectual Ventures and the project's lead inventor, in a phone interview. "They had been talking to Bill Gates about his interest in addressing malaria as a global health problem, and Lowell suggested there should be a way to apply some of the high-technology techniques developed to destroy larger targets."
Kare began working on a prototype in October 2006, he said, when he joined Intellectual Ventures full time. The mosquito-killing laser was the first project for the company's internal lab.
Kare said that some of the hardware used for the prototype came from eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) and from DoveBid, an industrial auction site. "Both Nathan and I like buying things at auction, we bought a lot of hardware cheap," he said, noting that he purchased a $10,000 scanner for the project for $500.
Kare said that "WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction" isn't a term used internally to refer to the project. He calls the project "the Photonic Fence." "When we're being lighthearted, we call it 'the bug zapper,'" he explained.
As its name suggests, the Photonic Fence prototype consists of two posts that direct laser fire at mosquitoes that fly between them. Kare said the research team is still optimizing its targeting algorithm. "But we definitely can detect them and aim a beam at them," he said.
When that happens, the mosquitoes literally get toasted.
"That's very satisfying but it's a little wasteful of laser power," said Kare, noting that systems in the field will probably try to conserve power. "The real goal for us is to hit them just hard enough to prevent them from completing their mission -- going on to infect a person -- which doesn't mean you have to kill every single one of them immediately."
Kare said that while "the defenders of mosquitoes are few and far between," he nonetheless receives e-mail expressing concern that killing mosquitoes indiscriminately could harm the overall ecosystem. He stressed that the project's goal isn't to eliminate mosquitoes entirely, but he added that as far as he has been able to determine, there's no creature that would be significantly harmed by a decline in the mosquito population in a limited area.
"Even if we don't zap the mosquitoes, just detecting and categorizing insects turns out to be very high value," he said. "Being able to do that in real time ... is pretty high value for combating malaria."
Comments
After 20 minutes, I think they've run out of holidays
Cool enough tech, but you gotta see it in motion for maximum SCIENCE!
Just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, the prosthesis isn't just attached to muscles from the chest and shoulder, right? It actually receives nerve impulses and translates them into data and then movement?
3D "holographic" display from the USC graphics lab, pretty goddamned amazing if you ask me, can't wait til they perfect this and we all have full 3D displays of our own.
But once you're dead (in the Christian worldview) nothing can pose any danger to you ever again, since your existence is totally fixed. You're either in eternal unthinking bliss in heaven or eternal useless pain in hell. Danger becomes irrelevant, since nothing ever can possibly change in any way.
Of course, I wouldn't credit that book with accurately portraying reality, so who knows?
And there's a video too. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the future of killing from 200 miles away with a hunk of metal traveling at mach 5. Ya know, for peace.
I encourage anybody who disagrees with our nation's warmongering to get involved with local politics and support local politicians.
How cool is this?
That's just fucking great.
We can just nuke the sun as a preemptive measure against robot domination! How perfect is that plan?
Then we just gotta build some sort of undergound stronghold and spend all our time looking for "the one" who is obviously some poor sap we will expect to defeat the robots all by himself.