The latest excuse to work sans shoes and socks comes courtesy of the Toe Mouse, a concept computer interfacing device unveiled yesterday on the Yanko Design blog.
Designer Liu Yi crafted the Toe Mouse to slip on just like a flip flop, with a piece of plastic rising between the big and second toes for grip.
For a right-footed person, a sensor under the big toe acts as the left click on a traditional desktop mouse while the second toe's sensor functions as the right click. The mouse is wireless and can move along the floor the same way that a hand-held mouse slides over a surface.
The purported motivation for making such a mouse is to help those people with upper-limb disabilities navigate their computers. Alternatively, the Toe Mouse could free up one's hands for typing while still being able to point-and-click, somewhat like a drummer kicking a bass drum while working the rest of the kit with handheld drum sticks.
That would be extraordinarily uncomfortable. What with the "Shoe" only being under two of your toes. However I could see this thing grafted into a shoe, though that might not be a good idea either, seeing as how when your running to catch the bus as to be not late for work you could potentially be deleting your business presentation.
Scientists Uncover Transfer of Genetic Material Between Blood-Sucking Insect and Mammals
ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2010) — Researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington have found the first solid evidence of horizontal DNA transfer, the movement of genetic material among non-mating species, between parasitic invertebrates and some of their vertebrate hosts.
The findings are published in the April 28 issue of the journal Nature, one of the world's foremost scientific journals.
Genome biologist Cédric Feschotte and postdoctoral researchers Clément Gilbert and Sarah Schaack found evidence of horizontal transfer of transposon from a South American blood-sucking bug and a pond snail to their hosts. A transposon is a segment of DNA that can replicate itself and move around to different positions within the genome. Transposons can cause mutations, change the amount of DNA in the cell and dramatically influence the structure and function of the genomes where they reside.
"Since these bugs frequently feed on humans, it is conceivable that bugs and humans may have exchanged DNA through the mechanism we uncovered. Detecting recent transfers to humans would require examining people that have been exposed to the bugs for thousands of years, such as native South American populations," Feschotte said.
Data on the insect and the snail provide strong evidence for the previously hypothesized role of host-parasite interactions in facilitating horizontal transfer of genetic material. Additionally, the large amount of DNA generated by the horizontally transferred transposons supports the idea that the exchange of genetic material between hosts and parasites influences their genomic evolution.
"It's not a smoking gun, but it is as close to it as you can get," Feschotte said
The infected blood-sucking triatomine, causes Chagas disease by passing trypanosomes (parasitic protozoa) to its host. Researchers found the bug shared transposon DNA with some hosts, namely the opossum and the squirrel monkey. The transposons found in the insect are 98 percent identical to those of its mammal hosts.
The researchers also identified members of what Feschotte calls space invader transposons in the genome of Lymnaea stagnalis, a pond snail that acts as an intermediate host for trematode worms, a parasite to a wide range of mammals.
The long-held theory is that mammals obtain genes vertically, or handed down from parents to offspring. Bacteria receive their genes vertically and also horizontally, passed from one unrelated individual to another or even between different species. Such lateral gene transfers are frequent in bacteria and essential for rapid adaptation to environmental and physiological challenges, such as exposure to antibiotics.
Until recently, it was not known horizontal transfer could propel the evolution of complex multicellular organisms like mammals. In 2008, Feschotte and his colleagues published the first unequivocal evidence of horizontal DNA transfer.
Millions of years ago, tranposons jumped sideways into several mammalian species. The transposon integrated itself into the chromosomes of germ cells, ensuring it would be passed onto future generations. Thus, parts of those mammals' DNA did not descend from their common ancestors, but were acquired laterally from another species.
The actual means by which transposons can spread across widely diverse species has remained a mystery.
"When you are trying to understand something that occurred over thousands or millions of years ago, it is not possible to set up a laboratory experiment to replicate what happened in nature," Feschotte said.
Instead, the researchers made their discovery using computer programs designed to compare the distribution of mobile genetic elements among the 102 animals for which entire genome sequences are currently available. Paul J. Brindley of George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., contributed tissues and DNA used to confirm experimentally the computational predictions of Feschotte's team.
When the human genome was sequenced a decade ago, researchers found that nearly half of the human genome is derived from transposons, so this new knowledge has important ramifications for understanding the genetics of humans and other mammals.
Feschotte's research is representative of the cutting edge research that is propelling UT Arlington on its mission of becoming a nationally recognized research institution.
So once we start cloning people, can we mix and match DNA to create the perfect human being immune to almost to all diseases, with blonde hair and blue eyes?
There's no article to speak of, so you'll just have to check out the video linked in my headline. But the gist of it is that one Amber Case, self-professed cyborg anthropologist, will be getting a brain implant in the near future that will allow her to broadcast her thoughts to other people that have undergone the procedure over the Internet.
The project is called Bexis-Zed (nothing of substance on their website at the moment). The video is a preliminary Q&A discussion on the procedure, and future episodes should elucidate further leading up to the surgery.
The tech will be installed in her ocular nerve and motor cortex. Many of the specifics are unclear at this point (I'm curious as to how she will perceive the data being received, what sort of data will be transmitted, how the spam-blocking she mentioned is handled), so we'll have to stay tuned to find out more. But this is exciting stuff! Definitely blows current wearable computing experimentation right out of the water.
Or that if they do it will be a holographic touchsceen interface and have everything project out in front of you, which only you can see because it's just an illusion being shown to you by said implant.
I could see brain implant interfaces as having social etiquette issues along the line of Bluetooth headsets, where you switch to the virtual interface at the expense of interactions in meatspace. And worse, an implant means no external indication of the tech's presence, so people will just think you're batshit insane.
Still, I would sign up for this sort of testing. IN A HEARTBEAT.
PEFT!!! That's why I said commonplace, so that everyone just assumes your talking on the phone. It would be the perfect way for insane people to fit in, or to justify sitting around some place for no reason.
See, that's the real problem. Hard to get around too, cause people being crazy and humans and weirdos WILL find a way past your anti-spam stuff. No matter what.
When Oscar the cat lost both his hind paws in a farming accident, it was feared he'd have to trundle around in one of those wheeled-cat apparatuses. But Noel Fitzpatrick, a neuro-orthopedic veterinary surgeon in Surrey, pioneered a groundbreaking technique instead, installing weight-bearing bone implants to create a bionic kitty.
Custom-engineered metal implants -- called intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics (ITAPs) -- are fastened directly to Oscar's little ankle bones, inside his fuzzy little legs. From there they protrude directly through the skin and fur, using a biomimicking design inspired by the way that deer's antlers anchor to bone and then extend out through the skin. Prosthetic paws attach to the ends of the implants and let Oscar (no relation to Oscar Pistorius) walk normally.
"The real revolution with Oscar is [that] we have put a piece of metal and a flange into which skin grows into an extremely tight bone," Fitzpatrick told BBC News.
"We have managed to get the bone and skin to grow into the implant and we have developed an 'exoprosthesis' that allows this implant to work as a see-saw on the bottom of an animal's limbs to give him effectively normal gait."
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So once we start cloning people, can we mix and match DNA to create the perfect human being immune to almost to all diseases, with blonde hair and blue eyes?
Hitler would be proud.
There's no article to speak of, so you'll just have to check out the video linked in my headline. But the gist of it is that one Amber Case, self-professed cyborg anthropologist, will be getting a brain implant in the near future that will allow her to broadcast her thoughts to other people that have undergone the procedure over the Internet.
The project is called Bexis-Zed (nothing of substance on their website at the moment). The video is a preliminary Q&A discussion on the procedure, and future episodes should elucidate further leading up to the surgery.
The tech will be installed in her ocular nerve and motor cortex. Many of the specifics are unclear at this point (I'm curious as to how she will perceive the data being received, what sort of data will be transmitted, how the spam-blocking she mentioned is handled), so we'll have to stay tuned to find out more. But this is exciting stuff! Definitely blows current wearable computing experimentation right out of the water.
Ah, TECHNOLOGY! ROBOTS!!! APOCALYPSES!!!!!!!
Still, I would sign up for this sort of testing. IN A HEARTBEAT.