Is The Internet Changing Our Memory?

A recent study by Columbia University professor, Dr Betsy Sparrow, suggests that we are relying less on our memory of a subject and more on our memory of where to find the subject matter. "I don't think Google is making us stupid - we're just changing the way that we're remembering things... If you can find stuff online even while you're walking down the street these days, then the skill to have, the thing to remember, is where to go to find the information. It's just like it would be with people - the skill to have is to remember who to go see about [particular topics]." says Dr. Sparrow.


I'd argue that we've been doing this since we've been able to read and write. We may have faster access to information these days but prior to the internet there were libraries, filing cabinets, and subject matter experts. Don't you agree? Am I missing something here?


Source: bbc.co.uk

British Scientist Infects Himself With Computer Virus...

Well not himself but a chip implanted within himself. Dr. Mark Gasson from the University of Reading contaminated a modified RFID chip, similar to those used to chip your pets, and is experimenting with the infected device and systems that it may connect to. The ramifications, as Dr. Gasson explains in this BBC video clip, could be extensive as more and more uses for the chips are found and more devices are scanning for the data contained within the chips.

"This type of technology has been commercialised in the United States as a type of medical alert bracelet, so that if you're found unconscious you can be scanned and your medical history brought up." says Dr. Gasson. An infected chip could hold an entirely different payload than that which is intended for use by the system scanning it. 

Can you say Minority Report?

Secret Science Equals Gold Medals?

With the 2010 Winter Olympics about to get underway in Vancouver, the Canadian government is hoping that money poured into it's "Own The Podium" program equates to  Olympic medals. One of the pieces of science that particularly interests me is research being conducted on the curling ice where researchers are using infrared and other technical methods of studying the effect of sweeping on a curling stone. The theory was always that the sweeping action actually melted the ice slightly giving the desired affect on the curling stone as it travels down the sheet of ice. Professor Tom Jenkin, University of Western Ontario, has dispelled this theory and has come up with dozens of other discoveries to assist the Canadian teams in their quest for gold.

Source: CBC

 

Scientists On Path To Reading Your Mind With Brain Scans

Scientist at the University of California, Berkeley have made strides toward being able to read a human's mind. They Have successfully modeled how images are represented in the brain, and can now translate recorded patterns of a subjects neural activity into pictures of what the subject had seen.

The research could conceivably lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers according to a Wired article. "It's what you would actually use if you were going to build a functional brain-reading device," said Jack Gallant a neuroscientist working on the project.

Research Concludes That Zombie Attack Would Mean The End Of Us All

You may wish to polish up your Zombie killing techniques as a group of mathematics students and their professor from University of Ottawa have concluded that "A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly," While they admit that the scenario is highly unlikely if taken literally, the research is said to provide a useful framework in instances where scientists are dealing with the outbreak of an unknown disease.

I don't know about you, but I'll be stock piling supplies and honing my zombie eradication skills on Left4Dead! :-)

Source: CBC

Napping Improves Creativity

Need to amp up your creativity? Take a nap!

Virginia Tech Team Develops Laser-equipped Buggy That The Blind Can Drive

A team of Virginia Tech students has created a vehicle that can actually be driven by blind individuals. Equipped with an array of laser range finders, the dirt buggy offers an instant voice command interface and a other related systems that enable drivers to respond to whatever the vehicle "sees." It seems the technology is destined for vehicles for the rest of us but the fact that it has been tested by a non-sighted driver does prove that the technology in fact works.

Study Shows That As You Read Your Brain Simulates Actions In Stories

Using brain-imaging, researchers at Washington University have found that as you read your brain simulates the actions in the story.

"There has been good evidence for a while that mental simulation — imagination — can improve performance in sport and other skilled behaviours.

This study suggests that readers do mental simulation when they comprehend a story," said Jeffrey Zacks, director of the university's dynamic cognition laboratory.

This would suggest that we can practice skills by reading about them... interesting!

Source: CBC

Google Teams With Researchers To Identify ISPs Who Throttle

Google announced on Wednesday the launch of a new offering, Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform that researchers can use to deploy Internet measurement tools. Googles plans are to provide researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the U.S. and Europe over the course of 2009.

"Today, M-Lab is at the beginning of its development. To start, three tools running on servers near Google's headquarters are available to help users attempt to diagnose common problems that might impair their broadband speed, as well as determine whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled by their ISPs. These tools were created by the individual researchers who helped found M-Lab. By running these tools, users will get information about their connection and provide researchers with valuable aggregate data. Like M-Lab itself these tools are still in development, and they will only support a limited number of simultaneous users at this initial stage."

Google has been open in the past about it's desires for net neutrality and M-Lab looks like it's aimed at ferreting out the offenders. "At Google, we care deeply about sustaining the Internet as an open platform for consumer choice and innovation. No matter your views on net neutrality and ISP network management practices, everyone can agree that Internet users deserve to be well-informed about what they're getting when they sign up for broadband, and good data is the bedrock of sound policy. Transparency has always been crucial to the success of the Internet, and, by advancing network research in this area, M-Lab aims to help sustain a healthy, innovative Internet."

Source: Official Google Blog

UK Company Creates Injectable Bone To Speed Healing

RegenTec, a UK company, hopes to speed up the healing process for broken bones with the injection of a white powder designed to seal bones together in minutes. "You won't be able to just walk out of a hospital with a broken leg," said Robin Quirk, a professor at the University of Nottingham who, along with Kevin Shakesheff in the United States, originally developed the technology. "What we are trying to do in the short term is have something that fills the void left by a break that acts like normal spongy bone and encourages natural regeneration." At room temperature the material is in a power form but once injected into the body the materials fuse together in a hard, spongy mass much like living bone.

Jennifer Elisseef, a professor at Johns Hopkins University says "There is a lot of interest in bone filler materials from clinicians and from the military,"

Personally, I think the big market would be in professional sports!

Source: Discovery Channel

Robot Has Biological Brain Made Of Rat Neurons

Researchers at the University of Reading in England have developed robot, named Gordon, who relies on a dish with about 60 electrodes to pick up electrical signals generated by a biological brain made of rat neurons. When Gordon detects an object, signals are directed to stimulate the brain by means of the electrodes, in response, the brain's output drives the robot's wheels left and right, so that it moves to avoid hitting the object.

"One of the fundamental questions that scientists are facing today is how we link the activity of individual neurons with the complex behaviors that we see in whole organisms," said Ben Whalley, a pharmacist at the university and member of the team that built Gordon. "This project gives us a really unique opportunity to look at something which may exhibit complex behaviors, but still remain closely tied to the activity of individual neurons. Hopefully we can use that to go some of the way to answer some of these very fundamental questions."

Livescience.com article.

Invisibility Cloak Nearer To Reality

Scientists at the University of California in Berkeley have developed, on a nano scale, a material that can bend light around 3D objects theoretically rendering them invisible. According to a BBC article "The new system works like water flowing around a rock, the researchers said.Because light is not absorbed or reflected by the object, a person only sees the light from behind it - rendering the object invisible. The new material produces has "negative refractive" properties. It has a multi-layered "fishnet" structure which is transparent over a wide range of light wavelengths." The research is of course being funded by the US government and if reproducable on a large scale could have many military and covert applications. This conjures up images of the Predator movies...

Italian Researchers Identify Encrypted File Sharing Packets

For ISPs, like Bell and Rogers, who practice throttling techniques to discourage file sharing the results of some Italian research will be good news. Until now file sharing users could twart the throttling efforts of their ISP by encrypting the files they were sharing rendering them unrecognizable. A team of Italian researchers from the University of Brescia, has devised a method that they have demonstrated can catch these "hidden" file-sharing packets with up to 90 per cent accuracy. Their method "involves measuring the size and frequency of the discrete "packets" of data that a file-sharing program sends out over, and receives back from, the internet." The results of their experiments are impressive, if you are an ISP, "First and foremost, virtually no legitimate traffic is blocked by our mechanism," the Brescia engineers report. "Second, and equally important, the vast majority of [illegitimate] traffic is blocked by the mechanism." CBC Story here.

British Scientists Predict 500,000 GB mp3 Player

A report published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology suggests that 500,000 gigabytes of memory could be squeezed onto one square inch of flexible plastics. Prof Lee Cronin and Dr Malcolm Kadodwala chemists at Glasgow University "have developed a molecular switch which means that data storage can be dramatically increased without the need to increase the size of microchips" according to this article at Telegraph.co.uk. No mention is made of the potential for bringing this technology to market, seems as though it is all theoretical at the moment. Cool though if they can make it work!

Haptic Controller Brings Sense Of Touch To Computing

A new haptic controller developed by Carnegie Mellon professor, Ralph L. Hollis, allows users to manipulate three-dimensional images and explore virtual environments with a feel comes close to the sensitivity of the human hand. The device replicates the response a hand might have to textures and gravitational forces but don't expect to see it on a desk near you anytime soon as the price tag is said to be "much less" than $50,000. The device has made it's way to 6 Universities in the US and Canada thus far and new company, Butterfly Haptics, will begin marketing the device in June or July. Globe and Mail article here.

A Simple Solution To Compromise Encrypted Data

A group of researchers lead by a Princeton University scientist have developed a simple solution to hacking sophisticated encryption techniques and stealing data that, by many, would normally be considered to be secured. Rather than what you might expect to be a room full of powerful computing devices or highly complex computer code, the team describes the system in the following YouTube video, with further documentation on their website. Scary! Detailed story at the NYTimes.com website.

Study Says Males More Likely to Become Video Game Addicted

Researchers at Stanford University, using brain-imaging in a study of video game players, have concluded that "the part of the brain that generates feelings of reward is more stimulated in men than in women." The conclusion is therefore drawn that this neural affect explains why men are more likely to become addicted to video games. Speaking of the 22 test subjects, 11 male and 11 female, "The females 'got,' the game..." said Allan Reiss, who headed up the study. "They appeared motivated to succeed at the game. The males were just a lot more motivated to succeed." The game played involved gaining screen 'territory' by completing simple tasks and the researchers point out the the male of our species is definitely more territorial than the female, which could explain why the men were more driven to succeed. I think we're just amused by simple games and way too competitive for our own good. The CBC has the story.

File this under "yuck"!

When you have your sights set on putting astronauts on the moon or the red planet, you have to get creative and get stingy. NASA scientists, looking for ways to conserve and re-use are experimenting with "technology that would allow astronauts to convert both sweat and urine into drinkable water." Twenty employees of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will be sweating up a storm exercising, to generate water vapour through perspiration and respiration and donating urine as part of the test. The hope is that the hard work will allow NASA to conduct long space missions without need for resupply. All I can say about this one is, as cool as it sounds being an astronaut, this one would be the deal breaker for me! CBC story here.

How to assure that the best team wins

The CBC has an interesting article that, to me, proves that scientists don't know very much about sports! After analyzing and simulating league play, they found "a great degree of randomness of outcomes in games, with at least some chance that a lesser team can win in any given game". I have some experience in coaching, having participated in two national sporting championships. The fact is that teams who look good on paper do not always win, there is randomness in sport, that's what makes sport interesting! I do find this quote about major league baseball interesting however, "Over the past century, the lower-seeded team had an astounding 44 per cent chance of defeating a higher-seeded team", that number seems high but plausible. The researchers say that in order to ensure that the best team wins the respective schedules should contain a number of games equaling the square of the number of teams in the league. That would mean that a major league baseball team would have to play a schedule of 256 games, nearly 100 more than the current schedule! I say the best team should not necessarily win, but rather the team that performs the best when required to. If the best team won all of the time, nobody would be interested in participating or watching!

Phishing for answers

Researchers at Indiana University are employing some questionable tactics in an attempt to understand how scammers succeed at duping people out of their personal information and why people are fooled by such scams. The experiment involves phishing for information from random unwilling participants and has raised the eyebrows of others who say the researchers are no better than the scammers themselves. The debate is an interesting one, can you actually get good results from such experiments if the subjects knew they were going to be phished or is there a better, more controlled way of conducting such experiment without duping people into participating? This Globe and Mail article has more.