In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers has demonstrated the viability of direct brain-to-brain communication in humans.
Was just about to post it... :) It seems after transferring the EEG signals of one person, converting it to bits and stimulating some brain activity using magnetic stimulation (TMS) the receiving person actually sees 'flashes of light' in their peripheral vision. So its using your vision sense to get the information across. Would it not be better to try to see if you can generate some kind of signal in the part of your brain that is connected to 'hearing'? Or would this be me thinking too naive?
"transferring the EEG signals of one person, converting it to bits and stimulating some brain activity using magnetic stimulation (TMS)"
How is this "direct"?
Human hibernation again. A group in groningen that started 6 years ago and a study under the US army that will do some limited trials with humans apparently.
A vascular synthetic system that restores mechanical performance in response to large-scale damage. Gap-filling scaffolds are created through a two-stage polymer chemistry that initially forms a shape-conforming dynamic gel but later polymerizes to a solid structural polymer with robust mechanical properties.
The device, like dolphins, sends out two pulses in quick succession to allow for a targeted search for semiconductor devices, cancelling any background "noise",
and it sends out two pulses of opposite polarity, in succession, such that a semiconductor changes the negative to a positive one, amplifying the returning signal. Very interesting. Maybe we can combine different frequencies for identifying a single variable in earth observation. We already use more that one frequencies but for identifying one variable each.
Could it be used to measure ocean acidification? I found a study that links sound wave propagation with ocean acidity. Maybe we are able to do such measurement from space even?
"Their paper, "Unanticipated consequences of ocean acidification: A noisier ocean at lower pH," published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that fossil fuels are turning up the ocean's volume. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the overall pH of the world's oceans has dropped by about 0.1 units, with more of the changes concentrated closer to the poles. The authors found that sound absorption has decreased by 15 percent in parts of the North Atlantic and by 10 percent throughout the Atlantic and Pacific"
The last time I asked an oceanographer for the use of acoustic waves, she said it is still a bit problematic method to take into account its data, but we were referring to measuring ocean circulation. It may be more conclusive for PH measurements, though. The truth is that there is a whole underwater network with pulse emmitters/receivers covering the North Atlantic basin, remnant infrastructure for spying activities in the WW2 and in the cold war, that stays unexploited. We should look more into this idea
Not easily digestible piece of esa document, but to prove Paul's point.
And yes, they have already planned to train neural networks on a database of different water types, so that the satellite figures out from the combined retrieval of backscattering and absorption = f(λ) which type of water it is looking at. Type of water relates to οptical clarity of the water, a variable called turbidity.
We could do this as well for mapping iron fertilization locations if we find its spectral signature. Lab time?????
It's out there for TWO days and no one has posted it here yet? What's happening to the ACT...
In any case, yet-another-year-ACT-didn't-make-it... Better luck next time.
I think e.g. de Tommaso et al. results have application in almost any business, ESA notwithstanding, in terms of implications for optimal office decor...
Evolutionary Robotics, as practised by biologists.
Here's the link to John Long's book, mentioned in the article:
Darwin's Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QXVRZG/
The researchers have created two-dimensional computer models of the flying snakes, but they've also done real-world simulations - using 3D printed components in water tunnels. Both show that snake-shaped objects would get a special aerodynamic pop should they tilt their bodies at 35 degrees as they drop from tree branches.
"The new type of material consists of tens of thousands of picoliter connected water droplets encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies."