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Oakspar77777

Technology

Intel Wants Brain Implants in Its Customers' Heads by 2020

By Posted on 11.20.2009 33 Comments
If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don't tell Intel researchers. Intel's Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain waves by 2020.

11.23.2009 at 03:11pm - Comment by Oakspar77777

I think what they are really going for here is a universal remote to everything remotable stuck in your head. Look at the light switch and think, and the light goes on or off. Look at the TV and think, and navigate a channel guide menu or the volumn. Look at the cell phone and think, and it dials scrolls through your calllist of people. Of course, fighting over the remote is going to be interesting when everyone in the room has one. Put a scan-chip in my hand to serve as my federal ID and access to my federal bank account that serves as my total assessts/debt account and obolish physical money and credit/debit cards. Put a few more chips in my fingers so that I can type on any surface (or play piano for that matter). Throw in some built in storage so I can't lose my USB drive. I'm not even sure I've hit science fiction yet. Love the idea, but in a world where I still live on broadcast TV and dial-up internet, 2020 is much to ambitious - a lot like those "home of the future" displays fom the 50s.
Technology

So Do Prosthetic Limbs Give Sprinters an Advantage Or Not?

By Clay Dillow Posted on 11.20.2009 15 Comments
Using the same set of data--an analysis of double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius and his carbon fiber Cheetah prosthetic legs--two teams of researchers have come to very different conclusions on whether his prostheses give him an advantage over sprinters with both of their legs. The future of modern prostheses' usage in sports hangs in the balance, and the fight is getting ugly.

11.20.2009 at 08:19am - Comment by Oakspar77777

This is idiocy. Common sense alone tells us these things grant an unfair advantage. Time the guy running a race without them, then time him with them on. In one, he has world class speed, in the other, you need a calander. They are performance enhancers, in that they enhance his performance past his physical capabilities. Are you saying that if science made me the 6 million dollar man it would be fair for me to compete, just so long as I almost always came in second? This is not an issue of "equal playing field." That would be something like the swiming super-suits, which they had to offer to everyone before they were allowed. Thus, no one can argue that Phelps was the fastest, because everyone had them on. On the other hand, no one really believes that Phelps beat all those world records fairly in equal competition. The suit gave him an unfair advantage against previous records. Thus, while these artifical legs are great, and this guy should have a great time at the special olympics, he unfit to run in the Olympics without special assistance, which, of course is not to be allowed. After all, if my grandma's jazzy chair doesn't give her an advantage over the other sprinters, can she be in the olympics? It is just equaling out the playing field against her disability (being 96). After all, it can't be too unfair, since most sprinters can outrun her chair.
Technology

Boeing's Latest Mobile Laser Weapon Tracks and Shoots Down Drone

By Clay Dillow Posted on 11.18.2009 11 Comments
Boeing has just announced it successfully tracked and shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle with a laser weapon. Actually, it shot down five UAVs at various ranges with the trailer-mounted Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX).

11.19.2009 at 09:09am - Comment by Oakspar77777

Anti-laser reflective surfaces, however, are pretty much the opposite of stealth. So a hybrid system could cook the sneaks and shoot up the shiney ones. Yes, this is not anti-taliban tech. This is defensive tech against future foes. If it is already trailer sized, there would be little cost in attaching a range of optical, radar, and thermal sensors and putting it on auto-fire for UAVs. I could see such tech really tightening up a no-fly zome, and the nice thing about lasers is that even if they miss, they don't come down somewhere else.
Technology

Scientists Test First Universal Programmable Quantum Computer

By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.16.2009 5 Comments
Physicists have been taking baby steps toward creating a full-fledged quantum computer faster and more powerful than any computer in existence, by making quantum processors capable of performing individual tasks. Now a group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed the world's first universal programmable quantum computer that can run any program that's possible under the rules of quantum mechanics.

11.18.2009 at 09:02am - Comment by Oakspar77777

and all it will want to do is watch cartoons, sigh uncontrolably, or create worlds where little white mice try to figure out the question to the answer 42.
Science

Modified Algae Produce Clean, Easy Hydrogen

By Clay Dillow Posted on 11.16.2009 15 Comments
Algae get a lot of airtime as a possible future source of biofuels to wean us from dirty fossil fuels, but even biofuels don't go so far as to eliminate hydrocarbons (and their constituent carbon emissions) from our energy diet. But a different use for algae could prove a better solution to the future of fuel. A new process that produces clean, sustainable hydrogen from photosynthesis in algae could change all that. The means of manufacturing clean, usable hydrogen has heretofore required a high-energy process that drastically dilutes the upside.

11.18.2009 at 08:57am - Comment by Oakspar77777

Hydrogen would work well as a fuel source for a hybrid car. You would still want a battery bank to recover energy from breaking and likely to juice up from home. If, however, like a Volt, a second fuel source kicked in to generate electricity, then hydrogen makes sense. If this process creates hydrogen more efficiently, then great. That is one step in the right direction for hydro-hybrid cars. The second is distribution. A universal coupling system (like that for propane), would be all that requires. Yes, a high pressure volitile gas is more dangerous than a liquid fuel, but even free hydrogen in the air is rather harmless, and rises out of the breathable air quickly.
Science

Moon-Bombing Mission Finds Significant Amount of Water in Lunar Soil

By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.13.2009 12 Comments
NASA's moon-smashing mission may not have provided a huge show for the folks on Earth, but now there's sweet vindication for scientists. The plume of lunar debris kicked up from ancient lunar crater kicked up 24 gallons of water, LCROSS mission staff reported today.

11.17.2009 at 08:02am - Comment by Oakspar77777

Creating ideal space environments has long proven to be one of the best ways to improve this world. Tang, microwaves, velcro, etc. Do you really thing the tech that will put a two mile ribbon into space will have no other benefits to mankind? Would not terriforming Mars not be a good experiment in planitary engineering that does wet our own bed? Is there really that much difference between cities in the stars and cities undersea in a world to polluted and irradiated that surface life is impossible? Moon bases, however, need not be manned. The moon is close enough to have only limited lag time on robotic command (not like the painstakingly slow work of moving a Mars rover). Considering how inefficient man is at working with so few Gs and so much protective wear and that the moon would only delay, not stop, bone density loss, there really are no reasons to send man to it. Robotically harvesting hydrogen and oxygen from moon water gives us a rocket fuel source that is already in space, drastically cutting the costs of opperating in space (particularly fueling up an interplanitary ship for human travel).
Technology

Army Corps of Engineers Now Required to Consider Climate Change in All Future Projects

By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.13.2009 17 Comments
Worst-case planning never hurt anybody, and certainly not federal water projects that cost millions of dollars and could be easily undone by climate change and rising sea levels. A new policy now requires the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to plan for future climate change when designing plans for flood control or other projects.

11.16.2009 at 10:38am - Comment by Oakspar77777

No one who is doing anything to preserve New Orleans is preparing for global warming. If you really wanted to prepare it, you would buldoze it, and move it inland, or landfill it up to a level where it isn't below see level. The problem isn't sea-storms - they will always hit and damage costal areas, it is building below sea level where when the sea receeds, the water doesn't. If you really wanted to fix the issue, you wouldn't address symptoms, but would instead address problems. Massive solar desalination plants for agriculture in the sahara region, for example, would do much for putting carbon into agriculture and suffering peoplegroups.
Technology

National Security Agency's Surveillance Data Could Fill Two States by 2015

By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 11.13.2009 12 Comments
We always knew that the National Security Agency collects a lot of surveillance data from satellites and by other means, but we never quite imagined it was this much: the NSA estimates it will have enough data by 2015 to fill a million datacenters spread across the equivalent combined area of Delaware and Rhode Island. The NSA wants to store yottabytes of data, and one yottabyte comes to 1,000,000,000,000,000 GB.

11.16.2009 at 10:28am - Comment by Oakspar77777

Continual high res satelite film of the entire earth. A murder takes place? Go back, watch the film, see who enters and exits the scene. Follow the perp, up to the minute, arrest the murderer. Much like the passive recording database security cameras in most big stores today - not that useful for catching criminals, but gangbusters at convicting them. Another possible reason - genetic figerprinting. If I was looking for a place that would be sympathetic with a national database of genetic code (a national family tree, if you will) then Salt Lake is where I would put it.
Technology

UK Calls For a Transforming, Laser-Toting Stealth UAV

By Stuart Fox Posted on 11.10.2009 17 Comments
In February, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) in Great Britain unveiled its plans for modernizing its military. Curiously similar to the US Army's recently killed Future Combat System, the British program looks to bring a new generation of unmanned vehicles, advanced sensors and energy weapons to the battlefield. However, unlike its American counterpart, it looks like this project is a go.

11.13.2009 at 03:20pm - Comment by Oakspar77777

Forget cost. They build it, they prove it, and they sell it to us (the USA). Scrub our government waste, throw in some English resolve, and bang, the country has a money maker.
Technology

Study Proves That Specialized Prosthetic Legs Grant No Advantage In Sprinting

By Stuart Fox Posted on 11.12.2009 7 Comments
In 2008, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) banned double amputee Oscar Pistorius from racing in the 2008 Summer Olympics. Later that same year, the ban was reversed. The back and forth centered on Pistorius' specially designed, spring-loaded, prosthetic legs. The IAAF argued that artificial legs designed especially for running gave Pistorius an unfair advantage against runners whose flesh-and-blood limbs didn't benefit from advanced engineering and space-age materials. While an MIT study last year eventually led to the overturn of the original IAAF decision, no one had done a systematic study of amputee racers in general. Now, the MIT researchers that investigated Pistorius have released the results of a wider trial, and it turns out that specially designed prostheses don't actually help sprinters.

11.9.2009 at 04:15pm - Comment by Oakspar77777

High athletics is not just about work, it is also about genetic advantage. A 5'6" person will loose in sprints to a 6'4" person, all other factors equal. So, we are not testing work in athletics - they all work very hard to be there. We are testing genetics (like in horse racing). That an amputee works just as hard does not make him fit for the challenge. If he cannot do it on his own two legs (or stubs), then he is inferior for that race. Is that fair? It is just as fair as being born 5'6", only now more easily compensated for. You wouldn't let the 5'6" guy have a stride extender claiming for "fairness" with the 6'4" guy, would you? The Greekss competed naked, and after seeing what the super suits did to swimming, I can see why. If athletics is going to have aesthetics and not become the cyborg games, then the super shoes, suits, bikes, trigger releases, and the rest need to go. I feel compasion for stubby and hate it that he isn't qualified for olympic competition, but most people are not.