Skip to content

Phase III - Stealth Is.

“In the quietude, you may find solace in knowing.” “In knowing, you will find the solace of quietude.”

Archive

Category: squid vs dolphin interface

EyeWriter is an ongoing research project from Graffiti Research Lab, a collective of artists, urban pranksters and hackers who stage multimedia interventions around the world. Many of them were among Tempt’s closest friends, which made his diagnosis as much a devastation as it did an inspiration to intervene through innovation. So they mounted a small camera onto a pair of clunky eyeglass frames, and wired it so that the camera captures the pupil of Quan’s right eye, inputting it as it glides over a palette of colors and effects. To select a tool or color, he “clicks” by holding his gaze over it for four seconds He “clicks” by pausing his gaze for four seconds over the desired tool, then draws by moving his gaze around the canvas screen. Rather than saving the artwork in traditional JPG or GIF image formats, which have a number of limitations, output is saved in a GML format – Graffiti Markup Language, a new open-source format developed specifically for EyeWriter. Tempt then uploads his work to a server, from which his supporters have pulled it wirelessly to digitally project Tempt One “eyetags” onto everything from high rises in Los Angeles to Tokyo’s city halls to the riverbanks of Vienna.

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Share/Save/Bookmark

A novel transistor controlled by the chemical that provides the energy for our cells’ metabolism could be a big step towards making prosthetic devices that can be wired directly into the nervous system.

Transistors are the fundamental building blocks of electronic gadgets, so finding ways to control them with biological signals could provide a route towards integrating electronics with the body.

Aleksandr Noy at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and colleagues chose to control their transistor with adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – the molecular fuel found in nearly all living cells.

The new transistor is made up of a carbon nanotube, which behaves as a semiconductor, bridging the gap between two metal electrodes and coated with an insulating polymer layer that leaves the middle section of the nanotube exposed. The entire device is then coated again, this time with a lipid bi-layer similar to those that form the membranes surrounding our body’s cells.

Noy claims that this is the first example of a truly integrated bioelectronic system. “I hope that this type of technology could be used to construct seamless bioelectronic interfaces to allow better communication between living organisms and machines.”

Share/Save/Bookmark

A memristor is a device that, like a resistor, opposes the passage of current. But memristors also have a memory. The resistance of a memristor at any moment depends on the last voltage it experienced, so its behaviour can be used to recall past voltages.

Now memristors are being used in a US military-funded project trying to make brain-like computers, says Wei Lu, who led the team at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor that demonstrated the new behaviour

Memristors lend themselves to the task because the way that their resistance gives a glimpse of an earlier voltage is analogous to the way that a synapse’s electrical behaviour is dependent on its past activity.

Lu and colleagues have now provided the first demonstration that the analogy stands up. What’s more, their memristors were built with materials already used in the manufacture of computer chips.

Lu’s team used a mixture of silicon and silver to join two metal electrodes where they cross. The junction mimics a particular behaviour of synapses that allows neurons to learn new firing patterns, and is believed to allow memories to be stored.

In the brain the timing of electrical signals in two neurons affects the ease with which later messages can jump across the synapse between them. If the pair fire in close succession, the synapse becomes more likely to pass subsequent messages between the two.

Read more at New Scientist

Related External Links

Share/Save/Bookmark

Transplanting fetal neurons into the brains of young mice opens a new window on neural plasticity, or flexibility in the brain’s neural circuits. The research, published today in the journal Science, suggests that the brain’s ability to radically adapt to new situations might not be permanently lost in youth, and helps to pinpoint the factors needed to reintroduce this plasticity.

A better understanding of brain plasticity could one day point to new ways to treat brain injury and other neurological problems by returning the brain to a younger, more malleable state.

Scientists aren’t yet sure how the cells induce this second period of malleability. Stryker’s team and others had previously shown that the cells’ inhibitory signaling plays a key role–the critical period can be delayed or induced earlier by mimicking the inhibitory effects of the cells with drugs, such as valium. But in these previous experiments, it was not possible to induce a second critical period after the normal one. “Once you’ve had it, can never get another one, at least until these transplant experiments,”

Related External Links

Share/Save/Bookmark

Share/Save/Bookmark

Ray Kurzweil speaks at the BCI X-prize conference on the singularity and challenges facing neural computer interfaces. The X-Prize for BCI is hoping to be set to offer $10 million+ to technology which enables the sight of the blind. Read more at H+ Magazine

Related External Links

Share/Save/Bookmark

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Thanks to We’s Unruly for passing this along.

Related External Links

Share/Save/Bookmark


Electrical signals from different parts of the same cell have been simultaneously recorded for the first time, thanks to a new technique for attaching nanowire probes. This could aid the study of how heart, muscle and brain cells function and communicate.


The method uses a device called a nanowire field effect transistor (NWFET). This consists of a silicon wire just 20 nanometres in diameter attached to metal electrodes on a substrate of silicon dioxide. The nanowire, which sticks out by 30 to 40 nanometres, can be used as a probe to amplify the electrical signals produced by anything it touches.
….
They grow heart cells taken from chicken embryos on transparent polymer substrates and then transfer the cells to the nanowire array. Each cell is then positioned over up to 10 nanowires with the aid of a microscope. “We can do measurements that weren’t possible before,” says Lieber.

Besides making simultaneous measurements from different parts of the same cell, the wires can record the signals produced by several cells in the same tissue culture at the same time.

Modern wetware is a less disappointing field to look at all the time.

Related External Links

Share/Save/Bookmark

Viktor Schauberger’s Biological Submarine
by Albert Zock

The biological submarine once had the attention of the German War Lords, but Viktor Schauberger made it look as though it were not very useful, as in his opinion, biotechnology is for supporting progress and not for destruction. This submarine idea was taken from the observation of fish, especially of trout, which can stand motionless in a flowing stream, just by taking water in and out. This process has two functions, first it creates a vacuum in front of the mouth into which the fish gets sucked, and at the same time provides food, as the water contains all that the fish needs. While the food goes into the digestive system, the water is forced through the fan-like structure of the gills, which not only absorb the oxygen needed,but also push the water backwards. This specially compressed water does not mingle right away with the rest, it glides along the conical body like a wedge and shoves it forward. In addition, on the scales it forms little whirls which enhance the push further.

However, Viktor Schauberger was not the sole observer of this phenomenon. Before him others not only formed the same idea but even constructed prototypes with some results. One inventor, A. Bomer, came to the conclusion that the speedy motion of a fish is relative to the size of its gills. He constructed a boat with a precise opening in its bow, where a turbine sucked in water like a fish, and pushed it out through slit-like exit ports in such a way that it glided along the hull like a sheet, not only separating it from the friction of the outside water, but also giving it an additional push forward. Further, he applied such skin depressions like sharks have on his ship’s hull, presuming that they cause small swirls, and so increased the forward motion. Bomer even incorporated the slippery skin layer that fishes have by applying oil to the hull to reduce friction. He hoped all this would bring a 60-80% reduction in fuel. Indeed, experiments with his boat FORELLE, meaning ‘trout’, achieved twice the speed, while still using the same amount of fuel.

Apparently, Bomer did not know the spiral-vortex, which is an invention of Viktor Schauberger. If property applied, it will not only increase speed, but also reduce fuel consumption to a minimum!

This drawing by Dipl. Ing. Water Schauberger, Viktor’s son, shows such a submarine. His bio-technical submarine has a movable bow, which gives the boat the flexibility fish have. The conical and rifled water-intake permits a variable step-up, creating a strong torque on the water, which, after entering the implosion turbine, will be intensified to such a pitch, that now its recoil (resonance) is driving it instead of the motor, as bio-technical applications always have a pull and push action. Such a turbine consist of tapered-down pipes with inside rifling which are bent into spirals. Such FREE ENERGY is not a question of time, rather the will to use it, as it already exists, giving us a chance to move on water, under it and in the air using only a fraction of the energy we use today!

Borderland Sciences for more Kook fun.

Related External Links

Share/Save/Bookmark

This list seems to suggest that by 2030 we may have a very different map for sectors demanding workforce labor. There’s some interesting proposals for what the future of our employment may look like: Nano-medics, Vertical farmers, Commercial space-travel tour-guides, Memory Augmentations, Weather modification police, Waste-data handlers and Virtual Clutter organizers. The future of employment sounds promising in atleast that it has a possibility to be slightly more fulfilling with such wacky jobs coming to the forefront.

Via Klintron

Share/Save/Bookmark

Most theories that come out of the fringe are wrong. Hardly a point of any real contention to be sure. The world of kook science is populated by colourful wonks, unyielding grouches, the highly uneducated, the utterly mad, and, as follows, they’re usually working from cues that do not correspond to what is known about the world.

It is equally clear that we can never discount anything, no matter how ridiculous the theory or weird the theorist. It is as important to present alternative theories, to challenge them, as it is any conventional theory, because sometimes, just sometimes, the kooks have it right, and the world had it wrong all along.

Snap on your ether goggles, adjust your psychotronic tuning, drink that magnetic water, crank the rheostats radionic, pull the lever, flick the switches, prepare to oscillate, and RED, GREEN, BLUE . . .

EYES OPEN: WE’RE GOING IN!

Related External Links

Share/Save/Bookmark

Really innovative approach to computer interfaces and meatspace metadata.

More about Pranav’s designs are avbl. at his TED presentation.
Pranav Mistry is a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s Media Lab. Before his studies at MIT, he worked with Microsoft as a UX researcher; he’s a graduate of IIT. Mistry is passionate about integrating the digital informational experience with our real-world interactions.

Some previous projects from Mistry’s work at MIT includes intelligent sticky notes, Quickies, that can be searched and can send reminders; a pen that draws in 3D; and TaPuMa, a tangible public map that can act as Google of physical world. His research interests also include Gestural and Tangible Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, AI, Machine Vision, Collective Intelligence and Robotics.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Duncan Laurie: The Secret Art from DANGEROUS MINDS on Vimeo.

Duncan Laurie, author of The Secret Art, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the “forbidden science” of radionics. Some of you may recall Duncan from the Disinformation TV show. He’s the genteel mad scientist/artist from Jamestown, Rhode Island who looks like Harrison Ford and who works in laboratory housed in a glass building. In 2000 I recorded an interview with Duncan where he demonstrated the subtle energy exchange between plants and his mind-blowing collection of radionics devices. Continued @ Dangerous Minds

Much clearer and more direct information on Albert Abraham’s work is avbl. through our friends at Borderlands.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Care of the R & D scientist @ Dangus labs.

“It’s a mass meditation to stop the dude’s pacemaker.

A shitload of people contacted me when I first suggested it a month or

so ago, expressing both interest and amusement. The reason I picked

this date is because it’s the one year anniversary of his most recent

cardiological exam. Lots of hate has undoubtedly been directed at our

former VP over the last 8 or 9 years, but I submit that no one has

focused much attention on this little device that keeps his wicked old

ticker going. Well,. that needs to change! So let’s DO DIS!

I’m

guessing most of you are off work on Sunday, but even if you’re not,

just take a few moments to focus your mental energies on making the

pacemaker putt out. If you need help with visualization, just imagine

the thing slowly turning into a Yugo (see below), which then throws a

rod in the desert. Maybe pour a little beer into the gas tank for good

measure. I bet Cheney likes to pour beer into his own gas tank anyway

(especially while he’s out hunting birds), so that seems quite fitting.

Alternatively,

you can have him fall victim to a rabid sasquatch in the woods, who

then removes the still-pumping pacemaker from his nefarious chest.

The date is Sunday, July 12. Folks, let’s do this for the betterment of humanity!

yrs.,

heck/dang”

Share/Save/Bookmark