December 26, 2006
Mindball: EEG Game
This week the Mindball championship is being held at The Science Museum in London. According to the museum, the winner will be crowned Britain's Most Relaxed Mind.
Mindball is a game in which two players compete to push a ball over the other's goal line. But there's a catch--this is a game of mind over matter and the way to win is to relax. Each player is wired up to an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine which records the electrical activity in the brain. Certain frequencies of signal are associated with different mental activities--for example, gamma waves with a frequency above 26 Hz are associated with higher mental activities such as problem solving.
However, you need to produce theta waves (4-8 Hz) which are associated with drowsiness and alpha waves (8-12 Hz) which are associated with being relaxed. So the more relaxed you are, the better you're going to be at this game.
More information at the Science Museum
December 19, 2006
A Robot in Every Home?
The January 2007 issue of Scientific American presents a cover story on robotics by Bill Gates. He describes the emergence of the robotics industry, which is developing in much the same way that the computer business did 30 years ago with future images of assembly lines creating useful robots such as those that can perform surgery, or for military purposes such as surveillance and disposing of roadside bombs, or domestic robots that vacuum the floor. Electronics companies have made robotic toys that can imitate people or dogs or dinosaurs, and hobbyists are anxious to get their hands on the latest version of the Lego robotics system.
He points out that some of the world's best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics, such as visual recognition, navigation and machine learning. And they are succeeding. At the 2004 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge, a competition to produce the first robotic vehicle capable of navigating autonomously over a rugged 142-mile course through the Mojave Desert, the top competitor managed to travel just 7.4 miles before breaking down. In 2005, though, five vehicles covered the complete distance, and the race's winner did it at an average speed of 19.1 miles an hour. (In another intriguing parallel between the robotics and computer industries, DARPA also funded the work that led to the creation of Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet.)
Gates describes one of robotics' most difficult problems is "how to simultaneously handle all the data coming in from multiple sensors and send the appropriate commands to the robot's motors, a challenge known as concurrency."
What is more, the challenges facing the robotics industry are similar to those we tackled in computing three decades ago. Robotics companies have no standard operating software that could allow popular application programs to run in a variety of devices. The standardization of robotic processors and other hardware is limited, and very little of the programming code used in one machine can be applied to another. Whenever somebody wants to build a new robot, they generally start from scratch.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, about two million personal robots were in use around the world in 2004, and another seven million will be installed by 2008. In South Korea the Ministry of Information and Communication hopes to put a robot in every home there by 2013. The Japanese Robot Association predicts that by 2025, the personal robot industry will be worth more than $50 billion a year worldwide, compared with about $5 billion today.
Scientific American January 2007
December 16, 2006
Time's Person of the Year
Congratulations! You are the Time magazine "Person of the Year."
Person of the Year: You Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.
Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals - citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.
As Time described it, "This response was the living example of the idea of our 2006 Person of the Year: that individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated content are transforming art and politics and commerce, that they are the engaged citizens of a new digital democracy. From user-generated images of Baghdad strife and the London Underground bombing to the macaca moment that might have altered the midterm elections to the hundreds of thousands of individual outpourings of hope and poetry and self-absorption, this new global nervous system is changing the way we perceive the world. And the consequences of it all are both hard to know and impossible to overestimate."
It was not the first time the magazine went away from naming an actual person for its "Person of the Year." In 1966, the 25-and-under generation was cited; in 1975, American women were named; and in 1982, the computer was chosen.
December 10, 2006
Virtual Reality and Memory: Too Much of a Good Thing?
It has been said that experience is the best teacher. However, a researcher, Ann E. Schlosser from the University of Washington, tested how well people used a camera after learning about its functions two different ways: either through an interactive virtual rendition or through text and static pictures. She found that though virtual experiences improved people’s memories of the camera’s functions, it also increased false positives - that is, more people believed it could do things that it couldn’t do.
"Although object interactivity may improve memory of associations compared to static pictures and text, it may lead to the creation of vivid internally-generated recollections that pose as memories," the author writes in the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.
In addition, though the virtual experience was better for retaining information, it didn’t help test subjects recognize the actual items when presented in real life: "The benefits of learning via virtual experience may come with costs: the ease of generating mental images may create later confusion regarding whether a retrieved mental image was perceived or imagined."
Schlosser also warns that while it might seem advantageous if consumers think a product has features it doesn’t actually have, this can actually lead to customer dissatisfaction. She explains, "Consumers who discover that the product does not have these attributes will likely feel misled by the company."
Ann E. Schlosser, "Learning Through Virtual Product Experience: The Role of Imagery on True Versus False Memories. Journal of Consumer Research: December 2006.
December 06, 2006
Smart Stick MD
What is new in medical record storage and access? Finger activated medical record USB storage device.
The smartSTIK-MD(TM), developed by bioMETRX, addresses the growing concern over unauthorized digital records access in the medical industry. smartSTIK- MD(TM) specifically addresses concerns over confidentiality of and access to medical records and how to securely transmit this sensitive data between healthcare professionals.
Along with a variety of pre-bundled medical applications, smartSTIK-MD(TM) easily and securely allows patients to carry their personal or family members medical records with them on the go. smartSTIK-MD(TM) is designed to accept medical information, including lab results, x-rays, physician's notes, prescription histories, testing results, and just about any medical data that pertains to a patient's health, directly from a doctor's computer. The information on the device can then be downloaded directly to another healthcare professional's computer.
However, you must first swipe your finger on smartSTIK-MD(TM) before those records can be loaded or transferred. The requirement of a fingerscan assures both the patient and doctor, that the patient is authorizing access to a health record, and complies with the mandates of the Health Information Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA). The device is currently in its testing phase, and the company expects to release it in 2007.