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The Blind Shall See Again, But When?
An anonymous reader writes "Restoring hearing with cochlea implants that replace the inner ear with an electronic version has become standard procedure for many types of deafness. Now it looks like the same thing might happen for many types of blindness. With five national labs funded by the Department of Energy, this third-generation artificial retina promises to enable the blind to see again soon. Already it has been successful in over a dozen test patients, but at resolutions too low for doing much more than proving the concept. However, if the DoE can perfect this larger version of an artificial retina, then the company Second Sight promises to commercialize the implant, aiming for VGA resolution within the decade."
It would be cool if, say, the IR spectrum or just more dynamic range in the visible spectrum could be tone-mapped to human perception in this way, resulting in perceptually sharper images by way of a direct retinal implant.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Try working on a VGA/DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort/whatever input, too. Bypass monitors altogether.
My Dad just had a stroke and has no perception on the left side of his body.
All I have been thinking about the last month is how to do something like this, set up something that can do motion detection and help him avoid collisions.
You know, I would go for low resolution versus no resolution right now.
M
This reminds me of a small girl we met at the swimmingpool (lessons), who had one visible cochlear implant. This girl turned out to be deaf from birth on both ears. I remarked to her mother that she could actually hear and talk amazingly well - I hadn't noticed anything in her speech. According to the doctors this was nigh impossible, but she had enough input from the 16 nerves to get perfect speech and reasonable hearing. She probably got very lucky with the connections on the nerves. So even with 16 nerves stimulated this could make a huge difference for someone who's blind, if they happen to hit the right connections.
Yeah I know - anecdotal evidence and such. Still, I'm happy they get this far already.
Oh, and I won't be upgrading my retina unless it matches the resolution of my computer display and comes with infrared, zoom and millimeterwave vision options. Preferably with scrolling 6502 assembly code on the left side as well :P
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Flip that argument - who's up for preventing blacks from purchasing skin lightening or radical plastic surgery?
See, kids, that's called a false dichotomy.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Keanu Reeves approves of this idea.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I'm not deaf but I think that there is enough a community for deaf people that they have a cultural identity of being deaf. By implanting children with the device, they are no longer in that culture, but neither are they a "normal" fully hearing person, even when they have the device plugged in. This may actually lead to a lower self-esteem for the child than if they were surrounded by people like them (i.e. deaf). But then again, teenagers or children who don't fit in or feel inadequate for any reason are as common as grass since schools and children tend to try and enforce sociological homogeneity, it doesn't matter if you wear thick glasses, are socially maladjusted, or have any other issue that makes you different from the "average" kid.
As for black people, I think the GP needs to learn a bit about skin tone discrimination amongst african americans and asians before he starts shooting off about skin lighteners and their evilness. Even americans of european descent do it, ever hear the term "redneck"? It immediately conjures a picture in one's mind of someone who is often poorly educated and poor financially and is often overweight.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Can we not use bit.ly and other URL shorteners on /.? There's no need to. They're harmful, actually. Thanks!
the man with 640x480 is king.
1. This is the best cure we have so far
2. They are deficient, they lack the ability to hear. Hate to hurt their feelings, but that is the truth. I am deficient in sight, so I use contacts.
3. Not if they want to communicate with 99.9% of the world that uses sound to communicate instead of gestures.
Yeah, but shouldn't they pass on their research work to another, more appropriate Department?
Senior academic scientists don't "pass on their research" unless they're exceptionally well-paid for it, or retiring. To do otherwise would be career suicide.
To answer the original question: there are a variety of reasons why the DoE maintains other research programs that don't appear at first glance to be related to energy. One is that it's useful to have a sustainable and adaptable academic culture - for instance, the DoE is now putting a great deal of effort (and money) into biofuels, which is both directly related to the core mission of the Department, and dependent on biologists of every kind. If the DoE were strictly limited to physicists, synthetic chemists, and engineers, no one in the organization would have a clue about how to go about starting up a biological research program. You can always hire outsiders, but it is nice to have in-house expertise.
Another reason is that the very nature both of science and of the DoE labs inherently introduces some mission creep. Because they have always done defense-related work as part of the nuclear weapons program, ever since the Manhattan Project, they have branched into other defense-related areas. The DoE is also probably the world's largest operator of particle accelerators, which have a variety of uses. At some point in the last century, someone figured out that a particular type of electron accelerator called a synchrotron (which the DoE has several of) was most useful as an X-ray generator. As a result, protein crystallographers - biochemists - are some of the most active users of DoE facilities. (This was my background, and I now work for the DoE.) More recently, they've started to work on X-ray lasers, starting with the old Stanford LINAC, and the hope is that these will make possible many new experiments in multiple fields.
(Keep in mind, the time span over which new methodologies develop is typically multiple decades. The first protein crystallography experiment was in 1937; the first cyclotron was invented in 1929. No one actually solved a protein structure with X-rays until the early 1960s, by which time synchrotrons had been invented. It took another 20-30 years to realize the application of synchrotron X-rays to biology, and another 20 years for their use to become standard. It isn't simply a case of government bureaucrats searching for new fields to move into - although that happens occasionally too. Basic research is often inherently undirected and directionless, and you don't necessarily know where you're going to end up when you start.)
Finally, don't assume that the funding comes entirely from the DoE. The research group that I work for is mostly based at a national lab, but our funding comes almost entirely from the NIH and sponsoring companies.
That's when they finally plug the analog hole for good.
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