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Brain-Computer Interface Works With Speech Centers
Scottingham writes "Science Daily reports on new research that uses electrodes placed in the speech centers of the brain to move a cursor around the screen. Participants were instructed to utter different vowel sounds while their neural activity was parsed and analyzed. Once analyzed and connected to a cursor-control program, participants quickly learned to use the different vowel sounds to move a cursor around a screen. The system can distinguish between actual speech and the cursor controlling thought sounds."
From the summary: "The system can distinguish between actual speech and the cursor controlling thought sounds."
Can you do that, Dr. Leuthardt? :)
The other day I went and logged into a Counter-Strike server just for the hell of it, and made the mistake of leaving the voice chat feed on. It was as if someone took all the rage and stupid on the internet and turned it into a live audio stream that fed directly to my headset. At first it was amusing. It didn't last.
Basically, people are terrible. I'm amazed we kept it together long enough to get here.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
(emphasis added)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
If you read the article (Shocking I know), you would know that this is aimed at people who, becasue of either brain injury, or injury to to the vocal system, can't speak. The long term goal is to allow the user to "speak" with a computer voice using the same brain impulses as they would to speak normally. The ability to move to a mouse around is just a stepping stone.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
It works even if the user can't speak. it would be extremely useful for someone like Stephen Hawking.
Went to the witch doctor, here's what he said to his PC...
I tried to pronounce that, and now there's four humpback whales who want to mate with me trying to bash down the door of my vacation suite here. Decisions decisions.
Table-ized A.I.
If anything, it's more fitting to be depressed because space travel has advanced far, far less over the last 50 years than just about anything.
But no, the last decade did bring a fair bit of innovation, I think. Just a few things...
On the Internet front, not much technically new, but last decade is when it truly became widespread globally, instead of being largely limited to a few rich Western countries. From 2000 to 2010, Europe went from 105 million to 475 million Net users. Mideast went from 114M to 825M. Africa, where overall use remains very low, still went from 4M to 110M. [Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm%5D
A lot of interesting stuff happened with cybernetic implants / mind controlled tech. The BrainGate allowed paraplegics to mentally control a robotic arm (see Matt Nagle).
Stem cell research has shown some very promising things. Shinya Yamanaka came up with some method to use non-embryonic stem cells by some reprogramming process I won't claim to understand.
Spirit & Opportunity discovered proof of liquid water once on Mars, while frozen water got discovered on the Moon. And the first private spaceflights took place in this decade.
As far as gadgets and such go, some are also rather important. Digital cameras became commonplace, which I'd say is a more important innovation than smartphones, for now at least. In terms of ease and convenience, Wi-Fi and flat LCD screens became popular - with Wi-Fi being widely used and LCDs essentially pushing CRTs off the market, personal computing became easier.
Come to think of it, mobile phones! Last decade is when they went from expensive to common. In 2000, in my area at least, they'd be mostly used by businessmen and those who really had a need, but over a few years mobile phones became so widespread that grannies and schoolchildren have them now, in the last few years they've also caused landline use at home to become less prevalent.
Perelman's proof of the Poincare conjecture gave a solution to one of the most important outstanding problems in mathematics.
A functional memristor was built at HP. This can be a very important technology.
3D printing has become feasible for use.
And to finish this post, Mycoplasma laboratorium. One of the most potentially interesting developments in recent times, while it could also pose major ethical issues and possible misuse.
Interesting decade!
Damn, my mod points just expired or I'd give you a +1 Insightful. Instead I'll just leave this right here:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
I used translate.google.com to translate that from Finnish and it's a URL shortener pointing to goatse.
No, then we'd have to put up with *silent* jackasses waving their arms about without the *slightest* idea of what they are going on about.