Digital Genetics

According to Dick Pelletier from the Institute of Ethics & Emerging Technologies

“Cutting-edge research around the world will soon launch a new era in human procreation – a world in which embryos can be ‘brought to term’ in artificial wombs, replacing traditional pregnancies.”

He goes on to say:

“In Japan, Juntendo University researcher Yosinori Kuwabara and his team kept goat fetuses growing for ten days. While this womb was only a prototype, Kuwabara predicts that a fully functioning artificial womb capable of gestating a human fetus will evolve in the near future.”

Whilst I visualise matrix-style human farms, I cannot help but wonder whether there is reason enough to pursue such technology or even if it is even ethical in the first place. Having children of my own, I must unfortunately agree with the critics which are arguing that such technology would intefer with the mother-child development of the baby and the contributions that such interaction provides.

To read the full article, vist: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pelletier20121113

Bioengineers at Harvard University have created the first examples of half flesh, half electronic cyborg tissue. Whilst the technology is dissapointingly nowhere near terminator-level yet, it demonstrates a huge leap forward. The cells themselves simply continue to do what they normally do – but the electronics side actually acts as a sensor network, allowing computers to interface directly with the cells the same way a biological system would.

The Harvard engineers basically took normal collagen, and wove nanowires and transistors into the matrix to create nanoelectric scaffolds (nanoES). The neurons, heart cells, muscle, and blood vessels were then grown as normal, creating cyborg tissue with a built-in sensor network.

to read more about this fascinating development, go to:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/135207-harvard-creates-cyborg-flesh-thats-half-man-half-machine

Our bodies have been equipped with an array of sensory receptors which constantly stream information to our brains for processing, But what if could expand on this and introduce new ways of sensing and interacting with our environments? This is exactly what a small yet growing community of technologists are doing.

The way Cannon sees it, biohacking is all around us. “In a way, eyeglasses are a body hack, a piece of equipment that enhances your sense, and pretty quickly becomes like a part of your body,” says Cannon. He took a pair of electrodes off the workbench and attached them to my temples. “Your brain works through electricity, so why not help to boost that?” A sharp pinch ran across my forehead as the first volts flowed into my skull. He and Sarver laughed as my face involuntarily twitched. “You’re one of us now,” Cannon says with a laugh.

To read more, visit:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/8/3177438/cyborg-america-biohackers-grinders-body-hackers

In an amazing display of pure talent, a 17 year old by the name of Brittany Wenger has taken first price is the google science fair by creating a computer program that detects breast cancer with an accuracy of 99.1%.

To read more about this very talented youth, visit: http://www.futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/technology/futureoftech/17-year-old-girl-builds-artificial-brain-detect-breast-cancer-908308

Recently i’ve had issues with the spool services running on my windows 7 laptop. For reasons previously unknown, programs would simply freeze for long periods of time for no apparent reason. After googling, I found a work around whereby I would open the windows resource monitor, right click on the frozen application and ‘analyze wait chain’, which would then allow me to kill the offending spoolsvc.exe process. well, no more! Ive simply had enough of this daily torment.

Scouring the internet once more I found a comment posted by rmann on neuber.com (http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/spoolsv.exe.html) which drove straight to the heart of the issue – a stupid amount of pending print jobs waiting to spool. In my case, there was over 570, 608 items.

Here was his comment:

spoolsv.exe hogging 99% of cpu – the fix. Here’s the fix. First, get some breathing room – go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services and stop the Print Spooler. Turn off the printer. Now go to C:WINDOWSsystem32spoolPRINTERS and delete the files there. I found ’00020.SHD’ and ’00020.SPL’. Now turn your printer back on and restart the service. Check task manager, spoolsv.exe should be at 00%. Whew!

Below is a fantastically simple windows batch script which will take care of the stopping, starting and clearing of the print spool directory.

@ECHO OFF
REM BATCH SCRIPT
REM Source: http://wp.me/p6h4z-1v

REM This program stops the print spooler, deletes all documents in the queue
REM and then restarts the print spooler
ECHO *******************************
ECHO *** Printer Spooler Cleaner ***
ECHO *******************************
ECHO.
NET STOP SPOOLER
C:
ECHO Deleting the print queue...
DEL C:WINDOWSsystem32spoolPRINTERS* /Q /F
ECHO.
NET START SPOOLER
ECHO The print spooler is now clean.
PAUSE

Source: http://virtualparadise.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/clear-print-queue/

Thank you rmann & Joe!

As part of an ever growing need to organise and recycle, My wife and I have undergone a simple project with some used wine boxes originally destined for the rubbish. With a few small modifications, namely a strip of blackboard paint and a touch of elbow grease we’ve been able to achieve all this and more.

(continue reading…)

Youtube user trutapes has posted a fascinating video of an experiment testing a phenomenon called Change Blindess.

“Change blindness is the phenomenon that occurs when a person viewing a visual scene apparently fails to detect large changes in the scene. For change blindness to occur, the change in the scene typically has to coincide with some visual disruption such as a saccade (eye movement) or a brief obscuration of the observed scene or image. When looking at still images, a viewer can experience change blindness if part of the image changes.”

Oh blizzard, why do you tease me so!

Human-Computer interaction or HCI, has long been a fascination. I guess it first started with virtual reality, where total immersion into a digital world could be possible. Suddenly scenes from the lawnmower man immediately come to mind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doAnB5_eDnw). Whilst we are are still a long way from this sort of technology, there have been some amazing leap forwards in HCI research.

Microsoft HoloDesk
The HoloDesk is an interactive system which combines the technology of a transparent display, a Kinect camera and a half-silvered mirror. The real beauty of this system is getting hands-on, and physically being able to interact with three dimensional objects. Check out the cool video demonstration:

FogScreen
Wow! using fog, really? I was simply gobsmacked when I first came across this technology. FogScreen is the brainchild of a company in Helsinki, Finland. The device uses an array of tiny nozzles to deliver rows of near-microscopic drops of water, forming a thick fog upon which a project can shine a suprisingly clear image. that means no dorky glasses are required! Couple this display with a kinect style device and you have an interactive interface which looks very cool.

© Galit Weisberg