SeaDour - Slashdot User

Japan's Cyborg Research Enters the Skull 120

Posted by Zonk on Thursday April 17, 2008 @03:06PM from the datajack-is-just-around-the-corner dept.

RemyBR writes "Researchers at Osaka University are stepping up efforts to develop robotic body parts controlled by thought, by placing electrode sheets directly on the surface of the brain. The research marks Japan's first foray into invasive (i.e. requiring open-skull surgery) brain-machine interface research on human test subjects. The aim of the research is to develop real-time mind-controlled robotic limbs for the disabled. 'To date, the researchers have worked with four test subjects to record brain wave activity generated as they move their arms, elbows and fingers. Working with Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), the researchers have developed a method for analyzing the brain waves to determine the subject's intended activity to an accuracy of greater than 80%.'"

Comment Re:Seti Growth explosion yet to come (Score 1) 346

by SeaDour on Friday January 04, 2008 @01:40PM (#21911150) Attached to: 500-fold Increase in Data Flow from SETI Telescope

From what I've read in the setiathome forums, the SETI Institute/Allen Array has no plans to utilize setiathome software for data analysis. Setiathome will remain strictly a Project Phoenix (Arecibo-based) project. It's important to note that there is no one single "SETI" organization that controls all ET research. Project Phoenix at Berkeley is one, SETI Institute is another, the optical SETI project at Harvard is a third...there are multitudes.

Computer Model Points To the Missing Matter 97

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @03:41PM from the on-a-whim dept.

eldavojohn writes "There exists a little-known problem of missing regular matter that has perhaps been overshadowed by the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Computer models show that there should be about 40% more regular matter than we see... so where is it? From the article: 'The study indicated a significant portion of the gas is in the filaments — which connect galaxy clusters — hidden from direct observation in enormous gas clouds in intergalactic space known as the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium, or WHIM, said CU-Boulder Professor Jack Burns... The team performed one of the largest cosmological supercomputer simulations ever, cramming 2.5 percent of the visible universe inside a computer to model a region more than 1.5 billion light-years across.' This hypothesis will be investigated and hopefully proved/disproved when telescopes are completed in Chile and the Antarctic. The paper will be up for review in this week's edition of the the Astrophysical Journal."

The Home Library Problem Solved 328

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 11, 2007 @03:02PM from the ask-and-it-is-given dept.

Zack Grossbart writes "About 18 months ago I posted the following question to Ask Slashdot: 'How do you organize a home library with 3,500 books?' I have read all the responses, reviewed most of the available software, and come up with a good solution described in the article The Library Problem. This article discusses various cataloging schemes, reviews cheap barcode scanners, and outlines a complete solution for organizing your home library. Now you can see an Ask Slashdot question with a definitive answer."

The Coevolution of Lice & Their Hosts 179

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @11:43PM from the lets-be-adults-about-this-everyone dept.

eldavojohn writes "It might be an uncomfortable subject but parasites are an interesting subject when it comes to evolution. Ever wonder if pocket gophers have lice? Well, they do. And most interesting of all is the evolution of these lice mirroring the evolution of gophers. To study the genes of lice may shed just as much light on evolutionary trees as studying the genes of the actual host the lice has evolved to. The most unsettling result from these studies is that human head lice and human pubic lice (crabs) vary so greatly that they are in two separate genera. There were similarities between our pubic lice and the lice found on gorillas. Scientists came to the conclusion, which they published today in BMC Biology, is just as striking as their earlier one about head lice. But it is hardly the same. We did not get pubic lice from other hominids. We got them from the ancestors of gorillas."

The Assassination of Wi-Fi 258

Posted by Zonk on Sunday March 04, 2007 @07:38PM from the sniper-has-range-on-the-target dept.

justelite writes "John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine has up an article looking at the new strategy of American cell-phone-service companies. From article: 'There is mounting evidence that the cellular service companies are going to do whatever they can to kill Wi-Fi. After all, it is a huge long-term threat to them. We've seen that the route to success in America today is via public gullibility and general ignorance. And these cell-phone-service companies are no dummies.'"

Submission + - Scientist: Sun is Warming Both Earth and Mars

Submitted by

MCraigW

on Friday March 02, 2007 @05:05PM

MCraigW writes: "Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural — and not a human-induced — cause. Earth is currently experiencing warming, which climate scientists say is due to humans pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun."

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