The Brain Speaks: Scientists Decode Words From Brain Signals

This photo shows two kinds of electrodes sitting atop a severely epileptic patient's brain after part of his skull was removed temporarily. The larger, numbered, button-like electrodes are ECoGs used by surgeons to locate and then remove brain areas responsible for severe epileptic seizures. While the patient had to undergo that procedure, he volunteered to let researchers place two small grids -- each with 16 tiny "microECoG" electrodes -- over two brain areas responsible for speech. These grids are at the end of the green and orange wire bundles, and the grids are represented by two sets of 16 white dots since the actual grids cannot be seen easily in the photo. University of Utah scientists used the microelectrodes to translate speech-related brain signals into actual words -- a step toward future machines to allow severely paralyzed people to speak. (Credit: University of Utah Department of Neurosurgery)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 6, 2010) — In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.

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NASA Team To Trapped Miners: No Alcohol Or Cigarettes

Workers stand next to a special drill, the Xtrata 950, which will dig an escape hole for the miners who are trapped underground in a copper and gold mine, as it is transported to the top of a hill at Copiapo, some 725 km (450 miles) north of Santiago August 27, 2010.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

From Live Science:

After spending almost a week in Chile, a team of NASA personnel sent to provide nutritional advice and psychological support to 33 trapped miners reported Tuesday that the efforts of the Chilean government have been outstanding so far, and the focus needs to be on long-term strategies that will allow the men to live sustainably underground as a community.

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The Shark Soup Massacre And How To Stop It

From New Scientist:

Sharks attacking humans is big news; humans attacking sharks, not so much. Conservation photographers Paul Hilton and Alex Hofford are trying to redress this imbalance. In revealing the extent of the bloody trade in shark fins, their book Man and Shark is a testament of our cruelty towards these majestic creatures.

Hilton and Hofford, who both live in Hong Kong, have witnessed the butchery of sharks in places as diverse as Mozambique, Yemen and Sri Lanka. But Hofford had seen nothing until he went to Japan.

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Scientists Invent A Tractor Beam

In "Stak Trek," Federation starships relied upon tractor beams to hold and tow other vessels. Scientists may not be there yet, but they have managed to tow a small particle using light beams

From FOX News:

WASHINGTON – Tractor beams, energy rays that can move objects, are a science fiction mainstay. But now they are becoming a reality -- at least for moving very tiny objects.

Researchers from the Australian National University have announced that they have built a device that can move small particles a meter and a half using only the power of light.

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Airborne Laser Weapon Fails to Take Down Dummy Nuke In Critical 100-Mile Test Shot

The Airborne Laser Test Bed Missile Defense Agency

From Popular Science:

The Missile Defense Agency’s Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB) – formerly known simply as the Airborne Laser – has endured a back-and-forth existence, at different times the darling of the MDA, at other times on the verge of catching the Pentagon or Congressional axe. But after an all-around success in February, the scales have tipped back the other way for the embattled ICBM-blaster as it failed a critical test on September 1.

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Hubble Spots Ghostly Space Spiral

From Discovery News:

When I first saw this ghostly Hubble Space Telescope image, I assumed that faint blurry spiral was a lens flare or some other photographic anomaly. But on closer inspection, the details started to present themselves.

As imaged by the space telescope's sensitive Advanced Camera for Surveys, this striking pattern is formed by material being ejected from a dying star. But this isn't a lone star; there's a second star -- a binary partner -- orbiting with it and modulating the expanding gas.

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Mystery Of Google Doodles Answered: 'Google Instant'

From CBS News:

The big tease of the last few days is over: Google earlier today announced a search enhancement called Google Instant.

Google Instant, which is rolling out through the course of the day, evolved from the company's mission to speed up search results for Internet queries. The basic change means that users will find a changing set of results in the middle of the page each time they type in a character into the search box. The added technology is designed to help Google's search engine predict what a person might be searching for.

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Are We Closer To A 'Theory Of Everything'?

From The BBC:

The physicists' ultimate dream is the search for a "theory of everything", a unifying explanation that can make sense of the infinitely tiny as well as the infinitely large.

From the strange particles that are the terrain of atom-smashing machines such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, to galaxies beyond our own, about which we're learning more and more through increasingly powerful telescopes and observatories.

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Evolution Of The Star Trek Warp Drive Effect

[Via Gizmodo]

Two Asteroids To Pass By Earth Wednesday

Two small asteroids in unrelated orbits will pass within the moon's distance of Earth on Wed. Both should be observable with moderate-sized amateur telescopes.

From Space Daily:

Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, will pass within the moon's distance of Earth on Wednesday, Sept. 8.

Both asteroids should be observable near closest approach to Earth with moderate-sized amateur telescopes. Neither of these objects has a chance of hitting Earth.

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The Boss Is Robotic, And Rolling Up Behind You

Dr. John Whapham, using a robot, discussed care with a patient at Loyola University Medical Center near Chicago. Sally Ryan for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

SACRAMENTO — Dr. Alan Shatzel’s pager beeped at 9 on a Saturday morning. A man had suffered a stroke, and someone had to decide, quickly, whether to give him an anticlotting drug that could mean the difference between life and death.

Dr. Shatzel, a neurologist, hustled not to the emergency room where the patient lay — 260 miles away, in Bakersfield — but to a darkened room at a hospital here. He took a seat in front of the latest tools of his trade: computer monitors, a keyboard and a joystick that control his assistant on the scene — a robot on wheels.

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Can We Spot Volcanoes On Alien Worlds? Astronomers Say Yes

This artist's conception shows an extremely volcanic moon orbiting a gas giant planet in another star system. New research suggests that astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope could potentially detect volcanic activity on a distant Earth-sized planet by measuring volcanic gases in its atmosphere. Credit: (Credit: Wade Henning)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2010) — Volcanoes display the awesome power of Nature like few other events. Earlier this year, ash from an Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel throughout much of northern Europe. Yet this recent eruption pales next to the fury of Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system.

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New Details On How The Brain Responds To Fear

From Live Science:

Some ostensibly important politician once said, "The only thing we have to fear...is that a mad scientist will learn how to directly manipulate the brain regions responsible for fear itself." Whoever that was, he or she could not have been more insightful.

Thanks to some recent work from the European Molecular Biology Laboratories (EMBL) and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, fear itself might soon become the linchpin of this mad scientist's quest for world domination.

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Apple iPod Touch (4th Gen. With Camera)

From PC Magazine:

Apple's fourth-generation iPod touch finally gets a camera for HD video recording, and still-photo capture. Plus a second, front-facing camera brings FaceTime video chat to the touch. On the new high-res Retina display, everything looks crisp and colorful, and the screen remains highly responsive to touch. Apple eliminated video playback from its sixth-generation iPod nano ($149, ), making the touch the least-expensive video-playing iPod. Starting at $229 (direct, 8GB), however, it's not cheap, and that isn't much storage for an HD video device. The $299 32GB player seems like the best deal, while the 64GB model offers twice the storage, but remains exorbitantly priced at $399. Despite the cost, the iPod touch remains, by far, the best portable media player you can buy—and it retains our Editors' Choice crown.

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How Websites Make You Spill Your Secrets

Image: Owning up: Volunteers were more likely to divulge personal information to a less-official-looking website (top), than to an official-looking one (bottom). Credit: Carnegie Mellon University

From Technology Review:

People divulge more sensitive information on sites that look less safe.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that the appearance of website has a big effect on how honestly people answer personal questions put to them by the site. But paradoxically, it turns out we're more likely to spill our secrets on websites that appear less reputable. The way a website phrases questions also affects our willingness to disclose revealing information, the researchers found.

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Are We Living In A Designer Universe?

The argument over whether the universe has a creator, and who that might be, is among the oldest in human history. Photo: WALES NEWS SERVICE

From The Telegraph:

The creators of the world were closer to men than to gods, argues John Gribbin.

The argument over whether the universe has a creator, and who that might be, is among the oldest in human history. But amid the raging arguments between believers and sceptics, one possibility has been almost ignored – the idea that the universe around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today.

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Google TV To Launch This Year

Doubts remain about the ease of integrating content for computers with that for TV sets – will remote controls be better than a mouse?

From The Guardian:

The new Google service will bring the web to TV screens – the announcement comes a week after a new version of Apple TV was unveiled.

Google will launch its Google TV service, which it intends will bring the web to TV screens, in the US this autumn and around the world next year, its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said today.

In its sights will be a slice of the £117bn global TV advertising market – which it will want to add to its online advertising revenues, which totalled $22.9bn (£14.94bn) in 2009.

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Boeing's Billion Dollar Gamble

Boeing has taken 847 orders for the Dreamliner, worth nearly $150 billion, which makes the 787 the most successful new aircraft in Boeing's 94-year history

Boeing's Billion Dollar Gamble: Inside The World's Biggest Building, Where The New 787 Dreamliner Plane Is Built -- The Daily Mail

It's made in the world's biggest building, takes only four days to put together and is the first commercial aircraft built from carbon composites, but will the revolutionary new Dreamliner win the battle for our skies?

Tucked away in the upper north-west corner of the U.S., about 30 miles north of Seattle, sits the biggest building in the world, utterly dominating the town of Everett. It's three-quarters of a mile long and a third of a mile wide. Beneath the concrete floors there are two miles of pedestrian tunnels, while nestling in the five-storey structures that have sprung up inside the place are meeting rooms, offices and cafes. The inhabitants of this strange, vast palace get around on golf buggies and bicycles. It's so huge that the storm water runoff ponds - a must in Seattle winters - are large enough to float an ocean-going liner, and it has its own fire department.

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Money Can Buy You Happiness – Up To A Point

From New Scientist:

CAN money buy you happiness? The answer, it appears, depends on what you mean by "happiness". High earners are generally more satisfied with their lives, it seems, but a person's day-to-day emotional wellbeing is only influenced by money up to a certain point.

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How To Make The Perfect French Fry

adria.richards/Flickr

From Popular Mechanics:

For fare that looks so effortlessly prepared by millions of restaurant chains and festivals all over America, fried foods undergo a harrowing series of chemical reactions before they end up on your plate. Take the common French fry. Copying the magic of even a simple oil-cooked potato at home requires diligence, resources and certain flirtation with danger. Here is the food science you need to know to fry.

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