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Human Connectome Project maps brain's circuitry, produces super trippy graphics
A team of researchers at the Human Connectome Project (HCP) have been carving up mice brains like Christmas hams to find out how we store memories, personality traits, and skills -- the slices they're making, though, are 29.4 nanometers thick. The end goal is to run these tiny slices under a microscope, create detailed images of the brain, and then stitch them back together, eventually creating a complete map of the mind, or connectome. The team, comprised of scientists at Harvard, UCLA, University of Minnesota, and Washington University, is still a long way from cutting up a human brain, partially due to storage limitations -- a picture of a one-millimeter cube of mouse brain uses about a petabyte of memory. A human brain would require millions of petabytes, and an indefinite number of years, causing speculation that the payoff isn't worth the effort -- although, we're convinced the HCP wallpaper possibilities are totally worth it.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: pencil-tip generators, the Nissan Leaf, and the world's largest wind turbine
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. This week we saw renewable energy take the world by storm as Spain announced plans to construct the world's largest wind turbine and a team of engineers made waves with plans for an underwater turbine modeled after whale flippers. We also saw Boeing shine light on plans to produce a new breed of ultra-efficient solar panels that are suited for space, while researchers in Japan developed a potent new kinetic generator that's as tiny as a pencil tip. Innovative eco transportation also picked up the pace as China rolled out plans to produce the first fuel cell powered light rail train and the world's largest solar-powered boat made its successful maiden voyage across the Atlantic. We also applauded the Nissan Leaf as it took first place as the European Car of the Year and we were wowed by Mercedes' next-generation concept car, which may one day be grown in a lab. We also showcased several new ways that technology stands to wire our lives -- starting with an electronic smart wallet that curbs spending by clamping shut like a clam. We also looked at Harvard's plans for a laptop computer powered by biogas and we were impressed by Nike's next-gen design tools for producing environmentally efficient clothes. Finally, we wrapped up the week with two exciting advances in tablet tech - India is testing a solar-powered I-Slate tablet geared at children in need and Substrata rolled out a gorgeous wooden iPad case that goes light on the earth.
Harvard scientists reverse aging in mice, laugh maniacally at human possibilities
The reversal of aging has been one of the great dreams of humanity, but it seems like our rodent overlords have beat us to it. The Harvard Medical School has demonstrated "a dramatic reversal" in the aging process when reintroducing the enzyme telomerase into old and feeble mice. What happened was that their naturally worn out organs started to regenerate, instead of degenerating further, bringing them back to a youthful state of health. Sadly, while the results of this study are hugely important, there are a couple of caveats to make: firstly, the mice in question were genetically modified to suffer from a lack of telomerase, which might have inflated the results of the tests relative to regular mice, but more importantly, an increase in telomerase in humans is "a hallmark of most human cancers." So, if you want a shot of Benjamin Button brew, you'll have to be very patient indeed. For now, let's just be happy that Algernon and his buddies have found their fountain of youth. [Thanks, Vygantas]
Gurus track inhaled nanoparticles as they experience Mach 5 lung travel
Ever wondered what kind of objects you inhale on a daily basis, leaving your lungs to sort out whatever it is that you snort in? Scientists at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard School of Public Health have, and they're tired of simply imagining. A crew of wizards at the institution have started to test a so-called FLARE system (fluorescence-assisted resection and exploration), which enables them to see and monitor nanoparticles as they enter and travel through the lungs. The goal here is to "determine the characteristics and parameters of inhaled nanoparticles that mediate their uptake into the body -- from the external environment, across the alveolar lung surface and into the lymphatic system and blood stream and eventually to other organs." In short, this here study may offer a better understanding of the health effects surrounding air pollution... or restart the mask-wearing craze that SARS initiated. But probably both.
PARITy differential keeps your MAV flying level even if you clip its wings
Ever wonder how the single driveshaft in your car manages to power two (or more) wheels simultaneously? The answer is the differential, a device capable of splitting torque dynamically. There are a variety of different types of diffs, from fully unlocked to more pricey limited-slip models, but none are quite like the one created by Harvard graduate student Pratheev S. Sreetharan and professor Robert J. Wood. Dubbed the PARITy (Passive Aeromechanical Regulation of Imbalanced Torques), it's only five millimeters long and, while such a tiny thing would evaporate if mounted between the rear wheels on a Mustang GT, it's destined for rather smaller applications: tiny, winged micro air vehicles. The scientists proved its effectiveness by clipping one wing on a PARITy-equipped drone and, despite the imbalance in lift surface, the robo-bee maintained level flight -- differential automatically flapping the tinier wing more quickly to compensate. You know what that means: keeping our robot overlord's spies grounded just got a little bit harder. %Gallery-101468%
Metamaterials used to focus Terahertz lasers, make them useful
Forget old and busted X-rays, T-rays are the future, man! It was only recently that we were discussing Terahertz lasers and their potential to see through paper, clothes, plastic, flesh, and other materials, but that discourse had to end on the sad note that nobody had managed to make them usable in a practical and economically feasible way. The major hurdle to overcome was the diffusion of Terahertz radiation -- which results in weak, unfocused lasers -- but now researchers from the universities of Harvard and Leeds seem to believe they've managed to do it. Using metamaterials to collimate T-rays into a "tightly bound, high powered beam" will, they claim, permit semiconductor lasers (i.e. the affordable kind) to perform the duties currently set aside for sophisticated machinery costing upwards of $160,000. Harvard has already filed a patent application for this innovation, and if things pan out, we might be seeing body scanners (both for medical and security purposes), manufacturing quality checks, and a bunch of other things using the extra special THz stuff to do their work.
The moodiness of the US, as told by Twitter
Twitter, of course, isn't the be all and end all for tracking the mood of a population (not yet, at least). Still, it's worth studying, and if nothing else, it produces interesting observations. A team of researchers from both Northeastern University and Harvard collaborated to analyze some 300 million tweets from September 2006 to August 2009. Using geographical data and past work in word / emotion association, the group has produced preliminary results and (arguably just as important) pretty graphs. The findings are presented by cartogram evolving over time -- weekends and weekdays are currently lumped together but will be separated later. Unsurprisingly, west coast moods follow the same pattern as the east coast, only three hours behind, but it is interesting to note that they also don't hit the same lows. Consider it some food for thought, and if you take offense, maybe you should spend more time looking at the bright side of life and gloating about it online. Hit up the source for more data and after the break for video.
Rat lungs successfully grown in bioreactor: groundbreaking, yet also kind of gross
Bioartifical organs differ from, well, plain ol' artificial organs because they consist of biomaterials and cells. And while bioartificial livers are becoming increasingly commonplace, it's only recently that working lungs have been grown in a lab. Working at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, researchers removed the left lungs from rats and stripped them of cells with a process that left the blood vessels, airways, and connective tissues intact. Using all that as a sort of scaffolding, lung cells were regrown on the scaffolding in a bioreactor. The cultivation of the lungs took less than a week, and once they'd been run through their paces in culture, they were transplanted into rats. At this point, the lungs did their job for about six hours, after which "they failed through accumulation of fluid inside the lung and resultant capillary leakage," according to PhysOrg. According to the man in charge, Mass General's Harald C. Ott, if work continues at the current pace we might begin to see regenerated organs for human patients within the next ten years. To see the thing in action, hit up that source link.
Zuckerman: the Internet encourages cultural myopia, that 'double rainbow' guy
At a recent TED talk, entrepreneur and Harvard scholar Ethan Zuckerman (above, in the most embarrassing pic we could find of him), highlighted the ways that our Internet use might be counter-productive. While potentially a great source of information, perspective, and communication, he points out that "[w]hen we look at what's actually happening, our world-view might actually be narrowing" because we tend to stay within a certain small group of websites -- and perspectives. In the UK, for instance, more than 95% of news consumers send their traffic to domestic news sites, while social networks encourage you to limit communication to the small group of people who share your world view. "The wider world is a click away, but whether we mean to or not, we're usually filtering it out." he said. Lest you think this topic is all gloom and doom, Ethan & Co. are actively looking for ways to correct this and bring the Internet closer to the Utopian vision we all have of it. "We have to figure out how to rewire the systems we have. We have to fix our media, we have to fix the Internet, we have to fix education."
Self-assembling nanodevices could advance medicine one tiny leap at a time
Seems like Harvard wasn't content with making robotic bees, and has taken its quest for miniaturization right down to the nanoscale level. One nanometer-wide, single-stranded DNA molecules are the topic of the university's latest research, which sets out a way they can be used to create "3D prestressed tensegrity structures." Should these theoretical scribblings ever pan out in the real world, we could see the resulting self-assembled nanodevices facilitating drug delivery targeted directly at the diseased cells, and even the reprogramming of human stem cells. Infusing a nanodevice with the relevant DNA data passes instructions on to your stem cells, which consequently turn into, for example, new bone tissue or neurons to augment your fleshy CPU. Yes, we're kinda freaked out, but what's cooler than being able to say you're going to the doctor for a shot of nanotransformers?
Harvard and MIT researchers working to simulate the visual cortex to give computers true sight
It sounds like a daunting task, but some researchers at Harvard and MIT have banded together to basically "reverse engineer" the human brain's ability to process visual data into usable information. However, instead of testing one processing model at a time, they're using a screening technique borrowed from molecular biology to test a range of thousands of models up against particular object recognition tasks. To get the computational juice to accomplish this feat, they've been relying heavily on GPUs, saying the off-the-shelf parallel computing setup they've got gives them hundred-fold speed improvements over conventional methods. So far they claim their results are besting "state-of-the-art computer vision systems" (which, if iPhoto's skills are any indication, wouldn't take much), and they hope to not only improve tasks such as face recognition, object recognition and gesture tracking, but also to apply their knowledge back into a better understanding of the brain's mysterious machinations. A delicious cycle! There's a video overview of their approach after the break. [Thanks, David]
NSF awards Harvard $10 million for robot bees (video)
When we heard that the National Science Foundation awarded $10 million to Harvard to make a swarm of robot bees, our first thought was: "We could do it for half the price." Then we remembered that the university has been down this path before, including its robot fly program (whatever happened to that thing?) and might be the better choice after all. What does the NSF and Harvard hope to get for all that time and money? Aside from insight into such areas as distributed intelligence, robotic flight, and energy storage, a swarm of these bad boys could be tasked to do anything from battlefield spying to pollination (which might be necessary, with the way that real bees are vanishing at such an alarming rate). The RoboBee project is slated to run for the next five years. Video after the break. [Via Switched]
Conceptual interface brings gesture-based data transfers to medical realm
It's pretty clear by watching the demonstration video (which is lurking in the read link, just so you know) that this stuff is still pretty preliminary, but we could definitely see it going places with the right people behind it. The Interface Database Concept was dreamed up by Alan Sien Wei Hshieh, and by utilizing a relatively simple set of Javascripts, he was able to overcome traditional platform incompatibilities that can so often hamstring medical hardware / software in day-to-day usage. The creation aims to enable "seamless and intuitive data transfer" and to "define a set of gesture and multitouch commands that will override controls and input devices that may be difficult to use on medical devices." The aforementioned vid shows off gesture-based transfers and even an accelerometer-based cross-platform transfer, both of which make you forget that we're just talking about X-rays and blood tests.[Thanks, Kara]
Harvard looks to MMOs for online leadership styles
While much has been said in recent weeks about raid leaders and whether the job necessitates being a jerk, nobody seems to dispute that the position engenders players with valuable leadership skills. In fact, according to a recent report by the Harvard Business Review, big companies may have a lot to learn from MMOs in terms of fostering leadership roles in a business world that is every bit as geographically decentralized as the roster from your typical raiding guild.But before you go and put your guild leadership experience on your resume, you might want to read the report in full. While they say that there are parallels between leadership in-game and leadership in a board room, the report focuses more on how the games themselves engender these leadership qualities, by creating an environment that fosters honesty, duplicity of leadership, non-monetary incentives, and transparency. It's interesting to think that games might actually change the way business works in the future, but we guess only time will tell if that proves prescient or not.[Via GamePolitics]
New book seeks to clear up game violence debate
It's not hard to find studies and media reports both for and against the damning effects of video game violence on children, but a new book coming out in April seems to be attempting to forge a new, more reasonable middle ground in the debate. Grand Theft Childhood is based on a June 2007 study in which the book's authors studied over 1,200 middle-schoolers in two states . Rather than trying to measure levels of "aggression" or map brain activity, the study asked the students to fill out surveys on their gameplay habits. The results found that while a large majority of students played violent games, most played "to get their anger out."The authors say their research is different because they went in with no preconceived notions. "When we began our research, we didn't fully grasp how politicized and emotional this topic was," said Dr. Cheryl K. Olsen in an interview with The Game Couch. "It may take a new generation of researchers and advocates, open to both pros and cons of video games (and who've played video games themselves!), to start truly productive discussions." Let's hope they hurry. We can't take many more screaming matches.
Researchers creating flexible fin to make AUVs more agile
If a wave of déjà vu just hit you like a ton of bricks, fret not, as this most certainly isn't the first (or second) time we've heard of researchers looking to the seas to create more intelligent / nimble submersibles. Apparently, a few more folks have gotten involved, as gurus from Drexel, MIT, Harvard and George Washington are now collaborating to develop a "fish-like fin to make autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) more agile." Apparently, the current iteration has improved on prior versions by eliminating drag during part of the "cut and sweep" motion. The general idea is to combine several of the fins in order to "allow robotic submarines to hover and turn on a dime as natural swimmers can," but it'll still be quite some time before devices such as this one can overcome ocean currents and ill-willed sea creatures.
Researchers clear up TV watching for visually impaired
Yeah, we've got HMDs for the visually impaired, but seriously, who's for sporting one of those things just to catch an afternoon soap? Thankfully, Dr. Eli Peli (and colleagues) from Harvard Medical School is lookin' out for said sect, and has developed a method for "enhancing the contrast of images of people and objects of interest on their digital televisions," which, during trials, was found to enhance legibility and overall enjoyment when watching. Furthermore, the technology is said to be the first to play nice with digital TV images, which seems fairly important considering that analog signals have but a few months to live here in America. Purportedly, the all-important modification that made the adjustments possible could be applied to HDTVs and digital STBs in the future, and sure enough, Peli has already sparked up conversation with Analog Devices in order to create a prototype chip for use in forthcoming sets. Now, if only clearing up those Get Smart reruns were this simple...[Via InventorSpot, image courtesy of Harvard (PDF)]
Silicon nanowire could convert light into electrical energy
Nanoelectonic devices have to have juice too, and thanks to a team at Harvard University, extraordinarily minuscule gizmos of the future could be powered via a "silicon nanowire that can convert light into electrical energy." The device itself is said to look much like a typical coaxial cable, but it's around 100,000 times smaller and shuns metal in favor of "silicon with three different types of conductivity arranged as layered shells." Reportedly, a single strand can output "up to 200-picowatts," which won't move much, but it could be just enough to run ultralow power electronics that could be worn on, or even inside, the body. Hopefully they'll have this all ironed out by the time we need a pacemaker.[Image courtesy of Harvard]
Harvard University's robotic fly takes flight
In a move sure to enkindle flying robotic creatures everywhere, a new species is finally ready to join the gang, as a "life-size, robotic fly has taken flight at Harvard University." The diminutive creation weighs just 60-milligrams, sports a three-centimeter wingspan, and has been developed to boast movements "modeled on those of a real fly." Notably, this isn't the first time we've seen researchers rely on the works of nature in order to craft their own mechanical beings, and given the fly's innate ability to be an excellent spy or chemical detection agent, it's no shock to hear that DARPA is reportedly sponsoring the endeavor. As expected, taking flight was simply the first step in a long line of improvements to come, as the man behind the machine is now looking to integrate an onboard battery and create a flight controller so that the robot can move in different directions.
Bill Gates gets Harvard degree, not at all smug about it
Little Bill is all growed up now, and has finally made his father proud. "I've been waiting for more than 30 years to say this: Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree," said Gates, who received a law degree on Thursday from Harvard after giving a commencement address to the students, the school he dropped out of to focus on Microsoft. "We recognize the most illustrious member of the Harvard College class of 1977 never to have graduated from Harvard," said Harvard University Provost Steven Hymen, who didn't seem too humbled to present the honorary degree. "It seems high time that his alma mater hand over the diploma." Bill Gates seemed more concerned with padding his resume, however, considering the fact that he's calling it quits at Microsoft soon. "I'll be changing my job next year, and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume." Oh, we're sure he'll get by alright.[Image via Seattle PI]
