bserreal's Blog

Source: Seed Magazine

Researchers have developed a robot capable of learning and interacting with the world using a biological brain.
Kevin Warwick’s new robot behaves like a child. “Sometimes it does what you want it to, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he says. And while it may seem strange for a professor of cybernetics to be concerning himself with such an unreliable machine, Warwick’s creation has something that even today’s most sophisticated robots lack: a living brain.

Life for Warwick’s robot began when his team at the University of Reading spread rat neurons onto an array of electrodes. After about 20 minutes, the neurons began to form connections with one another. “It’s an innate response of the neurons,” says Warwick, “they try to link up and start communicating.”
For the next week the team fed the developing brain a liquid containing nutrients and minerals. And once the neurons established a network sufficiently capable of responding to electrical inputs from the electrode array, they connected the newly formed brain to a simple robot body consisting of two wheels and a sonar sensor.

A relay of signals between the sensor, motors, and brain dictate the robot’s behavior. When it approaches an object, the number of electrical pulses sent from the sonar device to the brain increases. This heightened electrical stimulation causes certain neurons in the robot’s brain to fire. When the electrodes on which the firing neurons rest detect this activity, they signal the robot’s wheels to change direction. The end result is a robot that can avoid obstacles in its path.
At first, the young robot spent a lot of time crashing into things. But after a few weeks of practice, its performance began to improve as the connections between the active neurons in its brain strengthened. “This is a specific type of learning, called Hebbian learning,” says Warwick, “where, by doing something habitually, you get better at doing it.”

The robot now gets around well enough. “But it has a biological brain, and not a computer,” says Warwick, and so it must navigate based solely on the very limited amount of information it receives from a single sensory device. If the number of sensory devices connected to its brain increases, it will gain a better understanding of its surroundings. “I have another student now who has started to work on an audio input, so in some way we can start communicating with it,” he says.

But it would be a bit shortsighted to say that adding sensory input devices to the robot would make it more human, as theoretically there is no limit to how many sensory devices a robot equipped with a biological brain could have. “We are looking to increase the range of sensory input potentially with infrared and other signals,” says Warwick.

A robot that experiences its environment through devices like sonar detectors and infrared sensors would perceive the world quite differently from a person. Imagine having a Geiger counter plugged into your brain — or perhaps better yet, an X-ray detector. For future generations of Warwick’s robot, this isn’t just a thought experiment.

But Warwick isn’t interested only in building a robot with a wide range of sensory inputs. “It’s fun just looking at it as a robot life form, but I think it may also contribute to a better understanding of how our brain works,” he says. Studying the ways in which his robot learns and stores memories in its brain may provide new insights into neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.

Warwick’s robot is dependent upon biological cells, so it won’t live forever. After a few months, the neurons in its brain will grow sluggish and less responsive as learning becomes more difficult and the robot’s mortal coil begins to take hold. A sad thought perhaps — but such is life.

Photo Credit: Kevin Warkwick

By Kirsty Walker

Some MPs fear a loophole in the fertilisation laws will allow scientists to create human hybrids

Some MPs fear a loophole in the fertilisation laws will allow scientists to create human-ape hybrids

It also relaxes guidelines to make it easier for lesbians and single women to have IVF treatment and lets parents choose ’saviour siblings’ for seriously ill children.

The Bill, which is the most significant shake-up of embryology laws for 20 years, cleared its third reading last night - the final Commons hurdle - after the Government imposed a three-line whip on Labour MPs.

Gordon Brown - whose son James Fraser has cystic fibrosis - has described the proposed legislation as a ‘moral endeavour’.

But 16 Labour rebels defied the Government to vote against it, including Catholic former Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, who quit the Government this month.

Opponents have accused politicians of placing the need for medical understanding above the dangers of tinkering with life.

LibDem MP John Pugh said MPs had a responsibility to ban the placing of human gametes - eggs or sperm - into an animal, adding: ‘Why should we leave it to scientists to set limits on what is morally permissible?’

Tory MP Nadine Dorries said it was ’serious, sinister and absolutely, ultimately ridiculous’ not to outlaw such a procedure, which would allow scientists to attempt to create a ‘humanzee’.

She added: ‘Of all the experimental possibilities debated in the course of this Bill, surely none is quite so utterly repulsive as the possibility of seeking to inseminate animals with human sperm?

‘It is a sinister matter because of the connotations involved. It is impossible to discuss insemination of animals for very long without considering the infamous Soviet hybridisation trials of the 1920s.’

In those experiments, Stalin’s scientists tried to cross-breed apes with humans to create ‘the ultimate soldier’, she said.

DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson added: ‘The image that people have in their heads and the image that they find most abhorrent is of scientists producing GM babies or cloned adults or minotaurs.’

But the Department of Health insisted existing laws would prevent this, adding: ‘This is not about "creating monsters". It is purely laboratory research, and is aimed at increasing knowledge about diseases and treatments.

‘Embryos must be destroyed at 14 days and they cannot be placed in a woman or in an animal.’

Supporters of the Bill say it could save thousands of lives by producing treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Scientists creating hybrid embryos say they will provide an alternative source of stem cells - basic cells that can develop into many different types of tissue - for use in medical research. Currently, they must rely on donated human embryos.

In 2006, U.S. President George Bush vetoed funding into human embryonic stem-cell research.

It is also banned in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Italy, while Austria, Norway and Tunisia do not allow embryo research at all.

This is so wrong.....

Published on 23-10-2008

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded 100,000 dollars each on Wednesday to scientists in 22 countries including funding for a Japanese proposal to turn mosquitos into "flying syringes" delivering vaccines.

The charitable foundation created by the founder of software giant Microsoft said in a statement that the grants were designed to "explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve global health."

The grants were awarded for research into preventing or curing infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis and limiting the emergence of drug resistance.

They are the first round of funding for the Gates Foundation's "Grand Challenges Explorations," a five-year 100-million-dollar initiative to "promote innovative ideas in global health."

The funding was directed to projects that "fall outside current scientific paradigms and could lead to significant advances if successful," the Gates Foundation statement said.

"We were hoping this program would level the playing field so anyone with a transformational idea could more quickly assess its potential for the benefit of global health," said Tachi Yamada, president of global health at the Gates Foundation.

The Gates Foundation said 104 grants were awarded from nearly 4,000 proposals. The recipients included universities, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and six private companies.

"It was so hard for reviewers to champion just one great idea that we selected almost twice as many projects for funding as we had initially planned," Yamada said.

Among the proposals receiving funding was one from Hiroyuki Matsuoka at Jichi Medical University in Japan.

"(Matsuoka) thinks it may be possible to turn mosquitoes that normally transmit disease into 'flying syringes,' so that when they bite humans they deliver vaccines," the Gates Foundation said.

It said Pattamaporn Kittayapong at Mahidol University in Thailand received a grant to "explore new approaches for controlling dengue fever by studying bacteria with natural abilities to limit the disease."

Founded in 1994, the Seattle, Washington-based Gates Foundation is the largest private philanthropical organization in the world.

When the Antichrist is in power this (among so many other tools) will all be at his disposal.

Published on 20-10-2008

Source: Washington Post

Real-time streaming video of Iraqi and Afghan battle areas taken from thousands of feet in the air can follow actions of people on the ground as they dig, shake hands, exchange objects and kiss each other goodbye.

The video is sent from unmanned and manned aircraft to intelligence analysts at ground stations in the United States and abroad. They watch video in real time of people getting in and out of cars, loading trunks, dropping things or picking them up. They can even see vehicles accelerate, slow down, move together or make U-turns.

"The dynamics of an urban insurgency have resulted in a rapid increase in the number of activities visible in the video field of view," according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency .

Although the exploits of the Predator, the Global Hawk and other airborne collectors of information have been widely publicized, there are few authoritative descriptions of what they can see on the ground.

But some insights into the capabilities of the Predator and other aircraft can be drawn from a DARPA paper that describes the tasks of a contractor that will develop a method of indexing and rapidly finding video from archived aerial surveillance tapes collected over past years.

"The U.S. military and intelligence communities have an ever increasing need to monitor live video feeds and search large volumes of archived video data for activities of interest due to the rapid growth in development and fielding of motion video systems," according to the DARPA paper, which was written in March but released last month.

Last month, Kitware, a small software company with offices in New York and North Carolina, teamed up with 19 other companies and universities and won the $6.7 million first phase of the DARPA contract, which is not expected to be completed before 2011.

During the Cold War, satellites and aircraft took still pictures that intelligence analysts reviewed one frame at a time to identify the locations of missile silos, airplane hangars, submarine pens and factories, said John Pike , director of GlobalSecurity.org, an expert in space and intelligence matters.

"Now with new full-motion video intelligence techniques, we are looking at people and their behavior in public," he said.

The resolution capability of the video systems ranges from four inches to a foot, depending on the collector and environmental conditions at the time, according to the DARPA paper. The video itself is also shaped by the angle to the ground from which it is shot, although there are 3-D capabilities that allow viewers on the ground to manipulate videos of objects so they can see them from different vantage points.

Systems also exist that allow tracking, moving-target detection of objects under forest or other cover and determination of exact geographic location. Development is underway of systems that allow recognition of faces and gait -- in other words, human identification.

Currently, because there are so many activities or objects to be watched for hints of suspicious behavior, "more analysts . . . watch the same, real-time video stream simultaneously," according to DARPA. "If any of the given activities or objects are spotted, the analyst issues an alert to the proper authorities."

Future collection systems are expected to provide even more imagery, cover areas greater than 16 square miles and make it more difficult "for a limited number of analysts to effectively monitor and scrutinize all potential activities within the streaming field of view," DARPA wrote.

Today's volume of intelligence data, beyond just streaming video, already "makes it very difficult to detect specific events in real time and too time intensive to search archived video," the DARPA paper said. The effort underway is designed to find a way to index similar activity, then search and retrieve it from archives. The proposed new system should be able to analyze real-time streaming video as it is received in a ground station and match it on command to archived video from more than one video library.

One notion, described by DARPA, would be that an analyst with a standing alert to watch for U-turning cars could employ the new system to quickly match a real-time event with archived clips of cars making such turns before an attack.

National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but

From The Anniston Star

Photo illustration: Bill Wilson/The Anniston Star

Death offers a second chance to the living.

It stirs emotions once thinly veiled, forcing those caught in its wake to confront their own mortality. Through such unwanted introspection, a profound appreciation of life is gained — regrets are mended, failures forgotten and hope for an ever-fragile future is renewed.

Matt Nelson understands the sway death holds over the living. He, too, has been changed by its presence.

Only this death was his own.

As a sales inspector for Terminix, Nelson faces the darkness as a matter of routine. Almost daily, he belly crawls beneath the homes of potential clients, stabbing at the shadows with a flashlight searching for signs of infestation.

But what Nelson experienced beneath a house on Main Street in Glencoe on Monday, April 7 was anything but ordinary. For 30 seconds, while his body was being electrocuted, Nelson stepped out and across the threshold of eternity before being snatched back by an unlikely hero.

Once, Nelson would have rolled his eyes at the mention of a "near-death experience" — with the requisite stories of bright lights and choirs of angels usually told by the same people who believe in alien abduction and Bigfoot.

"I was an absolute skeptic, a cynic," says the 40-year-old Nelson.

That was until it happened to him.

Crawlspace

It was a day like so many before. With owner Jerry Oswalt watching over his shoulder, Nelson descended, crawling on his elbows, into the dank darkness.

"It was so small, so cramped that it was like diving underwater," Nelson remembers. "Putting my hands in first, I had to pull myself along slowly."

With support beams hanging less than two feet overhead, Nelson couldn't rise off his stomach. Slowly, he made his way to the back of the house. Instead of turning around, Nelson cut across the crawlspace. As soon as he passed underneath a second support beam, "everything went crazy."

Waiting like a coiled rattlesnake was an exposed 110-volt electric wire that electrocuted Nelson the moment it touched his back.

Trapped in the painful throes as the current coursed through his body, Nelson was trembling uncontrollably, his teeth rattling against the powerful surge of electricity.

"I knew I was about to die," he says.

While still aware of his surroundings, Nelson's life flashed before his eyes. In an instant he reviews "thousands and thousands" of detailed images from his childhood, ending with a picture of his wife standing alone with their three kids.

"I was overcome with a sense of sadness, because I knew they would be grieving," he says. "All I wanted was for it to all be over. The pain was unimaginable."

As each excruciating moment dragged on, Nelson felt himself drifting out of his body and into a white light.

"I have no doubt that I was about to be called into the presence of God," he says.

Though drawing ever closer to death, Nelson didn't feel sorrow or fear but rather an overwhelming sense of hope, knowing that he was about to enter heaven.

Then it all stopped … silence consumed everything.

"I thought for a second that I was dead," he says.

Instead, Nelson had been saved. Somehow Jerry Oswalt made his way underneath the house, grabbed a pipe and slapped the electric wire away.

"But the Jerry Oswalt I saw wasn't the same man I'd met earlier," Nelson says, his words drifting in pursuit of the memory. "He was a very powerful, pure and holy image."

'Revival of purpose'

Outside in the cool sunshine, Jerry Oswalt could hear Nelson's muffled screams and moans. Peering into the darkness, he saw that Nelson was being electrocuted. At 67, Oswalt will be the first to admit that he's not the best option in an emergency.

With two bad knees and a pinched nerve in his back, Oswalt moves slowly, but not on this day.

"I wasn't myself," he says in a voice quivering with emotion. "What I did, moving that fast … Like I am, there's no way I could've gotten there in time. But somehow I got to him quick.

"The Lord was in complete control that day."

Oswalt knocked the electric cord off Nelson's back, shocking himself in the process. During those frozen moments, he was able to make out a few words as they stumbled out of Nelson's trembling lips. "Jesus," he said over and over again. "Jesus" …

"I looked into his eyes," Oswalt says. "He didn't really see me. I know in my own heart, my own faith, he was actually staring at the Lord."

With Oswalt's help, Nelson made it out where he was soon greeted by an ambulance and the wide eyes of gawking neighbors pulled from their own houses by the blaring siren.

Though Nelson's only obvious injury was a few trickles of blood on his lips, he was rushed to Gadsden Regional Medical Center where he remained for observation until the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Roughly equivalent to a household light bulb, 110 volts is easily enough to kill a person. It's not the actual voltage — 50 watts can be lethal — rather it's the voltage and the amperage together. Voltage is how strongly the electricity is being pulled through the line. Amperage is the amount of electricity that's flowing.

Water, as in the damp conditions Nelson was crawling through, can facilitate the shock and is the reason the live wire sunk its teeth into his back and wouldn't let go.

Those who survive being electrocuted are often left paralyzed, suffer brain damage or chronic heart problems. Nelson had a few chipped teeth and that was it.

While no physical scars are visible, the proof of Nelson's near-death experience is something that mere flesh and bone cannot define. In his death, all truths were revealed. What remains an unseen mystery, a leap of faith, to most is a reality for Nelson.

"It all reaffirmed what I knew in my heart was true," he says. "I knew my life was in God's hands and that my life after death would lead to an eternity in heaven.

"But now I know."

To those who haven't stepped across the gateway that separates life from death, the powerful — if all too similar — images of heaven, bright lights and out-of-body sensation are not only cliché but also "inherently unbelievable," says Dr. Raymond Moody, author of ITAL Life After Life ITAL and many other books dealing with this phenomenon.

For more than 30 years, Moody, who is credited with coining the phrase "near-death experience," has studied and chronicled the journeys of thousands of people who have returned from death with stories of an afterlife. From atheists to born-again Christians, all shared one thing in common.

"It changed everyone profoundly," Moody says from his Anniston home. "For some, their faith was crystallized, while others became more welcoming and less judgmental toward people of all faiths."

And all returned with a single message — "learn to love one another," Moody says.

There will always be skeptics who wish to diminish these stories, just as their will always be believers. Neither side is likely to ever find what they both long for — scientific proof of life after death.

"The views of both sides can be dismissed," Moody says, "but what remains is hope. Where reason cannot give a definitive answer, we have every right to make up our own minds."

As for Nelson, no matter what lies ahead, he knows that God has put him here for a reason.

"God's not through with me yet," Nelson says, a wide grin pulling across his face. "My life has had a revival of purpose. Faith is a very easy thing for me now. And for those struggling with their own faith, I say, 'Struggle no more.'

"This is not just a story. God is real."