The Whatchama Column: STROKES OF GENIUS

     During my reading lately I started making notes about things being done by a variety of people in varied places to make our world, and our lives inside it, better, both now and in the forseeable future. These things are so intriguing, innovative and future-important I think you will enjoy reading about them, even though I'm giving only thumb-nail versions. If you want more information on any items, Go to the sources listed or the Internet..

     1. Mick Ebeling, co-founder of the Venice, California, company named Not Impossible, is developing a device named the Brainwriter that will permit disabled persons to write with their minds. It combines new low-cost headsets, that monitor the wearer's brain's electrical activity with eye-tracing technology, and open-source software. The wearer, by thinking about a word or a single idea, can command a computer cursor to enter writing mode, then, as the eyes move, the cursor traces their path on screen. (Elizabeth Quill, May 2015 Smithsonian Magazine)

     Ebeling and his team have also 3-D printed prosthetic arms for amputees in South Sudan.

     2. Erica Mackle, co-founder of Grid Alternatives, reports that by teaching unemployed workers how to install solar panels, and by connecting them with low-income families in need of cheap electricity, the company helps solve two problems at once. The company has trained and, thus, given jobs to more than 20,000 solar installers who now install about 1,600 systems per year where most needed. (From Fast Company Magazine June 2015)

     3. Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, marks their advance in inexpensive and versatile robotics that could ultimately by created for pennies, stored in stacks like cards and deployed when needed in spaces for applications where no robot has been able to go before. Their prototype was assembled from about $20 worth of sheet paper and 3-D sheets of polystyrene from a children's Shrinky Dink art toy. Embedded wires heat and shrink, via batteries located in the middle, the material in specified places to make the robot self-fold into crab shape  and walk within minutes. 

     Researchers envision rather amazing jobs such a robot, designed to do various jobs, might accomplish, like sending a ream of the sheets into space and having them unfold into a satellite. (Science Magazine August 2014)

     4. Already many industries are using 3-D printing to create sophisticated products. Surgeons can create 3-D-printed bone grafts modeled off someone's scanned body. Dentists are fashioning the wax models for crowns and bridges perfectly fitted for a patient's mouth. Chefs are experimenting with 3-D printing foods for aesthetic effect. Plastic guns have been made (invisible to airport scanners).
     Last November astronauts aboard the International Space Station began using a 3-D printer to make a tool they needed. And now there is a skin-cell printer designed to print a range of living skin cells directly onto a patient, in the exact shape needed, for instance, to fit a wound. It can lay down tissues at the top two layers of skin, deep enough to treat and heal most burn wounds.
     Last year researchers announced the successful implantation of vaginas engineered using the patients' own cells in four teenagers suffering from a rare reproductive disorder. A Wake Forest lab is also testing lab-grown, decellurized cadaver penises and anal sphincters on animals, with the hope of starting human trials within the next few years.
     Eventually it's hoped more complicated layers of skin can be copied, including adipose tissue and deep-rooted hair follicles.  (Smithsonian Magazine March/May 2015)
     5. Mountain View, California, is testing a novel Wi-Fi network, called Veniam, that hopes to eliminate hot spot weaknesses throughout the city. Engineers tap supercharged wireless routers - reserved for transportation systems and having extra large ranges up to 1,600 feet - into the city's existing Internet infrastructure at various points. But, if a vehicle is unable to get a signal from a stationary router, it can piggyback on other vehicles in range, like city buses, police cars, taxicabs and garbage trucks, which have been fitted with Veniam's special NetRider routers as hot spots-on-the-go.
     These NetRider boxes also gather data a city can use to refine its infrastructure, like logging common traffic-congestion points or noting street damage. (Fast Company Magazine May 2015)
     6. Architect Greg Henderson, who lived through the San Francisco 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, got the idea of protecting cities and saving lives in such future catastrophes by levitating buildings. He has built a prototype featuring four "hover engines" with magnets coordinating to generate a concentrated field, which then generates an opposing field in a conductive material below, in the floor. When the two force fields repel a house, in theory, gets "lift off", floating above the trembling ground. (Kickstarter video 2014)
     7. From 2011 to 2013 the number of non-military earth-observing eye-in-the-sky satellites in orbit grew by 65%, from 92 to 152.
     They now watch over our planet's natural resources, tracking deforestation, glacier melt and urban sprawl. They watch migrations of people displaced by war in Syria and Somalia to target aid to the right places at the right times. The U.S., as the largest donor of food aid to the world, has thus been able to split $1.5 to $2.5 billion per year (among 60 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America).
     Satellites were used to monitor the pace of Ebola treatment center construction in West Africa and to confirm that crowds of people were stranded on Iraq's Mount Sinjar amid attacks by the Islamic State.They tipped Amnesty International to a sharp growth in political prisoner camps in North Korea. They have scrutinized Sudan and South Sudan, looking for evidence of atrocities and sounding alarms in the media.
     As tens of thousands of South Sudanese streamed into Ethiopia last year satellites identified for U\N. officials the most suitable places for refugee camps. They have allowed prediction of location, timing and severity of malaria outbreaks up to three months in advance, when rainfall, land greenness and ground moisture data is known. Such early warning preparation is expected to reduce malaria cases  50 to 70 percent. A NASA system, hosted on a U.S. Geological Survey website, tracks some 250 water holes and pasture conditions across Africa's Sahel, giving daily ratings to nomadic clan herders whose lives depend on such information. (Smithsonian Magazine May 2015)
     8. Neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, president of the Brain Power Preservation Foundation, is thinking about uploading his mind - his memories, skills and personality - into a computer that might be programmed to emulate the processes of his brain, making him, in a way, immortal (so long as someone kept the power on).His most optimistic scenario envisions - in 50 years or so, with billions of dollars in help - a future of "substrata independent minds merging human and machine consciousness, transcending biological limits of time, space and memory".
     As a first step, he hopes to achieve the ability to preserve an entire human brain at death - through chemicals, cryonics, or both - to keep its structure intact with enough detail that it can, at some future time,  be scanned into a database and emulated on a computer. (Smithsonian Magazine May 2015)

     

Tech Squibs You Probably Don't Know About

     Since I read a lot in a lot of varied publications I come across a lot of interesting - to me, at least - squibs in the tech news that I think are interesting or intriguing enough to share.
     For instance, did you know that Robert Morris, a commuter school based in downtown Chicago with fewer than 2,500 undergrads, is the first college in the U.S. to make video gaming a varsity sport? Top players can receive scholarships worth up to $19,000 per year.
     Their team, the Eagles, has the same mascot as the other varsity sports. They practice up to five hours per day in a classroom converted into a gaming center, which they sold the naming rights to (iBuypower E-Sports Arena) for more than five figures.
     Being developed in the MIT Space Lab - though created by engineers at Microsoft - is a transparent screen called SpaceTop. It works like a regular monitor, but put your hands behind it and suddenly your are able to manipulate 3-D models as though they were physical objects. To exit cyberspace and return to Windows just pull your hands back to the keyboard.
     The same researchers at the Tangible Media Group lab are also conducting experiments (title: InForm) that could make it possible for us to actually handle, shape, and manipulate physical objects even when they are far away.
     Less mind-shattering, but still interesting, is an app called Monument Valley, by ustwo. It is both an interactive work of art and a mobile game, wherein the player guides a faceless princess through elegantly crafted surrealistic structures.
     Two other apps, more useful types, include Soundown and Breathe2Relax. Soundown, with an idea originating with records, uses natural sounds, like a crackling campfire and coffee shop background noises, to free the mind for relaxation. Breathe2Relax focuses on deep breathing for quick calming in stressful eventualities, complete with helpful learning notes. Both available on IOS and Android.
     Several products also have struck my fancy. KissCam, by taliaYstudio, is a camera you activate by kissing it. The Vivitar Full HD Action camera - $100 at Amazon.com - mounts to a bike or an ATV to film a rider's "extreme excursions".
     The 3-D Printing Pen ($99 at hammacher.com) is a hot-glue-like handheld printer that extrudes warm plastic, turning doodles into sculptures when it hardens.
      Just as imaginative is the "origami robot" Crab-walker created by Harvard and MIT researchers. It's made of paper, bits of wiring and 3-D sheets of polystyrene from the children;'s art toy Shrinky Dinks, with batteries situated in the middle. Embedded wires heat and shrink the material in specific places, allowing the robot to bend, fold and unfurl, self-assembling into a robot walker.
     Envision a ream of these prepared sheets, for instance, being sent into space and unfolding into a satellite. They could also revolutionize manufacturing, allowing people to design and print their own robot to do whatever they want.

(Information taken from Discovery, Parade and Fast Company Magazines.)t Know About

Punny You Should Say That!

     I'm not a fancier of puns especially, but these (from Net Mail Verizon) struck my funny bone. Some of them are bound to make you smile.

How do you catch a Unique Rabbit? (Answer: Unique up on it.)

How do you catch a tame rabbit? (Tame way, unique up on it.)

How do you get holy water? (You boil the hell out of it.)

What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? (A stick.)

Why don't blind people like to sky dive? (Because it scares the dog.)

What do you call cheese that isn't yours? (Nacho cheese.)

How do crazy people get through a forest? (They take the psychopath.)

What are Santa's helpers called? (Subordinate clauses.)

What comes from a pampered cow? (Spoiled milk.)

Where would you find a dog with no legs? (Right where you left him.)

Why do gorillas have big nostrils? (Because they also have big fingers.)

What lies at the bottom  of the sea and twitches? (Nervous wrecks.)

What would you get by crossing a snowman with a vampire? (Frostbite.)

What is the biggest difference between roast beef and pea soup/ (Anybody can roast beef.)

Playing With Your Food

     By the late 1990's McDonalds claimed to be opening a new store somewhere  every three hours. Today nearly two million people work at 36,000 McDonalds fast food restaurants in 119 countries. Transitioning to foreign countries has meant experimenting with their 75-year old tried-and-true operation. In Sweden this has even meant a ski-through.
     Menus have also been played with, and have become more nutritious because of demand. And local foods have been incorporated, like the Hula Burger (with grilled pineapple) in Hawaii, Filet-O-Fish launched in 1982 to capture Lenten business, and the McLean Deluxe, made with seaweed to save calories.
     They haven't been alone playing with their food choices, of course. KFC, for instance, has debuted a burrito stuffed with fried chicken, cheese, bacon and bourbon barbecue sauce in New Zealand.
     The Filipino enclave in Las Vegas, Nevada, is making changes there. Filipino spaghetti, unlike Italian style, is sweet. In place of tomato sauce they use banana ketchup, which was developed during World War II when tomatoes were in short supply. And they plunk sliced hot dogs into it, instead of meatballs. They also use rice noodles instead of the wheat noodles the Chinese prefer.
     Some other foods they just import as is, like siopao, which is the Chinese steamed buns with meat inside; Spanish flan they call leche flan; and adobo, which is a derivative of Chinese soy sauce chicken. Frozen foods include banana leaves, squash flour, horseradish fruit, grated casava, and macapuno and cheese ice creams. And halo-halo, which is rather unforgettable. This is sort of an ice cream sundae, but the ice cream is purple (made from yams), evaporated milk replaces whipped cream, boiled beans - garbanzo, white and red - replace nuts, and coconut, palm fruit, pounded rice flakes, jack fruit and shaved ice are added. Halo-halo quite logically means "hodge podge".
     Companies that produce the foods and drinks used in restaurants, and in our homes,  also have experimentation periods where tasting panels play with flavors. In attempting to find their product's "bliss point", where the perfect amount of sugar creates the maximum  amount of appeal, the Cadbury Schweppes company tasters prepared 61 distinct formulas and subjected them to 3,904 tastings before creating their popular cherry-vanilla Dr. Pepper.
     They aren't alone in their failures. In a given year up to 89% of new items, like Classic Coke, fail.
     To show how far afield this playing with food goes, some of the foods we now eat have intriguing origins. For example, the bacteria responsible for sourdough bread originally came from rodent feces. Any sourdough we eat has that history, yet it is all perfectly safe, and delicious.
     The first graham crackers, as another example, were invented by a Presbyterian minister "to reduce sexual desire". Sylvester Graham created a bland, white, wheat-like biscuit and it wasn't until after his death that it was turned into the sweet treat we know today.
     Indiana dairy farmer Mike McCloskey dissected milk, adjusted its components and came up with a milk that has almost 50% more protein and calcium, half the sugar, and no lactose.
     Not everything turns out so well with this sort of individual tinkering. J.M. Hirsch, a writer for Associated Press, in a report on a new ketchup, states that Traina Foods, producer of all manner of dried fruits and vegetables, "has combined the world's two most perfect condiments" to make sweet and spicy Sriracha Sun Dried Tomato Ketchup. Then he spoils it by relating how he uses it - in what he calls "ketchup-pickle soup". Here is his recipe: Fill a cereal bowl with bread-and-butter pickle chips, then overfill  this with Sriracha Ketchup. He eats this with a spoon!

(Sourdough and graham cracker items courtesy of Rob Dunn in "The Man Who Touched His Own Heart" and Libby O'Connell in "The American Plate: A Culinary History in Two Bites" respectively.)