Science

Obama answers live questions on Reddit, crashes servers

U.S. President Barack Obama briefly took to Reddit today to do one of the popular social news site's AMA or "ask me anything" sessions.

The interview, which kicked off just after 1 p.m. Pacific and lasted roughly an hour, quickly brought the site to its knees.

Ahead of the overload, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian confirmed that President Obama was legitimately participating in the event, adding that the questions were being answered from Charlottesville, Va., where Obama is currently campaigning for a second term.

The format allows any registered Reddit users to ask questions, and the … Read more

First wireless back pain devices approved in U.S.

If you're in need of a little back pain relief and have $149 to spare, keep an eye out for the newly approved WiTouch by medical device developer Hollywog.

Putting a fresh spin on old tech, the device employs electrical stimulation (called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation -- aka TENS) to ease back pain. But unlike its predecessors, this one is wirelessly remote controlled.… Read more

Scientists start hacking minds with cheap EEG gear

Are the deepest secrets of your mind safe? Could thieves trick you into revealing your bank card PIN or computer passwords just by thinking about them?

Theoretically, it could happen.

Ivan Martinovic of the University of Oxford and colleagues at the University of Geneva and University of California at Berkeley describe research into that question in a paper entitled "On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks With Brain-Computer Interfaces" presented earlier this month at the 21st USENIX Security Symposium.

The research was inspired by the growing number of games and other mind apps available for low-cost consumer EEG devices such as Emotiv's EPOC headset, which lets users interact with computers using their thoughts alone. … Read more

Design 3D lava lamps with gestures on Handy-Potter

Gestural interfaces like the Leap promise a world in which we'll all be driving cars and flying planes by waving our hands in the air, "Minority Report"-style.

Pudue University is joining the fun with the Handy-Potter, a design tool that lets you fashion 3D virtual objects with your bare hands.

Recently presented at the ASME 2012 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference in Chicago, the research won the All-Conference Best Paper award.

The Handy-Potter is a departure from traditional computer-aided design. It works with the Microsoft Kinect to track the user's body and hand gestures, modifying 3D shapes according to motions such as waving or pulling. … Read more

Smart kitchen helps chefs who aren't too smart

Let's face it: Opening up a cookbook, turning the pages, and reading a recipe is hard work. Thankfully, scientists in Japan recognize this and have developed a kitchen that puts recipes right on your food.

Unfortunately, you still have to read, and actually try to cook, by following instructions projected onto your food. But if you go astray a robot called Phyno is there to help out.

Developed by Yu Suzuki and colleagues at Kyoto Sangyo University, the "cooking support system" is being presented next week at the 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction (APCHI 2012) in Matsue, Japan.

With a combination of image processing and speech interaction, it's aimed at novice cooks who find recipe jargon confusing.… Read more

High-tech camouflage could protect soldiers from ballistic heat

Powerful explosives from fires or roadside bombs produce two near-simultaneous blasts: first, a high-pressure blast that can cause internal injuries, and then a thermal blast that produces temps above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and can literally cook skin, according to Robert Lochhead, a professor of polymer science at the University of Southern Mississippi.

He worked with chemists to engineer a high-tech camouflage paint that is waterproof; easy to apply and remove; non-irritating to the eyes, nose, and mouth; and actually reflects -- instead of absorbs, like most face paints -- intense heat.… Read more

Curiosity does the Martian wiggle! (picture)

In preparation for driving the Curiosity rover around the Martian surface, NASA engineers today wiggled the wheels from mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a test of the rover's steering systems. This animated series of four images shows the movement of Curiosity's rear right wheel as rover drivers on Earth turned the vehicle's four corner wheels in place in the gravel at the landing site on Mars.

My cyborg sister: When life-saving gadgets break down

You'd never know it from looking at her, but my sister Rachel has pressure settings.

They're regulated by a surgically implanted valve in her head, part of a system called a ventriculoperitoneal shunt that makes her one of a growing number of humans medically augmented with implantable and attachable devices.

The shunt drains excess cerebrospinal fluid that would otherwise over-accumulate inside her skull due to a congenital condition called hydrocephalus, or "water on the brain," that can damage brain tissue if left untreated. The apparatus directs the fluid from the magnetized pressure valve in her head down through a tube that leads to her abdomen, where it's re-absorbed by her body.

Yes, my sister has a magnet in her head, and to answer a few questions commonly asked since her latest surgery a few months ago, yes, she'll be able to go through airport security scanners and metal detectors and stand near microwaves. But she'll need to be cautious of some kinds of audio headphones, and after she gets magnetic resonance imaging scans, a doctor will have to hold a special handheld device to her head to recalibrate her pressure settings.

Think of hydrocephalus as a plumbing problem. She needs tubes and valves to do what most of our bodies do naturally. … Read more

Hacking humans: Building a better you

Do you have a cochlear implant? An intraocular lens in your eye? A prosethetic leg with microservos? You may not realize it, but you're standing on the front line of a new age of medical augmentation, one that's raising a host of complex questions.

Who owns the expensive implant that allows you to hear or see better or the sleek thin blades that let you sprint faster? How are upgrades to your device handled? What happens to you and your device if that company goes out of business? Do the answers change if the procedure is elective rather than life-saving?

No one has easy answers, or even much beyond informed speculation -- certainly not the doctors we spoke to for this article or the medical students who addressed medical augmentation at a Defcon 20 session last month in Las Vegas. But all agree on one thing: A new frontier of medical augmentation isn't just coming sooner than you think. It's already here, as society moves from medically necessary augmentation to elective procedures. Call it human hacking. … Read more