April 16, 2009
Genes Show Limited Value in Predicting Diseases
By NICHOLAS WADE
The era of personal genomic medicine may have to wait. The genetic analysis of common disease is turning out to be a lot more complex than expected.
Since the human genome was decoded in 2003, researchers have been developing a powerful method for comparing the genomes of patients and healthy people, with the hope of pinpointing the DNA changes responsible for common diseases.
This method, called a genomewide association study, has proved technically successful despite many skeptics’ initial doubts. But it has been disappointing in that the kind of genetic variation it detects has turned out to explain surprisingly little of the genetic links to most diseases.
A set of commentaries in this week’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine appears to be the first public attempt by scientists to make sense of this puzzling result.
One issue of debate among researchers is whether, despite the prospect of diminishing returns, to continue with the genomewide studies, which cost many millions of dollars apiece, or switch to a new approach like decoding the entire genomes of individual patients.
The unexpected impasse also affects companies that offer personal genomic information and that had assumed they could inform customers of their genetic risk for common diseases, based on researchers’ discoveries.
These companies are probably not performing any useful service at present, said David B. Goldstein, a Duke University geneticist who wrote one of the commentaries appearing in the journal.
“With only a few exceptions, what the genomics companies are doing right now is recreational genomics,” Dr. Goldstein said in an interview. “The information has little or in many cases no clinical relevance.”
Unlike the rare diseases caused by a change affecting only one gene, common diseases like cancer and diabetes are caused by a set of several genetic variations in each person. Since these common diseases generally strike later in life, after people have had children, the theory has been that natural selection is powerless to weed them out.
The problem addressed in the commentaries is that these diseases were expected to be promoted by genetic variations that are common in the population. More than 100 genomewide association studies, often involving thousands of patients in several countries, have now been completed for many diseases, and some common variants have been found. But in almost all cases they carry only a modest risk for the disease. Most of the genetic link to disease remains unexplained.
Dr. Goldstein argues that the genetic burden of common diseases must be mostly carried by large numbers of rare variants. In this theory, schizophrenia, say, would be caused by combinations of 1,000 rare genetic variants, not of 10 common genetic variants.
This would be bleak news for those who argue that the common variants detected so far, even if they explain only a small percentage of the risk, will nonetheless identify the biological pathways through which a disease emerges, and hence point to drugs that may correct the errant pathways. If hundreds of rare variants are involved in a disease, they may implicate too much of the body’s biochemistry to be useful.
“In pointing at everything,” Dr. Goldstein writes in the journal, “genetics would point at nothing.”
Two other geneticists, Peter Kraft and David J. Hunter of the Harvard School of Public Health, also writing in the journal, largely agree with Dr. Goldstein in concluding that probably many genetic variants, rather than few, “are responsible for the majority of the inherited risk of each common disease.”
But they disagree with his belief that there will be diminishing returns from more genomewide association studies.
“There will be more common variants to find,” Dr. Hunter said. “It would be unfortunate if we gave up now.”
Dr. Goldstein, however, said it was “beyond the grasp of the genomewide association studies” to find rare variants with small effects, even by recruiting enormous numbers of patients. He said resources should be switched away from these highly expensive studies, which in his view have now done their job.
“If you ask what is the fastest way for us to make progress in genetics that is clinically helpful,” he said, “I am absolutely certain it is to marshal our resources to interrogate full genomes, not in fine-tuning our analyses of common variations.”
He advocates decoding the full DNA of carefully selected patients.
Dr. Kraft and Dr. Hunter say that a person’s genetic risk of common diseases can be estimated only roughly at present but that estimates will improve as more variants are found. But that means any risk estimate offered by personal genomics companies today is unstable, Dr. Kraft said, and subject to upward or downward revision in the future.
Further, people who obtain a genomic risk profile are likely to focus with horror on the disease for which they are told they are at highest risk. Yet this is almost certain to be an overestimate, Dr. Kraft said.
The reason is that the many risk estimates derived from a person’s genomic data will include some that are too high and some that are too low. So any estimate of high risk is likely to be too high. The phenomenon is called the “winner’s curse,” by analogy to auctions in which the true value of an item is probably the average of all bids; the winner by definition has bid higher than that, and so has overpaid.
Dr. Kari Stefansson, chief executive of deCODE Genetics, an Icelandic gene-hunting company that also offers a personal genome testing service, said deCODE alerted clients to pay attention to diseases for which testing shows their risk is three times as great as average, not to trivial increases in risk.
Dr. Stefansson said his company had discovered 60 percent of the disease variants known so far.
“We have beaten them in every aspect of the game,” he said of rival gene hunters at American and British universities.
The undiscovered share of genetic risk for common diseases, he said, probably lies not with rare variants, as suggested by Dr. Goldstein, but in unexpected biological mechanisms. DeCODE has found, for instance, that the same genetic variant carries risks that differ depending on whether it is inherited from the mother or the father.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/healt ... nted=print
TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT
April 24, 2009
Advances Elusive in the Drive to Cure Cancer
By GINA KOLATA
In 1971, flush with the nation’s success in putting a man on the Moon, President Richard M. Nixon announced a new goal. Cancer would be cured by 1976, the bicentennial.
When 1976 came and went, the date for a cure, or at least substantial progress, kept being put off. It was going to happen by 2000, then by 2015.
Now, President Barack Obama, discussing his plans for health care, has vowed to find “a cure” for cancer in our time and said that, as part of the economic stimulus package, he would increase federal money for cancer research by a third for the next two years.
Cancer has always been an expensive priority. Since the war on cancer began, the National Cancer Institute, the federal government’s main cancer research entity, with 4,000 employees, has alone spent $105 billion. And other government agencies, universities, drug companies and philanthropies have chipped in uncounted billions more.
Yet the death rate for cancer, adjusted for the size and age of the population, dropped only 5 percent from 1950 to 2005. In contrast, the death rate for heart disease dropped 64 percent in that time, and for flu and pneumonia, it fell 58 percent.
Still, the perception, fed by the medical profession and its marketers, and by popular sentiment, is that cancer can almost always be prevented. If that fails, it can usually be treated, even beaten.
The good news is that many whose cancer has not spread do well, as they have in the past. In some cases, like early breast cancer, drugs introduced in the past decade have made an already good prognosis even better. And a few rare cancers, like chronic myeloid leukemia, can be controlled for years with new drugs. Cancer treatments today tend to be less harsh. Surgery is less disfiguring, chemotherapy less disabling.
But difficulties arise when cancer spreads, and, often, it has by the time of diagnosis. That is true for the most common cancers as well as rarer ones.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/healt ... nted=print
Advances Elusive in the Drive to Cure Cancer
By GINA KOLATA
In 1971, flush with the nation’s success in putting a man on the Moon, President Richard M. Nixon announced a new goal. Cancer would be cured by 1976, the bicentennial.
When 1976 came and went, the date for a cure, or at least substantial progress, kept being put off. It was going to happen by 2000, then by 2015.
Now, President Barack Obama, discussing his plans for health care, has vowed to find “a cure” for cancer in our time and said that, as part of the economic stimulus package, he would increase federal money for cancer research by a third for the next two years.
Cancer has always been an expensive priority. Since the war on cancer began, the National Cancer Institute, the federal government’s main cancer research entity, with 4,000 employees, has alone spent $105 billion. And other government agencies, universities, drug companies and philanthropies have chipped in uncounted billions more.
Yet the death rate for cancer, adjusted for the size and age of the population, dropped only 5 percent from 1950 to 2005. In contrast, the death rate for heart disease dropped 64 percent in that time, and for flu and pneumonia, it fell 58 percent.
Still, the perception, fed by the medical profession and its marketers, and by popular sentiment, is that cancer can almost always be prevented. If that fails, it can usually be treated, even beaten.
The good news is that many whose cancer has not spread do well, as they have in the past. In some cases, like early breast cancer, drugs introduced in the past decade have made an already good prognosis even better. And a few rare cancers, like chronic myeloid leukemia, can be controlled for years with new drugs. Cancer treatments today tend to be less harsh. Surgery is less disfiguring, chemotherapy less disabling.
But difficulties arise when cancer spreads, and, often, it has by the time of diagnosis. That is true for the most common cancers as well as rarer ones.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/healt ... nted=print
April 27, 2009
In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit
By BRAD STONE and MIGUEL HELFT
Facebook is booming in Turkey and Indonesia. YouTube’s audience has nearly doubled in India and Brazil.
That may seem like good news. But it is also a major reason these and other Web companies with big global audiences and renowned brands struggle to turn even a tiny profit.
Call it the International Paradox.
Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.
This intractable contradiction has become a serious drag on the bottom lines of photo-sharing sites, social networks and video distributors like YouTube. It is also threatening the fervent idealism of Internet entrepreneurs, who hoped to unite the world in a single online village but are increasingly finding that the economics of that vision just do not work.
Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there.
“I believe in free, open communications,” Dmitry Shapiro, the company’s chief executive, said. “But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it’s very difficult to derive revenue from it.”
Internet start-ups that came of age during the Web 2.0 era, roughly from 2004 to the beginning of the recession at the end of 2007, generally subscribed to a widely accepted blueprint: build huge global audiences with a free service, and let advertising pay the bills.
But many of them ran smack into global economic reality. There may be 1.6 billion people in the world with Internet access, but fewer than half of them have incomes high enough to interest major advertisers.
“It’s a problem every Internet company has,” said Michelangelo Volpi, chief executive of Joost, a video site with half its audience outside the United States.
“Whenever you have a lot of user-generated material, your bandwidth gets utilized in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, where bandwidth is expensive and ad rates are ridiculously low,” Mr. Volpi said. If Web companies “really want to make money, they would shut off all those countries.”
Few Internet companies have taken that drastic step, but many are exploring other ways to increase revenue or cut costs in developing countries.
MySpace — the News Corporation’s social network with 130 million members, about 45 percent of them overseas — is testing a feature for countries with slower Internet connections called Profile Lite. It is a stripped-down version of the site that is less expensive to display because it requires less bandwidth.
MySpace says it may make Profile Lite the primary version for its members in India, where it has 760,000 users, although people there could click on a link to switch to the richer version of the site.
Perhaps no company is more in the grip of the international paradox than YouTube, which a Credit Suisse analyst, Spencer Wang, recently estimated could lose $470 million in 2009, in part because of the high cost of delivering billions of videos each month. Google, which owns YouTube, disputed the analysis but offered no details on the site’s financial situation.
Tom Pickett, director of online sales and operations at YouTube, says the company still hews to its vision of bringing online video to the entire globe. In the last two years, it has pushed to create local versions of its site in countries like India, Brazil and Poland.
But Mr. Pickett also says that YouTube has slowed the creation of new international hubs and shifted its focus to making money. He says that does not rule out restricting bandwidth in certain countries as a way to control costs — essentially making YouTube a slower, lower-quality viewing experience in the developing world.
“We may choose to set a limit to how much we are willing to pay in bandwidth cost,” Mr. Pickett said. In some countries, he said, “there may be particular peak times where instead of high definition, we might decrease the resolution.”
The Facebook social network is also considering lowering the quality of videos and photographs delivered to some regions in an effort to reduce expenses.
“We can decide, either on a country by country or user by user basis, to engineer the quality of the service for that cohort of users,” said Jonathan Heiliger, the executive who oversees Facebook’s computing infrastructure.
Facebook is in a particularly difficult predicament. Seventy percent of its 200 million members live outside the United States, many in regions that do not contribute much to Facebook’s bottom line. At the same time, the company faces the expensive prospect of storing 850 million photos and eight million videos uploaded to the site each month.
Facebook, which says it favors membership growth over profitability for now, is trying to increase revenue overseas by hiring advertising sales staff in countries like Britain, Australia and France.
In other parts of the world, Microsoft serves ads on the site and Facebook offers self-service tools to advertisers. But those ads are far less lucrative than the ones Facebook itself sells in the United States and Western Europe.
As a result, speculation has swirled about Facebook’s finances. Industry analysts wonder aloud how fast the company is losing money and whether it needs to solicit another round of investment.
Facebook said last month that it was on track to become profitable next year. But as it did, Gideon Yu, Facebook’s experienced chief financial officer, left the company. Three people familiar with the internal maneuverings at Facebook said Mr. Yu objected to such a rosy projection as the company was struggling to finance its expensive global growth.
Web entrepreneurs like Mr. Shapiro of Veoh, still struggling with his decision to restrict his site from much of the world, might have to find a way to soothe their battered consciences.
“The part of me that wants to change the world says, ‘This is unfair, it shouldn’t be like this,’ ” Mr. Shapiro said. “On the other hand, from the business side of things, serving videos to the entire world is just not supportable at this time.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/techn ... nted=print
In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit
By BRAD STONE and MIGUEL HELFT
Facebook is booming in Turkey and Indonesia. YouTube’s audience has nearly doubled in India and Brazil.
That may seem like good news. But it is also a major reason these and other Web companies with big global audiences and renowned brands struggle to turn even a tiny profit.
Call it the International Paradox.
Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.
This intractable contradiction has become a serious drag on the bottom lines of photo-sharing sites, social networks and video distributors like YouTube. It is also threatening the fervent idealism of Internet entrepreneurs, who hoped to unite the world in a single online village but are increasingly finding that the economics of that vision just do not work.
Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there.
“I believe in free, open communications,” Dmitry Shapiro, the company’s chief executive, said. “But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it’s very difficult to derive revenue from it.”
Internet start-ups that came of age during the Web 2.0 era, roughly from 2004 to the beginning of the recession at the end of 2007, generally subscribed to a widely accepted blueprint: build huge global audiences with a free service, and let advertising pay the bills.
But many of them ran smack into global economic reality. There may be 1.6 billion people in the world with Internet access, but fewer than half of them have incomes high enough to interest major advertisers.
“It’s a problem every Internet company has,” said Michelangelo Volpi, chief executive of Joost, a video site with half its audience outside the United States.
“Whenever you have a lot of user-generated material, your bandwidth gets utilized in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, where bandwidth is expensive and ad rates are ridiculously low,” Mr. Volpi said. If Web companies “really want to make money, they would shut off all those countries.”
Few Internet companies have taken that drastic step, but many are exploring other ways to increase revenue or cut costs in developing countries.
MySpace — the News Corporation’s social network with 130 million members, about 45 percent of them overseas — is testing a feature for countries with slower Internet connections called Profile Lite. It is a stripped-down version of the site that is less expensive to display because it requires less bandwidth.
MySpace says it may make Profile Lite the primary version for its members in India, where it has 760,000 users, although people there could click on a link to switch to the richer version of the site.
Perhaps no company is more in the grip of the international paradox than YouTube, which a Credit Suisse analyst, Spencer Wang, recently estimated could lose $470 million in 2009, in part because of the high cost of delivering billions of videos each month. Google, which owns YouTube, disputed the analysis but offered no details on the site’s financial situation.
Tom Pickett, director of online sales and operations at YouTube, says the company still hews to its vision of bringing online video to the entire globe. In the last two years, it has pushed to create local versions of its site in countries like India, Brazil and Poland.
But Mr. Pickett also says that YouTube has slowed the creation of new international hubs and shifted its focus to making money. He says that does not rule out restricting bandwidth in certain countries as a way to control costs — essentially making YouTube a slower, lower-quality viewing experience in the developing world.
“We may choose to set a limit to how much we are willing to pay in bandwidth cost,” Mr. Pickett said. In some countries, he said, “there may be particular peak times where instead of high definition, we might decrease the resolution.”
The Facebook social network is also considering lowering the quality of videos and photographs delivered to some regions in an effort to reduce expenses.
“We can decide, either on a country by country or user by user basis, to engineer the quality of the service for that cohort of users,” said Jonathan Heiliger, the executive who oversees Facebook’s computing infrastructure.
Facebook is in a particularly difficult predicament. Seventy percent of its 200 million members live outside the United States, many in regions that do not contribute much to Facebook’s bottom line. At the same time, the company faces the expensive prospect of storing 850 million photos and eight million videos uploaded to the site each month.
Facebook, which says it favors membership growth over profitability for now, is trying to increase revenue overseas by hiring advertising sales staff in countries like Britain, Australia and France.
In other parts of the world, Microsoft serves ads on the site and Facebook offers self-service tools to advertisers. But those ads are far less lucrative than the ones Facebook itself sells in the United States and Western Europe.
As a result, speculation has swirled about Facebook’s finances. Industry analysts wonder aloud how fast the company is losing money and whether it needs to solicit another round of investment.
Facebook said last month that it was on track to become profitable next year. But as it did, Gideon Yu, Facebook’s experienced chief financial officer, left the company. Three people familiar with the internal maneuverings at Facebook said Mr. Yu objected to such a rosy projection as the company was struggling to finance its expensive global growth.
Web entrepreneurs like Mr. Shapiro of Veoh, still struggling with his decision to restrict his site from much of the world, might have to find a way to soothe their battered consciences.
“The part of me that wants to change the world says, ‘This is unfair, it shouldn’t be like this,’ ” Mr. Shapiro said. “On the other hand, from the business side of things, serving videos to the entire world is just not supportable at this time.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/techn ... nted=print
May 5, 2009
Findings
Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration
By JOHN TIERNEY
Imagine that you have ditched your laptop and turned off your smartphone. You are beyond the reach of YouTube, Facebook, e-mail, text messages. You are in a Twitter-free zone, sitting in a taxicab with a copy of “Rapt,” a guide by Winifred Gallagher to the science of paying attention.
The book’s theme, which Ms. Gallagher chose after she learned she had an especially nasty form of cancer, is borrowed from the psychologist William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” You can lead a miserable life by obsessing on problems. You can drive yourself crazy trying to multitask and answer every e-mail message instantly.
Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Ms. Gallagher calls the focused life. It can sound wonderfully appealing, except that as you sit in the cab reading about the science of paying attention, you realize that ... you’re not paying attention to a word on the page.
The taxi’s television, which can’t be turned off, is showing a commercial of a guy in a taxi working on a laptop — and as long as he’s jabbering about how his new wireless card has made him so productive during his cab ride, you can’t do anything productive during yours.
Why can’t you concentrate on anything except your desire to shut him up? And even if you flee the cab, is there any realistic refuge anymore from the Age of Distraction?
I put these questions to Ms. Gallagher and to one of the experts in her book, Robert Desimone, a neuroscientist at M.I.T. who has been doing experiments somewhat similar to my taxicab TV experience. He has been tracking the brain waves of macaque monkeys and humans as they stare at video screens looking for certain flashing patterns.
When something bright or novel flashes, it tends to automatically win the competition for the brain’s attention, but that involuntary bottom-up impulse can be voluntarily overridden through a top-down process that Dr. Desimone calls “biased competition.” He and colleagues have found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s planning center — start oscillating in unison and send signals directing the visual cortex to heed something else.
These oscillations, called gamma waves, are created by neurons’ firing on and off at the same time — a feat of neural coordination a bit like getting strangers in one section of a stadium to start clapping in unison, thereby sending a signal that induces people on the other side of the stadium to clap along. But these signals can have trouble getting through in a noisy environment.
“It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to process a strong input like a television commercial,” said Dr. Desimone, the director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at M.I.T. “If you’re trying to read a book at the same time, you may not have the resources left to focus on the words.”
Now that neuroscientists have identified the brain’s synchronizing mechanism, they’ve started work on therapies to strengthen attention. In the current issue of Nature, researchers from M.I.T., Penn and Stanford report that they directly induced gamma waves in mice by shining pulses of laser light through tiny optical fibers onto genetically engineered neurons. In the current issue of Neuron, Dr. Desimone and colleagues report progress in using this “optogenetic” technique in monkeys.
Ultimately, Dr. Desimone said, it may be possible to improve your attention by using pulses of light to directly synchronize your neurons, a form of direct therapy that could help people with schizophrenia and attention-deficit problems (and might have fewer side effects than drugs). If it could be done with low-wavelength light that penetrates the skull, you could simply put on (or take off) a tiny wirelessly controlled device that would be a bit like a hearing aid.
In the nearer future, neuroscientists might also help you focus by observing your brain activity and providing biofeedback as you practice strengthening your concentration. Researchers have already observed higher levels of synchrony in the brains of people who regularly meditate.
Ms. Gallagher advocates meditation to increase your focus, but she says there are also simpler ways to put the lessons of attention researchers to use. Once she learned how hard it was for the brain to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly other people’s voices, she began carrying ear plugs with her. When you’re trapped in a noisy subway car or a taxi with a TV that won’t turn off, she says you have to build your own “stimulus shelter.”
She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption. (For more advice, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.)
“Multitasking is a myth,” Ms. Gallagher said. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.” She points to calculations that the typical person’s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime.
“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” she said. “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.”
During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said, she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind James’s mantra as well as a line from Milton: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”
“When I woke up in the morning,” Ms. Gallagher said, “I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/scien ... ?th&emc=th
Findings
Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration
By JOHN TIERNEY
Imagine that you have ditched your laptop and turned off your smartphone. You are beyond the reach of YouTube, Facebook, e-mail, text messages. You are in a Twitter-free zone, sitting in a taxicab with a copy of “Rapt,” a guide by Winifred Gallagher to the science of paying attention.
The book’s theme, which Ms. Gallagher chose after she learned she had an especially nasty form of cancer, is borrowed from the psychologist William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” You can lead a miserable life by obsessing on problems. You can drive yourself crazy trying to multitask and answer every e-mail message instantly.
Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Ms. Gallagher calls the focused life. It can sound wonderfully appealing, except that as you sit in the cab reading about the science of paying attention, you realize that ... you’re not paying attention to a word on the page.
The taxi’s television, which can’t be turned off, is showing a commercial of a guy in a taxi working on a laptop — and as long as he’s jabbering about how his new wireless card has made him so productive during his cab ride, you can’t do anything productive during yours.
Why can’t you concentrate on anything except your desire to shut him up? And even if you flee the cab, is there any realistic refuge anymore from the Age of Distraction?
I put these questions to Ms. Gallagher and to one of the experts in her book, Robert Desimone, a neuroscientist at M.I.T. who has been doing experiments somewhat similar to my taxicab TV experience. He has been tracking the brain waves of macaque monkeys and humans as they stare at video screens looking for certain flashing patterns.
When something bright or novel flashes, it tends to automatically win the competition for the brain’s attention, but that involuntary bottom-up impulse can be voluntarily overridden through a top-down process that Dr. Desimone calls “biased competition.” He and colleagues have found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s planning center — start oscillating in unison and send signals directing the visual cortex to heed something else.
These oscillations, called gamma waves, are created by neurons’ firing on and off at the same time — a feat of neural coordination a bit like getting strangers in one section of a stadium to start clapping in unison, thereby sending a signal that induces people on the other side of the stadium to clap along. But these signals can have trouble getting through in a noisy environment.
“It takes a lot of your prefrontal brain power to force yourself not to process a strong input like a television commercial,” said Dr. Desimone, the director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at M.I.T. “If you’re trying to read a book at the same time, you may not have the resources left to focus on the words.”
Now that neuroscientists have identified the brain’s synchronizing mechanism, they’ve started work on therapies to strengthen attention. In the current issue of Nature, researchers from M.I.T., Penn and Stanford report that they directly induced gamma waves in mice by shining pulses of laser light through tiny optical fibers onto genetically engineered neurons. In the current issue of Neuron, Dr. Desimone and colleagues report progress in using this “optogenetic” technique in monkeys.
Ultimately, Dr. Desimone said, it may be possible to improve your attention by using pulses of light to directly synchronize your neurons, a form of direct therapy that could help people with schizophrenia and attention-deficit problems (and might have fewer side effects than drugs). If it could be done with low-wavelength light that penetrates the skull, you could simply put on (or take off) a tiny wirelessly controlled device that would be a bit like a hearing aid.
In the nearer future, neuroscientists might also help you focus by observing your brain activity and providing biofeedback as you practice strengthening your concentration. Researchers have already observed higher levels of synchrony in the brains of people who regularly meditate.
Ms. Gallagher advocates meditation to increase your focus, but she says there are also simpler ways to put the lessons of attention researchers to use. Once she learned how hard it was for the brain to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly other people’s voices, she began carrying ear plugs with her. When you’re trapped in a noisy subway car or a taxi with a TV that won’t turn off, she says you have to build your own “stimulus shelter.”
She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption. (For more advice, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.)
“Multitasking is a myth,” Ms. Gallagher said. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.” She points to calculations that the typical person’s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime.
“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” she said. “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.”
During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said, she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind James’s mantra as well as a line from Milton: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”
“When I woke up in the morning,” Ms. Gallagher said, “I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/scien ... ?th&emc=th
New technology curbs lead-footed drivers
Speed-restricted cars being unveiled for six-month UK. trial
DAVID WILLIAMS
THE TELEGRAPH
New technology that forces motorists to obey the speed limit will be unveiled in a British trial to be announced on Monday.
More than 20 vehicles are to be fitted with computers that "know" the maximum permitted speed on any given stretch of road.
When the vehicle reaches the limit, sophisticated electronics — linked to an onboard digital map and satellites — cut in to prevent the engine going any faster.
The "Intelligent Speed Adaptation" (ISA) system has alarmed motoring campaigners, who claim the device — which could add almost $900 to the cost of a car when it goes into production—could hinder rather than aid road safety and is further evidence of state interference.
The six-month trial, the largest ISA experiment so far, is being carried out by Transport for London (TfL). The specially equipped fleet — including cars, a bus and a black cab — will take to the streets this summer. The aim is to develop the technology for the marketplace.
TfL analysts claim that forcing motorists to stick to speed limits would cut the number of accidents by about 10 per cent.
At the heart of the computer is a digital map that took two years to complete at a cost of $380,000, programmed with the speed limits on every road within the M25.
Already in use on three trial cars, the system offers the driver two modes, "voluntary" and "advisory," as well as an override button to switch it off altogether.
In "advisory" mode the device's satnav style screen shows the speed limit—and a smiley face if the driver sticks to it. The face frowns if the motorist goes too fast.
But in the "voluntary" mode — in the sense that you volunteer to have your speed curbed — when vehicles reach the speed limit the car cannot go any faster.The system does not affect the brakes.
If an ISA-equipped car is driven from a 65 km/h to a 50 km/h or 30 km/h zone it is automatically slowed. "This innovative technology could help any driver avoid the unnecessary penalties of creeping over the speed limit and will save lives," said Chris Lines, the head of TfL's road safety unit.
Andrew Howard, the AA's head of road safety, said: "Drivers are divided in their views of ISA; some hate it, some want it. Many have questions that will be answered only by trials like those carried out by TfL."
Paul Biggs, of the Association of British Drivers, said: "The problem is that speed limits are often unrealistic and slow traffic unnecessarily. At other times, this system could encourage motorists to travel right up to the speed limit when it is not safe to do so."
Southwark council in south London says it wants to order 300 ISA units for its vehicles, and other authorities are expected to follow.
The ISA trial units cost almost $700,000 to develop. They were made by the British division of Technolution a Dutch firm, with funding from TfL.
Published in today's Calgary Herald
Speed-restricted cars being unveiled for six-month UK. trial
DAVID WILLIAMS
THE TELEGRAPH
New technology that forces motorists to obey the speed limit will be unveiled in a British trial to be announced on Monday.
More than 20 vehicles are to be fitted with computers that "know" the maximum permitted speed on any given stretch of road.
When the vehicle reaches the limit, sophisticated electronics — linked to an onboard digital map and satellites — cut in to prevent the engine going any faster.
The "Intelligent Speed Adaptation" (ISA) system has alarmed motoring campaigners, who claim the device — which could add almost $900 to the cost of a car when it goes into production—could hinder rather than aid road safety and is further evidence of state interference.
The six-month trial, the largest ISA experiment so far, is being carried out by Transport for London (TfL). The specially equipped fleet — including cars, a bus and a black cab — will take to the streets this summer. The aim is to develop the technology for the marketplace.
TfL analysts claim that forcing motorists to stick to speed limits would cut the number of accidents by about 10 per cent.
At the heart of the computer is a digital map that took two years to complete at a cost of $380,000, programmed with the speed limits on every road within the M25.
Already in use on three trial cars, the system offers the driver two modes, "voluntary" and "advisory," as well as an override button to switch it off altogether.
In "advisory" mode the device's satnav style screen shows the speed limit—and a smiley face if the driver sticks to it. The face frowns if the motorist goes too fast.
But in the "voluntary" mode — in the sense that you volunteer to have your speed curbed — when vehicles reach the speed limit the car cannot go any faster.The system does not affect the brakes.
If an ISA-equipped car is driven from a 65 km/h to a 50 km/h or 30 km/h zone it is automatically slowed. "This innovative technology could help any driver avoid the unnecessary penalties of creeping over the speed limit and will save lives," said Chris Lines, the head of TfL's road safety unit.
Andrew Howard, the AA's head of road safety, said: "Drivers are divided in their views of ISA; some hate it, some want it. Many have questions that will be answered only by trials like those carried out by TfL."
Paul Biggs, of the Association of British Drivers, said: "The problem is that speed limits are often unrealistic and slow traffic unnecessarily. At other times, this system could encourage motorists to travel right up to the speed limit when it is not safe to do so."
Southwark council in south London says it wants to order 300 ISA units for its vehicles, and other authorities are expected to follow.
The ISA trial units cost almost $700,000 to develop. They were made by the British division of Technolution a Dutch firm, with funding from TfL.
Published in today's Calgary Herald
Spacewalkers finish first Hubble upgrade
New camera to take deeper look at universe
By Chris Baltimore, Reuters
May 15, 2009
Spacewalkers John Grunsfeld, left, and Andrew Feustel were outside Atlantis working on the Hubble Space Telescope for seven hours Thursday.
Photograph by: Reuters, NASA TV, Reuters
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A pair of spacewalking astronauts on Thursday outfitted the Hubble Space Telescope with a new camera that will allow astronomers to turn their gaze closer to the birth of the universe.
Clad in bulky pressurized spacesuits, five-time shuttle flyer John Grunsfeld, 50, and rookie partner Andrew Feustel, 43,floated outside the shuttle Atlantis for a space-walk that lasted more than seven hours.
The 11-day mission is the U. S. space agency's last chance to service the telescope -- which has vastly expanded scientists' knowledge of the universe-- before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010. It is NASA's fifth and final servicing call to Hubble, which was put into space in 1990.
NASA hopes the improvements will keep Hubble operational until at least 2014 so it can work in tandem with its projected replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Tethered to the shuttle's robotic arm, Feustel struggled with a bolt on the old camera for more than an hour, finally using a wrench and old-fashioned elbow grease to pry it loose. "It's been in there for 16 years--and it didn't want to come out," Grunsfeld said.
Installing the new wide field camera was among NASA's highest priorities, and will allow Hubble to capture images of objects formed as early as 500 million years after the birth of the universe.
Grunsfeld and Feustel also replaced a key computer that processes and formats information collected by Hubble's science instruments but which shut down last September.
The astronauts will perform five spacewalks to repair the bus-sized observatory and install new instruments that will allow Hubble to send back upgraded versions of its spectacular images of distant galaxies and cosmic anomalies.
Astronomers could see the first of the images from Hubble's upgraded capacity in September.
The new camera replaces a 1990s-era digital camera with an upgraded imager that is sensitive to infrared and ultraviolet light in addition to the wavelengths the human eye can detect.
The infrared detectors are particularly important for imaging very distant objects, whose light comes to Earth shifted into longer, redder wavelengths.
Taking a long, deep look for the most distant objects detectable tops Hubble's to-do list once the observatory is back in service. The oldest targets Hubble has seen date back to 700 million years after the Big Bang, the explosion that created the universe about 13.7 billion years ago.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
PreviousNext
Spacewalkers John Grunsfeld, left, and Andrew Feustel were outside Atlantis working on the Hubble Space Telescope for seven hours Thursday.
Photograph by: Reuters, NASA TV, Reuters
New camera to take deeper look at universe
By Chris Baltimore, Reuters
May 15, 2009
Spacewalkers John Grunsfeld, left, and Andrew Feustel were outside Atlantis working on the Hubble Space Telescope for seven hours Thursday.
Photograph by: Reuters, NASA TV, Reuters
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 6&sponsor=
A pair of spacewalking astronauts on Thursday outfitted the Hubble Space Telescope with a new camera that will allow astronomers to turn their gaze closer to the birth of the universe.
Clad in bulky pressurized spacesuits, five-time shuttle flyer John Grunsfeld, 50, and rookie partner Andrew Feustel, 43,floated outside the shuttle Atlantis for a space-walk that lasted more than seven hours.
The 11-day mission is the U. S. space agency's last chance to service the telescope -- which has vastly expanded scientists' knowledge of the universe-- before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010. It is NASA's fifth and final servicing call to Hubble, which was put into space in 1990.
NASA hopes the improvements will keep Hubble operational until at least 2014 so it can work in tandem with its projected replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Tethered to the shuttle's robotic arm, Feustel struggled with a bolt on the old camera for more than an hour, finally using a wrench and old-fashioned elbow grease to pry it loose. "It's been in there for 16 years--and it didn't want to come out," Grunsfeld said.
Installing the new wide field camera was among NASA's highest priorities, and will allow Hubble to capture images of objects formed as early as 500 million years after the birth of the universe.
Grunsfeld and Feustel also replaced a key computer that processes and formats information collected by Hubble's science instruments but which shut down last September.
The astronauts will perform five spacewalks to repair the bus-sized observatory and install new instruments that will allow Hubble to send back upgraded versions of its spectacular images of distant galaxies and cosmic anomalies.
Astronomers could see the first of the images from Hubble's upgraded capacity in September.
The new camera replaces a 1990s-era digital camera with an upgraded imager that is sensitive to infrared and ultraviolet light in addition to the wavelengths the human eye can detect.
The infrared detectors are particularly important for imaging very distant objects, whose light comes to Earth shifted into longer, redder wavelengths.
Taking a long, deep look for the most distant objects detectable tops Hubble's to-do list once the observatory is back in service. The oldest targets Hubble has seen date back to 700 million years after the Big Bang, the explosion that created the universe about 13.7 billion years ago.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
PreviousNext
Spacewalkers John Grunsfeld, left, and Andrew Feustel were outside Atlantis working on the Hubble Space Telescope for seven hours Thursday.
Photograph by: Reuters, NASA TV, Reuters
Astronauts' house call repairs Hubble
Intricate fix pulled off without a hitch
By Chris Baltimore, ReutersMay 17, 2009 7:33 AM
Two spacewalking astronauts on Saturday tackled one of their toughest repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope--a meticulous fix of a broken camera -- and installed a new spectrograph that can divine the properties of distant galaxies.
Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel spent 6 1/2 hours outside the shuttle Atlantis for the third of five back-to-back spacewalks to upgrade the famous space observatory for another five to 10 years of work.
NASA officials had billed Saturday's spacewalk as the "hold your breath" day for Atlantis's ongoing 11-day mission, the fifth and final servicing call to Hubble before the shuttle fleet is retired next year.
But Grunsfeld and Feustel's tasks came off without a hitch, after two earlier spacewalks were beset with balky equipment that required astronauts to improvise.
Thursday's installation of a new wide-field camera was almost derailed by a frozen bolt.
Saturday's work required Grunsfeld to clamber into Hubble's body, dig into its electronic guts and replace sharp-edged computer circuit boards that were never meant to be repaired in space.
Working mostly by feel, Grunsfeld cut off a mesh grid, unscrewed a protective plate and used a specially designed pair of tongs to pluck out four circuit boards.
It was the first time NASA had tried to fix an instrument on Hubble rather than replacing it.
"This activity is dedicated to studying the behaviour of tiny screws in space," Grunsfeld joked after removing 32 fasteners securing the faulty circuit boards in Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, which shut down in 2007 after a power failure.
Hubble's observations have reshaped scientists'understanding of how galaxies form and change over time, of planet origins and of the mysterious "dark energy" force that is inflating the universe at a faster and faster rate.
The spectrograph--the most sensitive such instrument to ever fly in space--delivers precise astrophysical data on the temperature, density and speed of distant cosmic bodies.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 9&sponsor=
Intricate fix pulled off without a hitch
By Chris Baltimore, ReutersMay 17, 2009 7:33 AM
Two spacewalking astronauts on Saturday tackled one of their toughest repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope--a meticulous fix of a broken camera -- and installed a new spectrograph that can divine the properties of distant galaxies.
Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel spent 6 1/2 hours outside the shuttle Atlantis for the third of five back-to-back spacewalks to upgrade the famous space observatory for another five to 10 years of work.
NASA officials had billed Saturday's spacewalk as the "hold your breath" day for Atlantis's ongoing 11-day mission, the fifth and final servicing call to Hubble before the shuttle fleet is retired next year.
But Grunsfeld and Feustel's tasks came off without a hitch, after two earlier spacewalks were beset with balky equipment that required astronauts to improvise.
Thursday's installation of a new wide-field camera was almost derailed by a frozen bolt.
Saturday's work required Grunsfeld to clamber into Hubble's body, dig into its electronic guts and replace sharp-edged computer circuit boards that were never meant to be repaired in space.
Working mostly by feel, Grunsfeld cut off a mesh grid, unscrewed a protective plate and used a specially designed pair of tongs to pluck out four circuit boards.
It was the first time NASA had tried to fix an instrument on Hubble rather than replacing it.
"This activity is dedicated to studying the behaviour of tiny screws in space," Grunsfeld joked after removing 32 fasteners securing the faulty circuit boards in Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, which shut down in 2007 after a power failure.
Hubble's observations have reshaped scientists'understanding of how galaxies form and change over time, of planet origins and of the mysterious "dark energy" force that is inflating the universe at a faster and faster rate.
The spectrograph--the most sensitive such instrument to ever fly in space--delivers precise astrophysical data on the temperature, density and speed of distant cosmic bodies.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 9&sponsor=
Hubble released with 'full arsenal' of upgrades
Agence France-PresseMay 20, 2009
Offering a wistful farewell, astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis released the Hubble Space Telescope back into its orbit Tuesday, concluding the U. S. space agency's final mission to repair and upgrade the revolutionary observatory.
The separation marked the end of NASA's human missions to the aging butbelovedHubble, whosespectacular images have helped broaden human-kind's understanding of the universe as it peers into the cosmos.
Mission specialist Megan McArthur, who manoeuvred the Hubble using the Atlantis's robotic arm released the telescope as the two spacecraft sailed at an altitude of 560 kilometres over Africa.
"Hubble has returned to flagship status. It now has a full arsenal of instruments and tools for astronomers to make new discoveries," said Jon Morse, NASA's chief astrophysicist.
The refurbished telescope will undergo three to four months of recommissioning, a period during which each of the four cameras and spectrographs either installed or repaired by the Atlantis astronauts will be checked and re-calibrated before scientists resume their observations.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Agence France-PresseMay 20, 2009
Offering a wistful farewell, astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis released the Hubble Space Telescope back into its orbit Tuesday, concluding the U. S. space agency's final mission to repair and upgrade the revolutionary observatory.
The separation marked the end of NASA's human missions to the aging butbelovedHubble, whosespectacular images have helped broaden human-kind's understanding of the universe as it peers into the cosmos.
Mission specialist Megan McArthur, who manoeuvred the Hubble using the Atlantis's robotic arm released the telescope as the two spacecraft sailed at an altitude of 560 kilometres over Africa.
"Hubble has returned to flagship status. It now has a full arsenal of instruments and tools for astronomers to make new discoveries," said Jon Morse, NASA's chief astrophysicist.
The refurbished telescope will undergo three to four months of recommissioning, a period during which each of the four cameras and spectrographs either installed or repaired by the Atlantis astronauts will be checked and re-calibrated before scientists resume their observations.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Fifth dimension could boost capacity of DVDs 10,000 times
Reuters
May 21, 2009 3:01 AM
"Five-dimensional" discs with a capacity 10,000 times greater than current dvds could be on the market within 10 years, researchers reported Wednesday.
A team from Swinburne University of technology in Australia said that by harnessing nanoparticles and a "polarization" dimension to existing technology, storage can be massively boosted without changing the size of a current disc.
The researchers, who have signed a deal with Samsung electronics, said the technique had allowed them to store 1.6 terabytes of data on a disc with the potential to one day store up to 10 terabytes.
One terabyte could hold 250,000 songs.
"We were able to show how nano-structured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc," said Min Gu, who worked on the research. "These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs."
Discs now have three spatial dimensions, but using nanoparticles, the researchers said they were able to introduce a spectral -- or colour -- dimension as well as a polarization dimension.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Technology ... story.html
Reuters
May 21, 2009 3:01 AM
"Five-dimensional" discs with a capacity 10,000 times greater than current dvds could be on the market within 10 years, researchers reported Wednesday.
A team from Swinburne University of technology in Australia said that by harnessing nanoparticles and a "polarization" dimension to existing technology, storage can be massively boosted without changing the size of a current disc.
The researchers, who have signed a deal with Samsung electronics, said the technique had allowed them to store 1.6 terabytes of data on a disc with the potential to one day store up to 10 terabytes.
One terabyte could hold 250,000 songs.
"We were able to show how nano-structured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc," said Min Gu, who worked on the research. "These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs."
Discs now have three spatial dimensions, but using nanoparticles, the researchers said they were able to introduce a spectral -- or colour -- dimension as well as a polarization dimension.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Technology ... story.html
NASA to search for water on moon
Agence France-presseMay 22, 2009
NASA on Thursday said it was on target for a June mission to scour the moon's surface for landing sites and water that would allow humans to work and live on Earth's nearest neighbour.
The space agency hopes to launch a dual craft in June, part of which would survey the moon's surface from orbit while another plows into the surface in search for water.
"We had the original target of providing information back for being able to safely return to the moon for exploration," said Mike Wargo, NASA's chief lunar scientist.
The mission will focus on the little-know lunar poles, hoping to confirm reports of hydrogen accumulation and possible water ice not found at the equatorial regions that were famously explored in the 1970s.
"One of the (resources) we are looking for is the potential of water ice at
the lunar polar regions in these really mysterious, permanently shadowed regions," said Wargo.
The permanently shadowed craters that may not have seen sunlight for one billion or two billion years could hold deposits of ice at a temperature of -200 C.
Project manager Dan Andrews said the discovery of ice would be a crucial resource for future manned missions to the moon, potentially providing oxygen for astronauts and oxidizer for rocket fuel.
The lunar reconnaissance orbiter --decked with instruments to mea-sure temperature, topography, radio-activity and hydrogen levels--will circle the polar areas, producing three-dimensional maps and data on 100 sites, some of which could later be used for manned landings.
Another module, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, will hurtle into the moon's surface, crashing into a permanently shadowed crater.
In 1969, the Apollo 11 mission touched down on the lunar surface, allowing Neil Armstrong to become the first human to set foot on the moon. In 2004, President George W. Bush vowed to return Americans to the moon by 2020.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Agence France-presseMay 22, 2009
NASA on Thursday said it was on target for a June mission to scour the moon's surface for landing sites and water that would allow humans to work and live on Earth's nearest neighbour.
The space agency hopes to launch a dual craft in June, part of which would survey the moon's surface from orbit while another plows into the surface in search for water.
"We had the original target of providing information back for being able to safely return to the moon for exploration," said Mike Wargo, NASA's chief lunar scientist.
The mission will focus on the little-know lunar poles, hoping to confirm reports of hydrogen accumulation and possible water ice not found at the equatorial regions that were famously explored in the 1970s.
"One of the (resources) we are looking for is the potential of water ice at
the lunar polar regions in these really mysterious, permanently shadowed regions," said Wargo.
The permanently shadowed craters that may not have seen sunlight for one billion or two billion years could hold deposits of ice at a temperature of -200 C.
Project manager Dan Andrews said the discovery of ice would be a crucial resource for future manned missions to the moon, potentially providing oxygen for astronauts and oxidizer for rocket fuel.
The lunar reconnaissance orbiter --decked with instruments to mea-sure temperature, topography, radio-activity and hydrogen levels--will circle the polar areas, producing three-dimensional maps and data on 100 sites, some of which could later be used for manned landings.
Another module, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, will hurtle into the moon's surface, crashing into a permanently shadowed crater.
In 1969, the Apollo 11 mission touched down on the lunar surface, allowing Neil Armstrong to become the first human to set foot on the moon. In 2004, President George W. Bush vowed to return Americans to the moon by 2020.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
May 25, 2009
Editorial
An Even Better Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope, already hugely successful, should have even greater powers thanks to new instruments installed and repairs made by astronauts on a servicing mission that ended Sunday.
The trip validates the decision of former NASA chief Michael Griffin. He reinstated the mission after it had been canceled by a previous administrator because it was slightly more risky than most shuttle flights. Without refurbishing, Hubble would have limped along with diminished viewing capability until its gyroscopes or key circuits conked out and left it unable to function.
Hubble is the only major space telescope that is close enough for astronauts to reach and refurbish; it was planned that way largely to give the costly shuttle program something useful to do beyond building the scientifically more dubious international space station.
Making the telescope reachable proved fortunate. After Hubble was launched in 1990, NASA discovered to its horror and chagrin that a misshapen mirror blurred its vision, rendering it largely useless. Shuttle astronauts corrected the vision defect, regularly replaced failing gyroscopes and installed ever more sensitive instruments, allowing Hubble to provide brilliantly sharp images.
Among a host of scientific achievements, Hubble has discovered hundreds of proto-galaxies that emitted light when the universe was forming and helped establish the age and expansion rate of the universe.
Now, with the fifth and possibly last servicing mission, NASA has made Hubble potentially better than ever. Astronauts installed two new instruments, repaired two others, and replaced gyroscopes that keep the telescope pointed in the right direction and batteries that provide power. The only glitches were a repair to a survey camera that was only partially successful and frustrating difficulties loosening a bolt and handrail.
If all works as planned, Hubble should be able to peer even deeper into space and farther back in time than it has before. The telescope, circling some 350 miles above Earth, is expected to perform for at least five more years.
That should be long enough to bridge the gap until its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is sent to a perch almost a million miles from Earth — four times as distant as the Moon. That is a much better vantage point for viewing the universe without Earth getting in the way. It will also be far beyond the reach of repair parties, so the manufacturers had better get it right the first time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opini ... nted=print
Editorial
An Even Better Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope, already hugely successful, should have even greater powers thanks to new instruments installed and repairs made by astronauts on a servicing mission that ended Sunday.
The trip validates the decision of former NASA chief Michael Griffin. He reinstated the mission after it had been canceled by a previous administrator because it was slightly more risky than most shuttle flights. Without refurbishing, Hubble would have limped along with diminished viewing capability until its gyroscopes or key circuits conked out and left it unable to function.
Hubble is the only major space telescope that is close enough for astronauts to reach and refurbish; it was planned that way largely to give the costly shuttle program something useful to do beyond building the scientifically more dubious international space station.
Making the telescope reachable proved fortunate. After Hubble was launched in 1990, NASA discovered to its horror and chagrin that a misshapen mirror blurred its vision, rendering it largely useless. Shuttle astronauts corrected the vision defect, regularly replaced failing gyroscopes and installed ever more sensitive instruments, allowing Hubble to provide brilliantly sharp images.
Among a host of scientific achievements, Hubble has discovered hundreds of proto-galaxies that emitted light when the universe was forming and helped establish the age and expansion rate of the universe.
Now, with the fifth and possibly last servicing mission, NASA has made Hubble potentially better than ever. Astronauts installed two new instruments, repaired two others, and replaced gyroscopes that keep the telescope pointed in the right direction and batteries that provide power. The only glitches were a repair to a survey camera that was only partially successful and frustrating difficulties loosening a bolt and handrail.
If all works as planned, Hubble should be able to peer even deeper into space and farther back in time than it has before. The telescope, circling some 350 miles above Earth, is expected to perform for at least five more years.
That should be long enough to bridge the gap until its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is sent to a perch almost a million miles from Earth — four times as distant as the Moon. That is a much better vantage point for viewing the universe without Earth getting in the way. It will also be far beyond the reach of repair parties, so the manufacturers had better get it right the first time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opini ... nted=print
Japanese scientists create green-glowing monkeys via genetics
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor, ReutersMay 27, 2009
WASHINGTON - Japanese researchers have genetically engineered monkeys whose hair roots, skin and blood glow green under a special light, and who have passed on their traits to their offspring, the first time this has been achieved in a primate.
They spliced a jellyfish gene into common marmosets, and said on Wednesday they hope to use their colony of glowing animals to study human Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS.
Erika Sasaki and Hideyuki Okano of the Keio University School of Medicine in Japan used a virus to carry the gene for green fluorescent protein into monkey embryos, which were implanted into a female monkey, and four out of five were born with the gene throughout their bodies.
One fathered a healthy baby that also carried the new genes, they reported in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
"The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone," stem cell expert Dr. Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, wrote in a commentary in Nature.
"Transgenic marmosets are potentially useful models for research into infectious diseases, immunology and neurological disorders, for example," they wrote.
"I am most interested in Parkinson’s disease and ALS," Okano told reporters in a telephone briefing. Both are incurable nerve diseases. But Okano said animals could be created to study a range of diseases.
The researchers used marmosets because they reproduce quickly, reaching sexual maturity in about a year.
"At the moment we use mice with mutant genes that are associated with Parkinson’s to search for new drugs to treat the condition," Dr. Kieran Breen, director of Research and Development at Britain’s Parkinson’s Disease Society, said in a statement.
"Because non-human primates are much closer to humans than mice genetically, the successful creation of transgenic marmosets means that we will have a new animal model to work with."
Last year, the discoverers of the green fluorescent protein won the Nobel Prize in chemistry — Japanese-born Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York and Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego.
The protein glows under blue and ultraviolet light, allowing researchers to illuminate tumor cells, trace toxins and to monitor genes as they turn on and off.
(Editing by Vicki Allen)
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/Jap ... story.html
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor, ReutersMay 27, 2009
WASHINGTON - Japanese researchers have genetically engineered monkeys whose hair roots, skin and blood glow green under a special light, and who have passed on their traits to their offspring, the first time this has been achieved in a primate.
They spliced a jellyfish gene into common marmosets, and said on Wednesday they hope to use their colony of glowing animals to study human Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS.
Erika Sasaki and Hideyuki Okano of the Keio University School of Medicine in Japan used a virus to carry the gene for green fluorescent protein into monkey embryos, which were implanted into a female monkey, and four out of five were born with the gene throughout their bodies.
One fathered a healthy baby that also carried the new genes, they reported in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
"The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone," stem cell expert Dr. Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, wrote in a commentary in Nature.
"Transgenic marmosets are potentially useful models for research into infectious diseases, immunology and neurological disorders, for example," they wrote.
"I am most interested in Parkinson’s disease and ALS," Okano told reporters in a telephone briefing. Both are incurable nerve diseases. But Okano said animals could be created to study a range of diseases.
The researchers used marmosets because they reproduce quickly, reaching sexual maturity in about a year.
"At the moment we use mice with mutant genes that are associated with Parkinson’s to search for new drugs to treat the condition," Dr. Kieran Breen, director of Research and Development at Britain’s Parkinson’s Disease Society, said in a statement.
"Because non-human primates are much closer to humans than mice genetically, the successful creation of transgenic marmosets means that we will have a new animal model to work with."
Last year, the discoverers of the green fluorescent protein won the Nobel Prize in chemistry — Japanese-born Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York and Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego.
The protein glows under blue and ultraviolet light, allowing researchers to illuminate tumor cells, trace toxins and to monitor genes as they turn on and off.
(Editing by Vicki Allen)
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/Jap ... story.html
Clinical trials one step closer for latest stem cell breakthrough
By Mira Oberman, Agence France-presse
May 29, 2009 3:02 AM
The technology for versatile, grow-in-a-dish transplant tissue took a step toward clinical use when researchers announced they have found a safe way to turn skin cells into stem cells.
Researchers say the method is so promising they hope to apply for approval to begin clinic trials by the middle of next year.
"This is the first safe method of generating patient-specific stem cells," said study author Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer at Stem Cell&Regenerative Medicine International.
"This technology will soon allow us to expand the range of possible stem cell therapies for the entire human body,"Lanza told AFP.
"This allows us to generate the raw material to solve the problem of rejection (by the immune system)so this is really going to accelerate the field of regenerative medicine."
The research builds on an award-winning breakthrough in 2007 by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University.
Yamanaka and his team introduced four genes into skin cells, reprogramming them so they became indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells.
That achievement conjured the distant vision of an almost limitless source of transplant material that would be free of controversy, as it would entail no cells derived from embryos.
But the downside of the technique for creating these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) is that the genes are delivered by a "Trojan horse" virus.
Reprogramming cells using a virus modifies their DNA in such a way that they cannot be given to patients without boosting the risk of cancer and genetic mutation.
Other researchers have succeeded in delivering the genes with a method called DNA transfection or using a chemical wash, but these techniquesn also posed health risks.
Lanza and the team led by Kwang Soo Kim of Harvard University succeeded in delivering the genes by fusing them with a cell penetrating peptide which does not pose the risk of genetic mutation.
While this method took twice as long to generate pluripotent stem cells, Lanza said he believes his team can increase the efficiency of the transmission by purifying the protein.
The study was published in the online edition of Cell Stem Cell.
Stem cells have excited huge interest over the past decade.
Promoters say this material could reverse cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other diseases and also allow researchers to grow patient-specific organ and tissue transplants which will not require harmful anti-rejection drugs.
But the dynamic has been sapped by opposition from religious conservatives, who argue that research on embryos--the prime source of stem cells so far --destroys human life.
Generating stem cells from skin cells bypasses the controversy and also dramatically increases the availability of patient-specific stem cells.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/Cli ... story.html
By Mira Oberman, Agence France-presse
May 29, 2009 3:02 AM
The technology for versatile, grow-in-a-dish transplant tissue took a step toward clinical use when researchers announced they have found a safe way to turn skin cells into stem cells.
Researchers say the method is so promising they hope to apply for approval to begin clinic trials by the middle of next year.
"This is the first safe method of generating patient-specific stem cells," said study author Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer at Stem Cell&Regenerative Medicine International.
"This technology will soon allow us to expand the range of possible stem cell therapies for the entire human body,"Lanza told AFP.
"This allows us to generate the raw material to solve the problem of rejection (by the immune system)so this is really going to accelerate the field of regenerative medicine."
The research builds on an award-winning breakthrough in 2007 by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University.
Yamanaka and his team introduced four genes into skin cells, reprogramming them so they became indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells.
That achievement conjured the distant vision of an almost limitless source of transplant material that would be free of controversy, as it would entail no cells derived from embryos.
But the downside of the technique for creating these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) is that the genes are delivered by a "Trojan horse" virus.
Reprogramming cells using a virus modifies their DNA in such a way that they cannot be given to patients without boosting the risk of cancer and genetic mutation.
Other researchers have succeeded in delivering the genes with a method called DNA transfection or using a chemical wash, but these techniquesn also posed health risks.
Lanza and the team led by Kwang Soo Kim of Harvard University succeeded in delivering the genes by fusing them with a cell penetrating peptide which does not pose the risk of genetic mutation.
While this method took twice as long to generate pluripotent stem cells, Lanza said he believes his team can increase the efficiency of the transmission by purifying the protein.
The study was published in the online edition of Cell Stem Cell.
Stem cells have excited huge interest over the past decade.
Promoters say this material could reverse cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other diseases and also allow researchers to grow patient-specific organ and tissue transplants which will not require harmful anti-rejection drugs.
But the dynamic has been sapped by opposition from religious conservatives, who argue that research on embryos--the prime source of stem cells so far --destroys human life.
Generating stem cells from skin cells bypasses the controversy and also dramatically increases the availability of patient-specific stem cells.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/Cli ... story.html
June 5, 2009
Editorial
Gene by Gene
Over the years, scientists have developed many strains of genetically modified mice, many of which incorporate human versions of similar mouse genes. But there is something different in a recent experiment performed at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Scientists there have created a strain of mouse that contains the human variant of a gene, called FOXP2, associated with several critical tasks, including the human capacity for language.
What makes this different is how fundamentally human — and unmouse-like — language really is. Something essential to us, something defining in our species, has been implanted in a rodent.
FOXP2 happens to work pretty well in mice. Those with the new gene in place do in fact communicate differently with each other, by using slightly lower-pitched ultrasonic whistles. The nerve cells they grow in one region of the brain are also more complex than those in unaltered mice. These may sound like modest results, but they are striking. They help clarify the function of FOXP2, and, in doing so, they help scientists better understand what constellation of genes produces the capacity for language in humans and, thus, how we differ from our nearest primate relative, the chimpanzee.
What takes some getting used to is the idea of exploring what humanness really is — how complex and how little understood — by transplanting our genetic signatures, gene by gene, into other species. And there is another question hovering over this experiment: Just how alien to themselves do these transgenic mice become? To that question, scientists are bound to find no answers, until, perhaps, mice can speak for themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/opini ... nted=print
Editorial
Gene by Gene
Over the years, scientists have developed many strains of genetically modified mice, many of which incorporate human versions of similar mouse genes. But there is something different in a recent experiment performed at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Scientists there have created a strain of mouse that contains the human variant of a gene, called FOXP2, associated with several critical tasks, including the human capacity for language.
What makes this different is how fundamentally human — and unmouse-like — language really is. Something essential to us, something defining in our species, has been implanted in a rodent.
FOXP2 happens to work pretty well in mice. Those with the new gene in place do in fact communicate differently with each other, by using slightly lower-pitched ultrasonic whistles. The nerve cells they grow in one region of the brain are also more complex than those in unaltered mice. These may sound like modest results, but they are striking. They help clarify the function of FOXP2, and, in doing so, they help scientists better understand what constellation of genes produces the capacity for language in humans and, thus, how we differ from our nearest primate relative, the chimpanzee.
What takes some getting used to is the idea of exploring what humanness really is — how complex and how little understood — by transplanting our genetic signatures, gene by gene, into other species. And there is another question hovering over this experiment: Just how alien to themselves do these transgenic mice become? To that question, scientists are bound to find no answers, until, perhaps, mice can speak for themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/opini ... nted=print
Skyscraper greenhouses may sprout in crowded cities
Vertical nurseries could make fresh produce available
Agence France-PresseJune 6, 2009
This computer-generated image released by Plantagon on Friday shows the design of a vertical greenhouse, where organic fruit and vegetables could be grown in heavily populated areas, ultimately making fresh produce available to city dwellers at affordable prices.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images, Agence France-Presse
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 1&sponsor=
V ertical greenhouses that grow organic fruit and vegetables smack in the middle of crowded cities where land is scarce may soon be a reality, a Swedish company developing the project said Friday.
"A tomato seed is planted on the ground floor on a rotating spiral and when it arrives at the top, 30 days later, you pick the fruit," the vice-president of Plantagon, Hans Hassle, told AFP.
In a few decades, 80 per cent of the global population will live in cities, increasing the need "to grow fruits and vegetables in an urban environment due to the lack of land," he said. With a vertical greenhouse, "we could have fresh organic produce every day and sell it directly to consumers in the city,"Hassle said.
That way, "we would save 70 per cent on the cost of fresh produce because right now 70 per cent of the price is transport and storage costs," he said.
Fresh produce would thereby also become more available to those with slim budgets, he added.
No vertical greenhouse exists yet, but"several cities in Scandinavia and in China have expressed an interest," Hassle said.
Each installation would cost around $30 million, much more than a regular greenhouse. But the investment would rapidly turn a profit, he insisted.
"With ground space of 10,000 square metres, a vertical greenhouse represents the equivalent of 100,000 square metres of cultivated land" thanks to the rotating spiral that allows continual planting.
"An inventor came up with the idea 20 years ago, but none of the people he presented it to believed in it. He presented it to me 10 years ago and it seemed like a good idea, so I talked to Sweco, a Swedish engineering firm, and they agreed to build these vertical greenhouses," Hassle explained.
A virtual image of what one of the greenhouses could look like resembles a large glass sphere with a pillar in the middle, around which the seedlings rotate on a platform.
"It looks fantastic like that, but the technology is simple," Hassle said.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Vertical nurseries could make fresh produce available
Agence France-PresseJune 6, 2009
This computer-generated image released by Plantagon on Friday shows the design of a vertical greenhouse, where organic fruit and vegetables could be grown in heavily populated areas, ultimately making fresh produce available to city dwellers at affordable prices.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images, Agence France-Presse
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 1&sponsor=
V ertical greenhouses that grow organic fruit and vegetables smack in the middle of crowded cities where land is scarce may soon be a reality, a Swedish company developing the project said Friday.
"A tomato seed is planted on the ground floor on a rotating spiral and when it arrives at the top, 30 days later, you pick the fruit," the vice-president of Plantagon, Hans Hassle, told AFP.
In a few decades, 80 per cent of the global population will live in cities, increasing the need "to grow fruits and vegetables in an urban environment due to the lack of land," he said. With a vertical greenhouse, "we could have fresh organic produce every day and sell it directly to consumers in the city,"Hassle said.
That way, "we would save 70 per cent on the cost of fresh produce because right now 70 per cent of the price is transport and storage costs," he said.
Fresh produce would thereby also become more available to those with slim budgets, he added.
No vertical greenhouse exists yet, but"several cities in Scandinavia and in China have expressed an interest," Hassle said.
Each installation would cost around $30 million, much more than a regular greenhouse. But the investment would rapidly turn a profit, he insisted.
"With ground space of 10,000 square metres, a vertical greenhouse represents the equivalent of 100,000 square metres of cultivated land" thanks to the rotating spiral that allows continual planting.
"An inventor came up with the idea 20 years ago, but none of the people he presented it to believed in it. He presented it to me 10 years ago and it seemed like a good idea, so I talked to Sweco, a Swedish engineering firm, and they agreed to build these vertical greenhouses," Hassle explained.
A virtual image of what one of the greenhouses could look like resembles a large glass sphere with a pillar in the middle, around which the seedlings rotate on a platform.
"It looks fantastic like that, but the technology is simple," Hassle said.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Photo at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/scien ... &th&emc=th
June 9, 2009
Opening Doors on the Way to a Personal Robot
By JOHN MARKOFF
Consider it one small step — or a roll, actually — for a robot, one not giant, but significant step for robotics.
Willow Garage, a Silicon Valley robotics research group, said that its experimental PR2 robot, which has wheels and can travel at speeds up to a mile and a quarter per hour, was able to open and pass through 10 doors and plug itself into 10 standard wall sockets in less than an hour. In a different test, the same robot completed a marathon in the company’s office, traveling 26.2 miles. PR2 will not compete with humans yet; it took more than four days.
For the person who wants to buy a fully functioning robot butler, this may not seem so impressive. But for roboticists and a new generation of technologists in Silicon Valley, this is a significant achievement, a step along the way to the personal robot industry.
Willow Garage was founded by Scott Hassan, one of the designers of the original Google search engine. The company’s name is a reference to a small garage on Willow Road in Menlo Park, Calif., which was Google’s first office. The company is trying to develop a new generation of robotic personal assistants. Roboticists here and at other companies envision creating something on the scale of the personal computer industry, with mechanical personal assistants taking over a lot of drudgery, from cleaning up to fetching a beer from the refrigerator.
This is not a new hope, nor is it the first time that robots have tried to open doors, navigate rooms and recharge themselves. The Beast, a robot built at Johns Hopkins University in the mid-1960s, was able to locate standard wall sockets to refuel. And devices like the inexpensive iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner can locate and dock with a specially designed charging station.
But roboticists said that the Willow Garage robot was the first to integrate the ability to do a number of operations in a real-world environment.
“There are other groups that have opened doors before,” said Andrew Ng, a Stanford roboticist with several students who have gone to work for the company. But, Mr. Ng said, this seemed to be the first robot able to repeatedly and reliably open doors and plug itself in.
William L. Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University roboticist and the winner of a Defense Department urban challenge robot driving contest last year, said it was “unprecedented” for a robot to navigate in a building reliably and repeatedly recharge itself. “These guys are the real deal,” he said.
The Willow Garage laboratory is less than a mile from another pioneering mobile robot project that was developed at SRI International in the late 1960s. The robot, known as Shakey, had little onboard computing capability and was remotely controlled by a combination of a mainframe and a minicomputer.
“In 40 years there has been a lot of progress, but not progress you notice,” said Nils Nilsson, a pioneering artificial intelligence researcher who was one of Shakey’s designers. “A lot of the progress has been made in removing the cheats we used.”
To help Shakey navigate, he said, the baseboards in the room were painted black to help identify walls, and objects were painted red so they could be identified by the vision system.
The ultimate goal of the Willow Garage researchers is to build a Robot Operating System, or R.O.S., that would greatly facilitate the work of a generation of software developers.
Microsoft is developing a similar system based on a version of the Windows operating system, but the Willow Garage effort is an open-source project intended to leverage the contributions of a number of robotics experts around the world.
Toward that end, a team of roboticists from the University of Tokyo recently modified the Willow Garage R.O.S. to run on a robot they were developing, said Steve Cousins, Willow Garage’s president and chief executive.
“The eventual goal is to provide a set of capabilities that are so generic and so universal that they can be used as building blocks in more complicated applications,” said Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a Willow Garage board member.
The current PR2 robot is powered by several Intel microprocessor chips and “sees” with a combination of sensors including scanning lasers and video cameras. It is able to locate electrical outlets and navigate in a building that is designed to accessibility guidelines in the Americans With Disabilities act. Such buildings do not have doors with round door knobs, which simplifies the task of opening a door for a robot. The PR2 carries its plug on a magnet at its base.
In the recent test, one of the plugs was behind a locked door, so the robot needed to be intelligent enough to abort its effort and move on to the next plug. The doors it needed to navigate were alternately closed, open and partially open.
One of the scientists summed up his feelings about the milestone in a succinct e-mail message:
“Now they can escape and fend for themselves.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/scien ... &th&emc=th
June 9, 2009
Opening Doors on the Way to a Personal Robot
By JOHN MARKOFF
Consider it one small step — or a roll, actually — for a robot, one not giant, but significant step for robotics.
Willow Garage, a Silicon Valley robotics research group, said that its experimental PR2 robot, which has wheels and can travel at speeds up to a mile and a quarter per hour, was able to open and pass through 10 doors and plug itself into 10 standard wall sockets in less than an hour. In a different test, the same robot completed a marathon in the company’s office, traveling 26.2 miles. PR2 will not compete with humans yet; it took more than four days.
For the person who wants to buy a fully functioning robot butler, this may not seem so impressive. But for roboticists and a new generation of technologists in Silicon Valley, this is a significant achievement, a step along the way to the personal robot industry.
Willow Garage was founded by Scott Hassan, one of the designers of the original Google search engine. The company’s name is a reference to a small garage on Willow Road in Menlo Park, Calif., which was Google’s first office. The company is trying to develop a new generation of robotic personal assistants. Roboticists here and at other companies envision creating something on the scale of the personal computer industry, with mechanical personal assistants taking over a lot of drudgery, from cleaning up to fetching a beer from the refrigerator.
This is not a new hope, nor is it the first time that robots have tried to open doors, navigate rooms and recharge themselves. The Beast, a robot built at Johns Hopkins University in the mid-1960s, was able to locate standard wall sockets to refuel. And devices like the inexpensive iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner can locate and dock with a specially designed charging station.
But roboticists said that the Willow Garage robot was the first to integrate the ability to do a number of operations in a real-world environment.
“There are other groups that have opened doors before,” said Andrew Ng, a Stanford roboticist with several students who have gone to work for the company. But, Mr. Ng said, this seemed to be the first robot able to repeatedly and reliably open doors and plug itself in.
William L. Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University roboticist and the winner of a Defense Department urban challenge robot driving contest last year, said it was “unprecedented” for a robot to navigate in a building reliably and repeatedly recharge itself. “These guys are the real deal,” he said.
The Willow Garage laboratory is less than a mile from another pioneering mobile robot project that was developed at SRI International in the late 1960s. The robot, known as Shakey, had little onboard computing capability and was remotely controlled by a combination of a mainframe and a minicomputer.
“In 40 years there has been a lot of progress, but not progress you notice,” said Nils Nilsson, a pioneering artificial intelligence researcher who was one of Shakey’s designers. “A lot of the progress has been made in removing the cheats we used.”
To help Shakey navigate, he said, the baseboards in the room were painted black to help identify walls, and objects were painted red so they could be identified by the vision system.
The ultimate goal of the Willow Garage researchers is to build a Robot Operating System, or R.O.S., that would greatly facilitate the work of a generation of software developers.
Microsoft is developing a similar system based on a version of the Windows operating system, but the Willow Garage effort is an open-source project intended to leverage the contributions of a number of robotics experts around the world.
Toward that end, a team of roboticists from the University of Tokyo recently modified the Willow Garage R.O.S. to run on a robot they were developing, said Steve Cousins, Willow Garage’s president and chief executive.
“The eventual goal is to provide a set of capabilities that are so generic and so universal that they can be used as building blocks in more complicated applications,” said Sebastian Thrun, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a Willow Garage board member.
The current PR2 robot is powered by several Intel microprocessor chips and “sees” with a combination of sensors including scanning lasers and video cameras. It is able to locate electrical outlets and navigate in a building that is designed to accessibility guidelines in the Americans With Disabilities act. Such buildings do not have doors with round door knobs, which simplifies the task of opening a door for a robot. The PR2 carries its plug on a magnet at its base.
In the recent test, one of the plugs was behind a locked door, so the robot needed to be intelligent enough to abort its effort and move on to the next plug. The doors it needed to navigate were alternately closed, open and partially open.
One of the scientists summed up his feelings about the milestone in a succinct e-mail message:
“Now they can escape and fend for themselves.”
June 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Tear Down This Cyberwall!
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The unrest unfolding in Iran is the quintessential 21st-century conflict. On one side are government thugs firing bullets. On the other side are young protesters firing “tweets.”
The protesters’ arsenal, such as those tweets on Twitter.com, depends on the Internet or other communications channels. So the Iranian government is blocking certain Web sites and evicting foreign reporters or keeping them away from the action.
The push to remove witnesses may be the prelude to a Tehran Tiananmen. Yet a secret Internet lifeline remains, and it’s a tribute to the crazy, globalized world we live in. The lifeline was designed by Chinese computer engineers in America to evade Communist Party censorship of a repressed Chinese spiritual group, the Falun Gong.
Today, it is these Chinese supporters of Falun Gong who are the best hope for Iranians trying to reach blocked sites.
“We don’t have the heart to cut off the Iranians,” said Shiyu Zhou, a computer scientist and leader in the Chinese effort, called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium. “But if our servers overload too much, we may have to cut down the traffic.”
Mr. Zhou said that usage of the consortium’s software has tripled in the last week. It set a record on Wednesday of more than 200 million hits from Iran, representing more than 400,000 people.
If President Obama wants to support democratic movements on a shoestring, he should support an “Internet freedom initiative” pending in Congress. This would include $50 million in the appropriations bill for these censorship-evasion technologies. The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier, and we can help puncture it.
Mr. Zhou, the son of a Chinese army general, said that he and his colleagues began to develop such software after the 1999 Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong (which the authorities denounce as a cult). One result was a free software called Freegate, small enough to carry on a flash drive. It takes a surfer to an overseas server that changes I.P. addresses every second or so, too quickly for a government to block it, and then from there to a banned site.
Freegate amounts to a dissident’s cyberkit. E-mails sent with it can be encrypted. And after a session is complete, a press of a button eliminates any sign that it was used on that computer.
The consortium also makes available variants of the software, such as Ultrasurf, and other software to evade censors is available from Tor Project and the University of Toronto.
Originally, Freegate was available only in Chinese and English, but a growing number of people have been using it in other countries, such as Myanmar. Responding to the growing use of Freegate in Iran, the consortium introduced a Farsi-language version last July — and usage there skyrocketed.
Soon almost as many Iranians were using it as Chinese, straining server capacity (many Chinese are wary of Freegate because of its links to Falun Gong, which even ordinary citizens often distrust). The engineers in the consortium, worrying that the Iran traffic would crash their servers, dropped access in Iran in January but restored it before the Iran election.
“We know the pain of people in closed societies, and we do want to accommodate them,” Mr. Zhou said.
China is fighting back against the “hacktivists.” The government has announced that new computers sold beginning next month will have to have Internet filtering software, called Green Dam (the consortium has already developed software called Green Tsunami to neutralize it). More alarming, in 2006 a consortium engineer living outside Atlanta was attacked in his home, beaten up and his computers stolen. The engineers behind Freegate are now careful not to disclose their physical locations.
Granted, these technologies are not a panacea. One Chinese journalist estimated that only 5 percent of the country’s Netizens use proxy software, and the Iranians themselves managed a grass-roots revolution in 1979 without high-tech help. And at the end of the day, bullets usually trump tweets.
Still, it does make a difference when people inside closed regimes get access to information — which is why dictatorships make such efforts to block comprehensive Internet access.
“Freegate was a kind of bridge to the outside world for me,” said a Chinese journalist with dissident leanings, who asked not to be named. “Before accessing the Internet through Freegate, I was really a pro-government guy.”
Human-rights activists from Cuba, North Korea, Syria and elsewhere have appealed to Congress to approve the $50 million Internet freedom initiative, and Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch says he supports it as well.
The Obama administration has been quiet on the proposal. For Mr. Obama, this would be a cheap and effective way of standing with Iranians while chipping away at the 21st-century walls of dictatorship.
•
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opini ... nted=print
Op-Ed Columnist
Tear Down This Cyberwall!
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The unrest unfolding in Iran is the quintessential 21st-century conflict. On one side are government thugs firing bullets. On the other side are young protesters firing “tweets.”
The protesters’ arsenal, such as those tweets on Twitter.com, depends on the Internet or other communications channels. So the Iranian government is blocking certain Web sites and evicting foreign reporters or keeping them away from the action.
The push to remove witnesses may be the prelude to a Tehran Tiananmen. Yet a secret Internet lifeline remains, and it’s a tribute to the crazy, globalized world we live in. The lifeline was designed by Chinese computer engineers in America to evade Communist Party censorship of a repressed Chinese spiritual group, the Falun Gong.
Today, it is these Chinese supporters of Falun Gong who are the best hope for Iranians trying to reach blocked sites.
“We don’t have the heart to cut off the Iranians,” said Shiyu Zhou, a computer scientist and leader in the Chinese effort, called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium. “But if our servers overload too much, we may have to cut down the traffic.”
Mr. Zhou said that usage of the consortium’s software has tripled in the last week. It set a record on Wednesday of more than 200 million hits from Iran, representing more than 400,000 people.
If President Obama wants to support democratic movements on a shoestring, he should support an “Internet freedom initiative” pending in Congress. This would include $50 million in the appropriations bill for these censorship-evasion technologies. The 21st-century equivalent of the Berlin wall is a cyberbarrier, and we can help puncture it.
Mr. Zhou, the son of a Chinese army general, said that he and his colleagues began to develop such software after the 1999 Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong (which the authorities denounce as a cult). One result was a free software called Freegate, small enough to carry on a flash drive. It takes a surfer to an overseas server that changes I.P. addresses every second or so, too quickly for a government to block it, and then from there to a banned site.
Freegate amounts to a dissident’s cyberkit. E-mails sent with it can be encrypted. And after a session is complete, a press of a button eliminates any sign that it was used on that computer.
The consortium also makes available variants of the software, such as Ultrasurf, and other software to evade censors is available from Tor Project and the University of Toronto.
Originally, Freegate was available only in Chinese and English, but a growing number of people have been using it in other countries, such as Myanmar. Responding to the growing use of Freegate in Iran, the consortium introduced a Farsi-language version last July — and usage there skyrocketed.
Soon almost as many Iranians were using it as Chinese, straining server capacity (many Chinese are wary of Freegate because of its links to Falun Gong, which even ordinary citizens often distrust). The engineers in the consortium, worrying that the Iran traffic would crash their servers, dropped access in Iran in January but restored it before the Iran election.
“We know the pain of people in closed societies, and we do want to accommodate them,” Mr. Zhou said.
China is fighting back against the “hacktivists.” The government has announced that new computers sold beginning next month will have to have Internet filtering software, called Green Dam (the consortium has already developed software called Green Tsunami to neutralize it). More alarming, in 2006 a consortium engineer living outside Atlanta was attacked in his home, beaten up and his computers stolen. The engineers behind Freegate are now careful not to disclose their physical locations.
Granted, these technologies are not a panacea. One Chinese journalist estimated that only 5 percent of the country’s Netizens use proxy software, and the Iranians themselves managed a grass-roots revolution in 1979 without high-tech help. And at the end of the day, bullets usually trump tweets.
Still, it does make a difference when people inside closed regimes get access to information — which is why dictatorships make such efforts to block comprehensive Internet access.
“Freegate was a kind of bridge to the outside world for me,” said a Chinese journalist with dissident leanings, who asked not to be named. “Before accessing the Internet through Freegate, I was really a pro-government guy.”
Human-rights activists from Cuba, North Korea, Syria and elsewhere have appealed to Congress to approve the $50 million Internet freedom initiative, and Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch says he supports it as well.
The Obama administration has been quiet on the proposal. For Mr. Obama, this would be a cheap and effective way of standing with Iranians while chipping away at the 21st-century walls of dictatorship.
•
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opini ... nted=print
Internet can't help all
By Kris Kotarski, For The Calgary HeraldJune 29, 2009 3:02 AM
Last week, as video clips of post-"election" violence in Iran began to flood You-Tube, Facebook and even (after some lag time)CNN, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown placed his foot in his mouth in a rather spectacular way.
Speaking to the Guardian, Brown enthused about the effects that new technologies have had on global civil society and foreign policy.
"People have now got the ability to speak to each other across continents, to join with each other in communities that are not based simply on territory, streets, but networks; and you've got the possibility of people building alliances right across the world."
Brown is right--the Internet is a wonderful communications tool, and people, organizations and businesses across the world are networking in ways unimaginable 20 years ago.
Yet, technology enthusiasts get ahead of themselves sometimes and, judging by his comments, Brown is no exception.
Referring to the flow of information out of Iran, Brown argued that technological advances, which have democratized the distribution of information, mean that foreign policy leaders are pressed into action far more quickly.
"That flow of information means that foreign policy can never be the same again. You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken."
You cannot have Rwanda again?Tell that to the people of Darfur.
While a very strong case can be made that the videos emerging from Iran have placed a higher political cost on the perpetration of violence, Brown's statement betrays a mindless technological optimism that praises theoretical outcomes at the expense of both technological and social realities.
Sure, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have enabled Iranians to provide real-time images of the horrific crackdown on anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrators, and have illustrated in graphic detail the brutality and cynicism of the regime. This has massive consequences for the long-term legitimacy of Ahmadinejad and the rest of Iran's leadership, and if that regime collapses this month, this year, or next decade, the videos of 2009 will certainly have played a major role.
Yet, we--the rest of the world--are very far from reaching a point where the instant flow of information could guarantee that "action would need to be taken."
If anything, we are not much farther along now than we were when Romeo Dallaire's cables were disregarded at the UN.
Certainly, the presence of witnesses can act as a powerful deterrent, and technological advances have created billions of witnesses across the globe.
Yet, once violence begins, a cellphone camera can only be so effective, and we are still far from the point where the political structures that govern us allow knowledge and outrage to translate to short-term action.
Technologically, the landscape is even bleaker. According to the World Bank, 1.6 billion people--a quarter of humanity--live without electricity. Many live in areas where violence and atrocities committed by governments and non-state groups dwarf anything that has been occurring in Iran, and these are the people that Brown seemingly forgot about when enthusing about the potential of the Internet.
In Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army has been fighting the Ugandan government since 1987, only five per cent of the population has access to electricity.
In Kenya, where around 1,000 people died and another 600,000 were displaced in postelection violence in late 2007, 15 per cent have access to electricity.
In the Congo, where rape is rampant and where an International Rescue Committee survey found that 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes since 1998, six per cent have access to electric power.
No power grid? No You-Tube.
No electricity? No Twitter.
We can all hope that in tomorrow's world Gordon Brown will be right--that technology will enable action, and that foreign policy will be conducted on vastly different terms. But today, he is spectacularly wrong, and his words illustrate just how little we think of those who live off the grid.
Not everyone in the world has access to the technologies that allow us to share information, and mass crimes are possible even when there are witnesses. We need change on both counts, not mindless optimism.
[email protected]/kotarski
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 0&sponsor=
By Kris Kotarski, For The Calgary HeraldJune 29, 2009 3:02 AM
Last week, as video clips of post-"election" violence in Iran began to flood You-Tube, Facebook and even (after some lag time)CNN, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown placed his foot in his mouth in a rather spectacular way.
Speaking to the Guardian, Brown enthused about the effects that new technologies have had on global civil society and foreign policy.
"People have now got the ability to speak to each other across continents, to join with each other in communities that are not based simply on territory, streets, but networks; and you've got the possibility of people building alliances right across the world."
Brown is right--the Internet is a wonderful communications tool, and people, organizations and businesses across the world are networking in ways unimaginable 20 years ago.
Yet, technology enthusiasts get ahead of themselves sometimes and, judging by his comments, Brown is no exception.
Referring to the flow of information out of Iran, Brown argued that technological advances, which have democratized the distribution of information, mean that foreign policy leaders are pressed into action far more quickly.
"That flow of information means that foreign policy can never be the same again. You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken."
You cannot have Rwanda again?Tell that to the people of Darfur.
While a very strong case can be made that the videos emerging from Iran have placed a higher political cost on the perpetration of violence, Brown's statement betrays a mindless technological optimism that praises theoretical outcomes at the expense of both technological and social realities.
Sure, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have enabled Iranians to provide real-time images of the horrific crackdown on anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrators, and have illustrated in graphic detail the brutality and cynicism of the regime. This has massive consequences for the long-term legitimacy of Ahmadinejad and the rest of Iran's leadership, and if that regime collapses this month, this year, or next decade, the videos of 2009 will certainly have played a major role.
Yet, we--the rest of the world--are very far from reaching a point where the instant flow of information could guarantee that "action would need to be taken."
If anything, we are not much farther along now than we were when Romeo Dallaire's cables were disregarded at the UN.
Certainly, the presence of witnesses can act as a powerful deterrent, and technological advances have created billions of witnesses across the globe.
Yet, once violence begins, a cellphone camera can only be so effective, and we are still far from the point where the political structures that govern us allow knowledge and outrage to translate to short-term action.
Technologically, the landscape is even bleaker. According to the World Bank, 1.6 billion people--a quarter of humanity--live without electricity. Many live in areas where violence and atrocities committed by governments and non-state groups dwarf anything that has been occurring in Iran, and these are the people that Brown seemingly forgot about when enthusing about the potential of the Internet.
In Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army has been fighting the Ugandan government since 1987, only five per cent of the population has access to electricity.
In Kenya, where around 1,000 people died and another 600,000 were displaced in postelection violence in late 2007, 15 per cent have access to electricity.
In the Congo, where rape is rampant and where an International Rescue Committee survey found that 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes since 1998, six per cent have access to electric power.
No power grid? No You-Tube.
No electricity? No Twitter.
We can all hope that in tomorrow's world Gordon Brown will be right--that technology will enable action, and that foreign policy will be conducted on vastly different terms. But today, he is spectacularly wrong, and his words illustrate just how little we think of those who live off the grid.
Not everyone in the world has access to the technologies that allow us to share information, and mass crimes are possible even when there are witnesses. We need change on both counts, not mindless optimism.
[email protected]/kotarski
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 0&sponsor=
As Unbreakable as ... Glass?
Excerpt:
Engineers, architects and fabricators, aided by materials scientists and software designers, are building soaring facades, arching canopies and delicate cubes, footbridges and staircases, almost entirely of glass. They’re laminating glass with polymers to make beams and other components stronger and safer — each of the Sears Tower sheets is a five-layer sandwich — and analyzing every square inch of a design to make sure the stresses are within precise limits. And they are experimenting with new materials and methods that could someday lead to glass structures that are unmarked by metal or other materials.
“Ultimately what we’re all striving for is an all-glass structure,” said James O’Callaghan of Eckersley O’Callaghan Structural Design, who has designed what are perhaps the world’s best-known glass projects, the staircases that are a prominent feature of every Apple Store.
Through it all, they’ve realized one thing. “Glass is just another material,” said John Kooymans of the engineering firm Halcrow Yolles, which designed the Sears Tower boxes.
It’s a material that has been around for millennia. Although glass can be made in countless ways to have any number of specific uses — to conduct light as fibers, say, or serve as a backing for electronic circuitry, as in a laptop screen — structural projects almost exclusively use soda-lime glass, made, as it has always been, largely from sodium carbonate, limestone and silica.
Video and the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/scien ... ?th&emc=th
Excerpt:
Engineers, architects and fabricators, aided by materials scientists and software designers, are building soaring facades, arching canopies and delicate cubes, footbridges and staircases, almost entirely of glass. They’re laminating glass with polymers to make beams and other components stronger and safer — each of the Sears Tower sheets is a five-layer sandwich — and analyzing every square inch of a design to make sure the stresses are within precise limits. And they are experimenting with new materials and methods that could someday lead to glass structures that are unmarked by metal or other materials.
“Ultimately what we’re all striving for is an all-glass structure,” said James O’Callaghan of Eckersley O’Callaghan Structural Design, who has designed what are perhaps the world’s best-known glass projects, the staircases that are a prominent feature of every Apple Store.
Through it all, they’ve realized one thing. “Glass is just another material,” said John Kooymans of the engineering firm Halcrow Yolles, which designed the Sears Tower boxes.
It’s a material that has been around for millennia. Although glass can be made in countless ways to have any number of specific uses — to conduct light as fibers, say, or serve as a backing for electronic circuitry, as in a laptop screen — structural projects almost exclusively use soda-lime glass, made, as it has always been, largely from sodium carbonate, limestone and silica.
Video and the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/scien ... ?th&emc=th
July 18, 2009
Editorial
The Moon Landing
Historians in the distant future are likely to classify humanity’s first steps on a world beyond our own as one of the most memorable achievements of the 20th century.
America’s race to the Moon began with the fear that the Soviets had already bested us in space. By the time Neil Armstrong set foot on the Sea of Tranquility — a broad desolate lunar basin, on July 20, 1969 — the feat brought a surge of pride and optimism to a nation mired in Vietnam and torn by urban riots and assassinations at home.
Never again would the human space flight program stir such excitement or seem so central to the nation’s endeavors. After a few more visits, the Apollo moon program shut down and the manned space program was relegated to shuttle flights in low Earth orbit.
Now the question frustrating space enthusiasts is how to rekindle the old days of glory. The answer is not readily apparent. At a confirmation hearing for President Obama’s choices to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Senator John Rockefeller IV described the agency as “a splendid story of the past” that has been adrift and lost its fascination for Americans. The nominees — Charles Bolden to be the NASA administrator and Lori Garver to be deputy — accepted the diagnosis but had trouble explaining how they would reinvigorate the agency beyond pushing harder on safety, research, aeronautics and communicating with the public.
In truth, it may not be possible to bring more drama to human space flight any time soon. Putting a base on the Moon by 2020, as is currently planned, feels like going back to the scene of the earlier triumph even if the stay this time would be longer. Second acts seldom captivate. And a wholly new conquest, say a landing on Mars, is decades away, if it ever proves feasible.
Wayne Hale, a NASA veteran, blames the old “Star Trek” television series, of which he was a fan, for setting expectations too high with visits to interesting planets and challenging interactions with alien species. That’s more glamour and excitement than real space travel can provide — unless, as Mr. Hale observes, we learn to travel at “warp speed” as the Trekkers did.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/opini ... nted=print
*****
Moon landing changed our world forever
Calgary HeraldJuly 20, 2009
t oday is the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon and if this seems irrelevant in our troubled times, that is just a reflection of our present state of mind. Although the Apollo 11 lunar landing was conceived as an instrument of political prestige in a race between rival superpowers seeking to dominate the world without open resort to war, four decades have not eroded the glory of this staggering achievement.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of Lunar Module 5 (known as Eagle) onto the moon's surface, they extended the bounds of exploration farther than anything and everyone that came before. The first forays of early humans across the uninhabited Earth, the voyages of Polynesian sailors across the windblown Pacific with no certainty of landfall, the dauntless travellers of the European Age of Exploration setting off for regions the maps said held only monsters--such precursors exemplified the courage and restless daring necessary to undertake dangerous journeys with uncertain rewards. But even they ultimately pale before the flight of humans through an airless void to the surface of a dusty rock, where the slightest misstep can kill and even the physics are unfamiliar.
However, putting men on the moon was about more than just pushing the limits in a show of intimidation directed at a rival nation. It was about making science (and scientists) sexy for the first time, elevating highly educated astronauts to hero status and encouraging scores of people to take up careers in the field. Society has benefited enormously as a result, not just from technology deriving from the space program, but from the boost to science. The spectacle of humans walking on another celestial body lit the flame of scientific inquiry in thousands of young minds. Our comfortable existence and the ever-racing technological progress we take for granted are the fruit of this endeavour.
In this light, the moon shot can be considered to have been too successful, its dividends treated as just another aspect of life scarcely worth a thought.
The space program is often thought of as frivolous, high-tech gadgetry is merely a diversion to pass the time, and astronauts have been replaced as icons by celebrities of a more earthly (and earthy) nature.
But however long this malaise lasts, it can't detract from that triumphant first landing. Forty years ago, two brave men descended in a primitive lander to the hostile surface of another world, and our own was changed forever.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 0&sponsor=
Editorial
The Moon Landing
Historians in the distant future are likely to classify humanity’s first steps on a world beyond our own as one of the most memorable achievements of the 20th century.
America’s race to the Moon began with the fear that the Soviets had already bested us in space. By the time Neil Armstrong set foot on the Sea of Tranquility — a broad desolate lunar basin, on July 20, 1969 — the feat brought a surge of pride and optimism to a nation mired in Vietnam and torn by urban riots and assassinations at home.
Never again would the human space flight program stir such excitement or seem so central to the nation’s endeavors. After a few more visits, the Apollo moon program shut down and the manned space program was relegated to shuttle flights in low Earth orbit.
Now the question frustrating space enthusiasts is how to rekindle the old days of glory. The answer is not readily apparent. At a confirmation hearing for President Obama’s choices to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Senator John Rockefeller IV described the agency as “a splendid story of the past” that has been adrift and lost its fascination for Americans. The nominees — Charles Bolden to be the NASA administrator and Lori Garver to be deputy — accepted the diagnosis but had trouble explaining how they would reinvigorate the agency beyond pushing harder on safety, research, aeronautics and communicating with the public.
In truth, it may not be possible to bring more drama to human space flight any time soon. Putting a base on the Moon by 2020, as is currently planned, feels like going back to the scene of the earlier triumph even if the stay this time would be longer. Second acts seldom captivate. And a wholly new conquest, say a landing on Mars, is decades away, if it ever proves feasible.
Wayne Hale, a NASA veteran, blames the old “Star Trek” television series, of which he was a fan, for setting expectations too high with visits to interesting planets and challenging interactions with alien species. That’s more glamour and excitement than real space travel can provide — unless, as Mr. Hale observes, we learn to travel at “warp speed” as the Trekkers did.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/opini ... nted=print
*****
Moon landing changed our world forever
Calgary HeraldJuly 20, 2009
t oday is the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon and if this seems irrelevant in our troubled times, that is just a reflection of our present state of mind. Although the Apollo 11 lunar landing was conceived as an instrument of political prestige in a race between rival superpowers seeking to dominate the world without open resort to war, four decades have not eroded the glory of this staggering achievement.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of Lunar Module 5 (known as Eagle) onto the moon's surface, they extended the bounds of exploration farther than anything and everyone that came before. The first forays of early humans across the uninhabited Earth, the voyages of Polynesian sailors across the windblown Pacific with no certainty of landfall, the dauntless travellers of the European Age of Exploration setting off for regions the maps said held only monsters--such precursors exemplified the courage and restless daring necessary to undertake dangerous journeys with uncertain rewards. But even they ultimately pale before the flight of humans through an airless void to the surface of a dusty rock, where the slightest misstep can kill and even the physics are unfamiliar.
However, putting men on the moon was about more than just pushing the limits in a show of intimidation directed at a rival nation. It was about making science (and scientists) sexy for the first time, elevating highly educated astronauts to hero status and encouraging scores of people to take up careers in the field. Society has benefited enormously as a result, not just from technology deriving from the space program, but from the boost to science. The spectacle of humans walking on another celestial body lit the flame of scientific inquiry in thousands of young minds. Our comfortable existence and the ever-racing technological progress we take for granted are the fruit of this endeavour.
In this light, the moon shot can be considered to have been too successful, its dividends treated as just another aspect of life scarcely worth a thought.
The space program is often thought of as frivolous, high-tech gadgetry is merely a diversion to pass the time, and astronauts have been replaced as icons by celebrities of a more earthly (and earthy) nature.
But however long this malaise lasts, it can't detract from that triumphant first landing. Forty years ago, two brave men descended in a primitive lander to the hostile surface of another world, and our own was changed forever.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 0&sponsor=
Last edited by kmaherali on Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Computer decides if people are attractive
By Frances Willick, Canwest News ServiceJuly 19, 2009
The computer analyzes every pore, pimple and wrinkle. It notices your slightly asymmetrical ears, the distance between your eyes and that chickenpox scar on your forehead. Then, it rates your attractiveness on a scale of one to 10.
Sound like a nightmare?
It's actually the handiwork of a Canadian student who has trained a computer system to recognize the characteristics of human attractiveness and rate people's appearance using photographs.
Josh Chauvin, a third-year philosophy and psychology student at the University of Windsor in Ontario, said his study shows it may be possible to create a computer or "artificial neural network" capable of producing human-like evaluations.
Thirty-three students volunteered for the research project. Photos were first rated by humans, and those ratings were fed to the computer.
Then, the system was asked to rate the attractiveness of 33 new images. Chauvin said the computer's ratings fell within one point of the human participants' ratings 86 per cent of the time.
Chauvin said the computer system could be used to diagnose congenital illnesses that are known to correlate with certain facial features.
The system could also be useful for marketers and advertisers to gauge the popularity of a product without having to poll human subjects, Chauvin said.
The study found that both males and females rated females as more attractive.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 6&sponsor=
By Frances Willick, Canwest News ServiceJuly 19, 2009
The computer analyzes every pore, pimple and wrinkle. It notices your slightly asymmetrical ears, the distance between your eyes and that chickenpox scar on your forehead. Then, it rates your attractiveness on a scale of one to 10.
Sound like a nightmare?
It's actually the handiwork of a Canadian student who has trained a computer system to recognize the characteristics of human attractiveness and rate people's appearance using photographs.
Josh Chauvin, a third-year philosophy and psychology student at the University of Windsor in Ontario, said his study shows it may be possible to create a computer or "artificial neural network" capable of producing human-like evaluations.
Thirty-three students volunteered for the research project. Photos were first rated by humans, and those ratings were fed to the computer.
Then, the system was asked to rate the attractiveness of 33 new images. Chauvin said the computer's ratings fell within one point of the human participants' ratings 86 per cent of the time.
Chauvin said the computer system could be used to diagnose congenital illnesses that are known to correlate with certain facial features.
The system could also be useful for marketers and advertisers to gauge the popularity of a product without having to poll human subjects, Chauvin said.
The study found that both males and females rated females as more attractive.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 6&sponsor=
Using Scientific Tools in an International War on Fake Drugs
Excerpt:
They can instantly identify the chemical makeup of food, drugs and just about anything placed in front of their stainless-steel aperture. The uses of the machines, known as mass spectrometers, are manifold — the federal Department of Homeland Security has commissioned Dr. Fernández to study whether the technology can help sniff for explosives at airports.
But Dr. Fernández’s main focus is counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs, especially in poorer countries, where government regulation is weak. He is part of an informal group of researchers and government officials spanning Africa, Asia and the United States who have teamed up with Interpol, the international police agency, to use cutting-edge technology in tracking fake drugs that claim to treat malaria. Counterfeit malaria drugs are of particular concern because of the scale and severity of the disease — it kills more than 2,000 children a day in Africa alone — and fears that fake or substandard malaria drugs are aggravating a growing problem of drug resistance.
For years, scientists have been able to analyze the ingredients of a pill or capsule using mass spectrometers, which identify chemicals by measuring molecular weights. But the overall process was time-consuming, taking about an hour per sample.
A scientific breakthrough in 2005 added an “ion gun” to the machines and allowed Dr. Fernández to check hundreds of pills a day. A technician simply holds the sample — a pill, dog food or a dollar bill, for example — up to the machine, which emits a jet of helium gas and captures a minute amount of the material, instantly identifying its component parts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/scien ... &th&emc=th
Excerpt:
They can instantly identify the chemical makeup of food, drugs and just about anything placed in front of their stainless-steel aperture. The uses of the machines, known as mass spectrometers, are manifold — the federal Department of Homeland Security has commissioned Dr. Fernández to study whether the technology can help sniff for explosives at airports.
But Dr. Fernández’s main focus is counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs, especially in poorer countries, where government regulation is weak. He is part of an informal group of researchers and government officials spanning Africa, Asia and the United States who have teamed up with Interpol, the international police agency, to use cutting-edge technology in tracking fake drugs that claim to treat malaria. Counterfeit malaria drugs are of particular concern because of the scale and severity of the disease — it kills more than 2,000 children a day in Africa alone — and fears that fake or substandard malaria drugs are aggravating a growing problem of drug resistance.
For years, scientists have been able to analyze the ingredients of a pill or capsule using mass spectrometers, which identify chemicals by measuring molecular weights. But the overall process was time-consuming, taking about an hour per sample.
A scientific breakthrough in 2005 added an “ion gun” to the machines and allowed Dr. Fernández to check hundreds of pills a day. A technician simply holds the sample — a pill, dog food or a dollar bill, for example — up to the machine, which emits a jet of helium gas and captures a minute amount of the material, instantly identifying its component parts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/scien ... &th&emc=th
July 25, 2009
Editorial Observer
A New Kind of Memorial for the Internet Age
By ADAM COHEN
I got a Facebook friend request a while back from Luke Cole, who had attended law school with me. We were never close, but I liked him. He was smart and funny and he cared about important things. We had lost touch, but once I friended him back I received a steady stream of updates on his life.
After he graduated, he had co-founded a center in San Francisco that helped poor people fight environmental contamination of their communities. He had represented American Indians who were trying to protect their ancestral lands and he had worked with Alaska Inuits who were trying to stop a corporation from polluting their water supply.
Luke had a wife and son, and his Facebook photo — smiling in front of a mountain, his beard flecked with gray — suggested that he had reached his mid-40s happy and full of purpose.
It was fitting, I suppose, that I learned of Luke’s death on Facebook. A mutual friend, Hillary Richard, sent an announcement out to her Facebook friends in early June, before his obituary appeared in The Times. Luke was killed while traveling in Uganda, when a truck veered across the road and hit his car head-on. His wife was seriously injured.
After Luke died, his Facebook page became an online gathering place for his hundreds of Facebook friends. They exchanged updates on his Wall — including news about his wife’s condition — reminiscences, photographs and a poem by Rilke. There was a report on his cremation ceremony in Uganda. The post said Luke was sent off with Madagascar chocolate, root beer and a small “environmental justice” note tucked in his pocket.
Luke’s Wall remains active today. In mid-July, his friends celebrated his birthday there. “I am sure I am not alone in saying that I am so grateful that Luke’s facebook page has stayed up,” Hillary wrote, adding: “I cry every single time I am on here and yet I feel I would be lost without this.”
Facebook’s policy is to keep members’ pages up after a death unless loved ones ask that they be taken down. When the company learns that someone has died, it puts the page into a memorialized status, in which only confirmed friends can see the profile.
Until Luke’s death, I had not considered what would happen as my Facebook friends began to die. Facebook allows you to de-friend dead people the same way you de-friend live ones. I suppose you could view deleting dead friends as simply routine updating of the sort people have long done with their hard-copy address books. But it seems callous to look into the eyes of an old friend and hit “remove.”
There is something not entirely satisfying about an online memorial. Those of us who visit Luke’s page are not physically coming together to remember him — and we are not making the effort and expending the time that it takes to gather in person.
Still, Luke’s Wall works, often in ways that an offline memorial cannot. A Facebook Wall is remarkably democratic — instead of a few people speaking, anyone who friended the deceased can offer a memory or a reflection. It is also long-lasting: memorial services end after an hour or two, but a Facebook page remains. It can even be, in an odd way, uniquely spiritual. It is striking how many of the comments written on Luke’s wall are addressed directly to him.
I’ve decided that I am going to remain Luke’s Facebook friend as long as his family keeps his page up. It is a tribute to a good person gone too soon and a reminder that, as the poet said, his death diminishes me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/opini ... nted=print
Editorial Observer
A New Kind of Memorial for the Internet Age
By ADAM COHEN
I got a Facebook friend request a while back from Luke Cole, who had attended law school with me. We were never close, but I liked him. He was smart and funny and he cared about important things. We had lost touch, but once I friended him back I received a steady stream of updates on his life.
After he graduated, he had co-founded a center in San Francisco that helped poor people fight environmental contamination of their communities. He had represented American Indians who were trying to protect their ancestral lands and he had worked with Alaska Inuits who were trying to stop a corporation from polluting their water supply.
Luke had a wife and son, and his Facebook photo — smiling in front of a mountain, his beard flecked with gray — suggested that he had reached his mid-40s happy and full of purpose.
It was fitting, I suppose, that I learned of Luke’s death on Facebook. A mutual friend, Hillary Richard, sent an announcement out to her Facebook friends in early June, before his obituary appeared in The Times. Luke was killed while traveling in Uganda, when a truck veered across the road and hit his car head-on. His wife was seriously injured.
After Luke died, his Facebook page became an online gathering place for his hundreds of Facebook friends. They exchanged updates on his Wall — including news about his wife’s condition — reminiscences, photographs and a poem by Rilke. There was a report on his cremation ceremony in Uganda. The post said Luke was sent off with Madagascar chocolate, root beer and a small “environmental justice” note tucked in his pocket.
Luke’s Wall remains active today. In mid-July, his friends celebrated his birthday there. “I am sure I am not alone in saying that I am so grateful that Luke’s facebook page has stayed up,” Hillary wrote, adding: “I cry every single time I am on here and yet I feel I would be lost without this.”
Facebook’s policy is to keep members’ pages up after a death unless loved ones ask that they be taken down. When the company learns that someone has died, it puts the page into a memorialized status, in which only confirmed friends can see the profile.
Until Luke’s death, I had not considered what would happen as my Facebook friends began to die. Facebook allows you to de-friend dead people the same way you de-friend live ones. I suppose you could view deleting dead friends as simply routine updating of the sort people have long done with their hard-copy address books. But it seems callous to look into the eyes of an old friend and hit “remove.”
There is something not entirely satisfying about an online memorial. Those of us who visit Luke’s page are not physically coming together to remember him — and we are not making the effort and expending the time that it takes to gather in person.
Still, Luke’s Wall works, often in ways that an offline memorial cannot. A Facebook Wall is remarkably democratic — instead of a few people speaking, anyone who friended the deceased can offer a memory or a reflection. It is also long-lasting: memorial services end after an hour or two, but a Facebook page remains. It can even be, in an odd way, uniquely spiritual. It is striking how many of the comments written on Luke’s wall are addressed directly to him.
I’ve decided that I am going to remain Luke’s Facebook friend as long as his family keeps his page up. It is a tribute to a good person gone too soon and a reminder that, as the poet said, his death diminishes me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/opini ... nted=print
July 26, 2009
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
By JOHN MARKOFF
A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.
As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.
While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.
The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon.
They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed. What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?
The researchers also discussed possible threats to human jobs, like self-driving cars, software-based personal assistants and service robots in the home. Just last month, a service robot developed by Willow Garage in Silicon Valley proved it could navigate the real world.
A report from the conference, which took place in private on Feb. 25, is to be issued later this year. Some attendees discussed the meeting for the first time with other scientists this month and in interviews.
The conference was organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and in choosing Asilomar for the discussions, the group purposefully evoked a landmark event in the history of science. In 1975, the world’s leading biologists also met at Asilomar to discuss the new ability to reshape life by swapping genetic material among organisms. Concerned about possible biohazards and ethical questions, scientists had halted certain experiments. The conference led to guidelines for recombinant DNA research, enabling experimentation to continue.
The meeting on the future of artificial intelligence was organized by Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is now president of the association.
Dr. Horvitz said he believed computer scientists must respond to the notions of superintelligent machines and artificial intelligence systems run amok.
The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the Singularity.
This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Other technologists, notably Raymond Kurzweil, have extolled the coming of ultrasmart machines, saying they will offer huge advances in life extension and wealth creation.
“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr. Horvitz said. “Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.”
The Kurzweil version of technological utopia has captured imaginations in Silicon Valley. This summer an organization called the Singularity University began offering courses to prepare a “cadre” to shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications.
“My sense was that sooner or later we would have to make some sort of statement or assessment, given the rising voice of the technorati and people very concerned about the rise of intelligent machines,” Dr. Horvitz said.
The A.A.A.I. report will try to assess the possibility of “the loss of human control of computer-based intelligences.” It will also grapple, Dr. Horvitz said, with socioeconomic, legal and ethical issues, as well as probable changes in human-computer relationships. How would it be, for example, to relate to a machine that is as intelligent as your spouse?
Dr. Horvitz said the panel was looking for ways to guide research so that technology improved society rather than moved it toward a technological catastrophe. Some research might, for instance, be conducted in a high-security laboratory.
The meeting on artificial intelligence could be pivotal to the future of the field. Paul Berg, who was the organizer of the 1975 Asilomar meeting and received a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980, said it was important for scientific communities to engage the public before alarm and opposition becomes unshakable.
“If you wait too long and the sides become entrenched like with G.M.O.,” he said, referring to genetically modified foods, “then it is very difficult. It’s too complex, and people talk right past each other.”
Tom Mitchell, a professor of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, said the February meeting had changed his thinking. “I went in very optimistic about the future of A.I. and thinking that Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil were far off in their predictions,” he said. But, he added, “The meeting made me want to be more outspoken about these issues and in particular be outspoken about the vast amounts of data collected about our personal lives.”
Despite his concerns, Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”
A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.”
Ken Conley/Willow Garage
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/scien ... nted=print
*****
Bill Gates drops Facebook because of 'too many friends'
Microsoft chair urges caution on tech addiction
Agence France-presseJuly 26, 2009 7:38 AM
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he was forced to give up on the social networking phenomenon Facebook after too many people wanted to be his friend.
Gates, the billionaire computer geek-turned-philanthropist who was honoured Saturday by India for his charity work, told an audience in New Delhi he had tried out Facebook but ended up with "10,000 people wanting to be my friends."
Gates, who remains Microsoft chairman, said he had trouble figuring out whether he " knew this person, did I not know this person."
Gates was in the Indian capital to receive the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, awarded by the government for his work for the charitable organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The foundation, built by his massive fortune, has committed nearly $1 billion to health and development projects in India, targeting especially AIDS and polio.
Gates also confided to the audience that he was "not that big at text messaging" and that "I'm not a 24-hour-a-day tech person."
Gates said the information technology revolution had been "hugely beneficial" but added: "All these tools of tech waste our time if we're not careful."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 7&sponsor=
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man
By JOHN MARKOFF
A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.
As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.
While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.
The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon.
They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed. What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?
The researchers also discussed possible threats to human jobs, like self-driving cars, software-based personal assistants and service robots in the home. Just last month, a service robot developed by Willow Garage in Silicon Valley proved it could navigate the real world.
A report from the conference, which took place in private on Feb. 25, is to be issued later this year. Some attendees discussed the meeting for the first time with other scientists this month and in interviews.
The conference was organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and in choosing Asilomar for the discussions, the group purposefully evoked a landmark event in the history of science. In 1975, the world’s leading biologists also met at Asilomar to discuss the new ability to reshape life by swapping genetic material among organisms. Concerned about possible biohazards and ethical questions, scientists had halted certain experiments. The conference led to guidelines for recombinant DNA research, enabling experimentation to continue.
The meeting on the future of artificial intelligence was organized by Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is now president of the association.
Dr. Horvitz said he believed computer scientists must respond to the notions of superintelligent machines and artificial intelligence systems run amok.
The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the Singularity.
This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Other technologists, notably Raymond Kurzweil, have extolled the coming of ultrasmart machines, saying they will offer huge advances in life extension and wealth creation.
“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr. Horvitz said. “Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.”
The Kurzweil version of technological utopia has captured imaginations in Silicon Valley. This summer an organization called the Singularity University began offering courses to prepare a “cadre” to shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications.
“My sense was that sooner or later we would have to make some sort of statement or assessment, given the rising voice of the technorati and people very concerned about the rise of intelligent machines,” Dr. Horvitz said.
The A.A.A.I. report will try to assess the possibility of “the loss of human control of computer-based intelligences.” It will also grapple, Dr. Horvitz said, with socioeconomic, legal and ethical issues, as well as probable changes in human-computer relationships. How would it be, for example, to relate to a machine that is as intelligent as your spouse?
Dr. Horvitz said the panel was looking for ways to guide research so that technology improved society rather than moved it toward a technological catastrophe. Some research might, for instance, be conducted in a high-security laboratory.
The meeting on artificial intelligence could be pivotal to the future of the field. Paul Berg, who was the organizer of the 1975 Asilomar meeting and received a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980, said it was important for scientific communities to engage the public before alarm and opposition becomes unshakable.
“If you wait too long and the sides become entrenched like with G.M.O.,” he said, referring to genetically modified foods, “then it is very difficult. It’s too complex, and people talk right past each other.”
Tom Mitchell, a professor of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, said the February meeting had changed his thinking. “I went in very optimistic about the future of A.I. and thinking that Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil were far off in their predictions,” he said. But, he added, “The meeting made me want to be more outspoken about these issues and in particular be outspoken about the vast amounts of data collected about our personal lives.”
Despite his concerns, Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”
A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.”
Ken Conley/Willow Garage
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/scien ... nted=print
*****
Bill Gates drops Facebook because of 'too many friends'
Microsoft chair urges caution on tech addiction
Agence France-presseJuly 26, 2009 7:38 AM
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he was forced to give up on the social networking phenomenon Facebook after too many people wanted to be his friend.
Gates, the billionaire computer geek-turned-philanthropist who was honoured Saturday by India for his charity work, told an audience in New Delhi he had tried out Facebook but ended up with "10,000 people wanting to be my friends."
Gates, who remains Microsoft chairman, said he had trouble figuring out whether he " knew this person, did I not know this person."
Gates was in the Indian capital to receive the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, awarded by the government for his work for the charitable organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The foundation, built by his massive fortune, has committed nearly $1 billion to health and development projects in India, targeting especially AIDS and polio.
Gates also confided to the audience that he was "not that big at text messaging" and that "I'm not a 24-hour-a-day tech person."
Gates said the information technology revolution had been "hugely beneficial" but added: "All these tools of tech waste our time if we're not careful."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 7&sponsor=
July 28, 2009
A Quest for Batteries to Alter the Energy Equation
By MATTHEW L. WALD
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — In a gleaming white factory here, Bob Peters was gently feeding sheets of chemical-coated foil one afternoon recently into a whirring machine that cut them into precise rectangles. It was an early step in building a new kind of battery, one smaller than a cereal box but with almost as much energy as the kind in a conventional automobile.
The goal of Mr. Peters, 51, and his co-workers at International Battery, a high-tech start-up, is industrial revolution. Racing against other companies around the globe, they are on the front lines of an effort to build smaller, lighter, more powerful batteries that could help transform the American energy economy by replacing gasoline in cars and making windmills and solar cells easier to integrate into the power grid.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/scien ... ?th&emc=th
A Quest for Batteries to Alter the Energy Equation
By MATTHEW L. WALD
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — In a gleaming white factory here, Bob Peters was gently feeding sheets of chemical-coated foil one afternoon recently into a whirring machine that cut them into precise rectangles. It was an early step in building a new kind of battery, one smaller than a cereal box but with almost as much energy as the kind in a conventional automobile.
The goal of Mr. Peters, 51, and his co-workers at International Battery, a high-tech start-up, is industrial revolution. Racing against other companies around the globe, they are on the front lines of an effort to build smaller, lighter, more powerful batteries that could help transform the American energy economy by replacing gasoline in cars and making windmills and solar cells easier to integrate into the power grid.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/scien ... ?th&emc=th
August 4, 2009
Giant Particle Collider Struggles
By DENNIS OVERBYE
The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.
Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.
Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean.
After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all.
But soon?
This week, scientists and engineers at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, are to announce how and when their machine will start running this winter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/scien ... nted=print
Giant Particle Collider Struggles
By DENNIS OVERBYE
The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.
Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.
Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean.
After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all.
But soon?
This week, scientists and engineers at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, are to announce how and when their machine will start running this winter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/scien ... nted=print
Extra embryos pose ethical issue for parents
Long-term effects of donation may be overlooked, says doctor
By Andrea Sands, Edmonton JournalAugust 6, 2009
Couples who have undergone in vitro fertilization often will have embryos left over. While an embryo adoption program exists in Calgary, parents sometimes balk at making a donation.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images Archive, Edmonton Journal
After Cheryl gave birth to her son and then to twins through in vitro fertilization, she had 19 embryos left over.
The Edmonton mom and her husband felt their family was finally complete, so the extra embryos sat frozen in a Calgary clinic.
"I was uncomfortable destroying the embryos, so we kept them for about two or three years," recalled Cheryl, who does not want her last name published.
The couple paid Calgary's IVF clinic a yearly fee to store the cryopreserved embryos while they decided what to do. Finally, Cheryl started filling out paperwork to donate her embryos to another couple.
"We, of course, were blithely going into it thinking, 'Wouldn't it be nice to donate the embryos?' but it was a much bigger decision than that," she said.
When Cheryl had to answer detailed questions about her family's medical history and then questions about whether she was prepared to be contacted by the child or the child's parents in the future, she changed her mind about becoming a donor.
She thought about her own three children, now 11 and seven, and how the decision would affect them.
"We were just not prepared emotionally for that type of a long-term commitment," she said.
"I understand how desperately these people want children, and if someone is in a place where they are capable of donating their embryos, God bless them."
Edmonton's Regional Fertility and Women's Endocrine Clinic recently started offering IVF treatments, which means northern Alberta residents no longer have to travel to Calgary for the procedure.
It also means that women will eventually have to decide what to do with embryos left over after their IVF treatments conclude.
Representatives from Alberta Health Services and the Edmonton fertility clinic have refused to answer any questions about the IVF program in Edmonton or about embryo donation and adoption.
If the Edmonton Clinic does eventually offer embryo donation, it is still years away.
At the Regional Fertility Program in Calgary--the only IVF clinic in Alberta that offers embryo donation and adoption -- the waiting list is 2½ years, said Dr. Calvin Greene, the program's medical director.
"It's not a big program, I can tell you that," he said. "We get far more requests for treatment than we are able to provide."
That's because very few couples are willing to donate the embryos.
Calgary's is the largest IVF program in the country, doing almost twice as much business as the next busiest clinic, Greene said.
"We have hardly any (embryo adoptions)," he said. "We would like to do more of them. We hate to see embryos destroyed."
Greene emphasized that embryo adoptions are available only to patients of the Calgary clinic who have exhausted all other options.
Stringent requirements must be met, including psychological counselling and an adoption home study, before a couple is accepted for embryo adoption.
Infertility Network executive director Diane Allen said she is pleased to see couples must agree to numerous requirements before they qualify for the Calgary program.
"There is a big tendency to treat this as a medical procedure instead of the adoption it really is," Allen said. "To give your embryos to somebody else, that is really complex because what it means is somebody else could well end up raising your genetic children-- children who are full siblings to the children you are raising."
The implications for children born from embryo donations are equally life-altering, but frequently overlooked, said Laura Shanner, professor of health ethics at the University of Alberta's school of public health.
"We just kind of assume that we can take the genetic material from one person and give it to another and everybody's happy," Shanner said.
"Whether it works for the child is a completely different question that nobody bothers to ask."
Embryo donation has taken off in the United States, where many Christian groups argue that life begins at conception and unused embryos should not be destroyed, said Shanner.
"So there really is a movement to try to rescue what are seen as unborn babies," she said.
"The problem I have is that they're so busy rescuing embryos that they're not thinking through the effect on the child and the adult they will become."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
PreviousNext
Couples who have undergone in vitro fertilization often will have embryos left over. While an embryo adoption program exists in Calgary, parents sometimes balk at making a donation.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images Archive, Edmonton Journal
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 3&sponsor=
Long-term effects of donation may be overlooked, says doctor
By Andrea Sands, Edmonton JournalAugust 6, 2009
Couples who have undergone in vitro fertilization often will have embryos left over. While an embryo adoption program exists in Calgary, parents sometimes balk at making a donation.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images Archive, Edmonton Journal
After Cheryl gave birth to her son and then to twins through in vitro fertilization, she had 19 embryos left over.
The Edmonton mom and her husband felt their family was finally complete, so the extra embryos sat frozen in a Calgary clinic.
"I was uncomfortable destroying the embryos, so we kept them for about two or three years," recalled Cheryl, who does not want her last name published.
The couple paid Calgary's IVF clinic a yearly fee to store the cryopreserved embryos while they decided what to do. Finally, Cheryl started filling out paperwork to donate her embryos to another couple.
"We, of course, were blithely going into it thinking, 'Wouldn't it be nice to donate the embryos?' but it was a much bigger decision than that," she said.
When Cheryl had to answer detailed questions about her family's medical history and then questions about whether she was prepared to be contacted by the child or the child's parents in the future, she changed her mind about becoming a donor.
She thought about her own three children, now 11 and seven, and how the decision would affect them.
"We were just not prepared emotionally for that type of a long-term commitment," she said.
"I understand how desperately these people want children, and if someone is in a place where they are capable of donating their embryos, God bless them."
Edmonton's Regional Fertility and Women's Endocrine Clinic recently started offering IVF treatments, which means northern Alberta residents no longer have to travel to Calgary for the procedure.
It also means that women will eventually have to decide what to do with embryos left over after their IVF treatments conclude.
Representatives from Alberta Health Services and the Edmonton fertility clinic have refused to answer any questions about the IVF program in Edmonton or about embryo donation and adoption.
If the Edmonton Clinic does eventually offer embryo donation, it is still years away.
At the Regional Fertility Program in Calgary--the only IVF clinic in Alberta that offers embryo donation and adoption -- the waiting list is 2½ years, said Dr. Calvin Greene, the program's medical director.
"It's not a big program, I can tell you that," he said. "We get far more requests for treatment than we are able to provide."
That's because very few couples are willing to donate the embryos.
Calgary's is the largest IVF program in the country, doing almost twice as much business as the next busiest clinic, Greene said.
"We have hardly any (embryo adoptions)," he said. "We would like to do more of them. We hate to see embryos destroyed."
Greene emphasized that embryo adoptions are available only to patients of the Calgary clinic who have exhausted all other options.
Stringent requirements must be met, including psychological counselling and an adoption home study, before a couple is accepted for embryo adoption.
Infertility Network executive director Diane Allen said she is pleased to see couples must agree to numerous requirements before they qualify for the Calgary program.
"There is a big tendency to treat this as a medical procedure instead of the adoption it really is," Allen said. "To give your embryos to somebody else, that is really complex because what it means is somebody else could well end up raising your genetic children-- children who are full siblings to the children you are raising."
The implications for children born from embryo donations are equally life-altering, but frequently overlooked, said Laura Shanner, professor of health ethics at the University of Alberta's school of public health.
"We just kind of assume that we can take the genetic material from one person and give it to another and everybody's happy," Shanner said.
"Whether it works for the child is a completely different question that nobody bothers to ask."
Embryo donation has taken off in the United States, where many Christian groups argue that life begins at conception and unused embryos should not be destroyed, said Shanner.
"So there really is a movement to try to rescue what are seen as unborn babies," she said.
"The problem I have is that they're so busy rescuing embryos that they're not thinking through the effect on the child and the adult they will become."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
PreviousNext
Couples who have undergone in vitro fertilization often will have embryos left over. While an embryo adoption program exists in Calgary, parents sometimes balk at making a donation.
Photograph by: AFP-Getty Images Archive, Edmonton Journal
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 3&sponsor=
August 10, 2009
Breakfast Can Wait. The Day’s First Stop Is Online.
By BRAD STONE
Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.
That was so last century. Today, Mr. Gude wakes at around 6 a.m. to check his work e-mail and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The two boys, Cole and Erik, start each morning with text messages, video games and Facebook.
The new routine quickly became a source of conflict in the family, with Ms. Gude complaining that technology was eating into family time. But ultimately even she partially succumbed, cracking open her laptop after breakfast.
“Things that I thought were unacceptable a few years ago are now commonplace in my house,” she said, “like all four of us starting the day on four computers in four separate rooms.”
Technology has shaken up plenty of life’s routines, but for many people it has completely altered the once predictable rituals at the start of the day.
This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/techn ... nted=print
Breakfast Can Wait. The Day’s First Stop Is Online.
By BRAD STONE
Karl and Dorsey Gude of East Lansing, Mich., can remember simpler mornings, not too long ago. They sat together and chatted as they ate breakfast. They read the newspaper and competed only with the television for the attention of their two teenage sons.
That was so last century. Today, Mr. Gude wakes at around 6 a.m. to check his work e-mail and his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The two boys, Cole and Erik, start each morning with text messages, video games and Facebook.
The new routine quickly became a source of conflict in the family, with Ms. Gude complaining that technology was eating into family time. But ultimately even she partially succumbed, cracking open her laptop after breakfast.
“Things that I thought were unacceptable a few years ago are now commonplace in my house,” she said, “like all four of us starting the day on four computers in four separate rooms.”
Technology has shaken up plenty of life’s routines, but for many people it has completely altered the once predictable rituals at the start of the day.
This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/techn ... nted=print
August 18, 2009
Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging
By NICHOLAS WADE
It may be the ultimate free lunch — how to reap all the advantages of a calorically restricted diet, including freedom from disease and an extended healthy life span, without eating one fewer calorie. Just take a drug that tricks the body into thinking it’s on such a diet.
It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. Yet such drugs are now in clinical trials. Even if they should fail, as most candidate drugs do, their development represents a new optimism among research biologists that aging is not immutable, that the body has resources that can be mobilized into resisting disease and averting the adversities of old age.
This optimism, however, is not fully shared. Evolutionary biologists, the experts on the theory of aging, have strong reasons to suppose that human life span cannot be altered in any quick and easy way. But they have been confounded by experiments with small laboratory animals, like roundworms, fruit flies and mice. In all these species, the change of single genes has brought noticeable increases in life span.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/scien ... nted=print
Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging
By NICHOLAS WADE
It may be the ultimate free lunch — how to reap all the advantages of a calorically restricted diet, including freedom from disease and an extended healthy life span, without eating one fewer calorie. Just take a drug that tricks the body into thinking it’s on such a diet.
It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. Yet such drugs are now in clinical trials. Even if they should fail, as most candidate drugs do, their development represents a new optimism among research biologists that aging is not immutable, that the body has resources that can be mobilized into resisting disease and averting the adversities of old age.
This optimism, however, is not fully shared. Evolutionary biologists, the experts on the theory of aging, have strong reasons to suppose that human life span cannot be altered in any quick and easy way. But they have been confounded by experiments with small laboratory animals, like roundworms, fruit flies and mice. In all these species, the change of single genes has brought noticeable increases in life span.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/scien ... nted=print