Possiblity of Eva
DigitalX
---
-DigitalX
My sig is always different, and always has one or more spelling erorr
and/or typo. can you find it?
---
I Hate Spam
news:k8NO9.172300$Qr.42...@news3.calgary.shaw.ca...
> is it theoreticly possible to create an Evangelion?
What aspect? I suppose we could build a giant robot today using Segway
type stabilization technology. As for the A-10 link, maybe another 20 years
if ethicists even allowed such a thing to be built.
As for AT fields, maybe we should perfect deflector shields first :-)
And as for the ability to dissolve souls into LCL, I think we stand a better
chance of building a TARDIS first ;-)
Jonathan Ford
All EVA's are clones of either Lilith or ADAM. As of now we don't have the
capability to genetically engineer such a being, but it may be possible
(since in one episode they say that Angels' DNA is very similar to Human
DNA). As for stabilization, ti won't be a big problem, since and EVA seems
to have a similar skeletal structure to that of a human, with the A-10 link,
the pilot of the EVA will feel, and "be" the mech. Thus the pilot will
automatically correct the balance of an EVA with his mind, just like we all
do when we walk.
A-10 link:
We're getting close to that, Scientists are mapping areas of the brain that
control different parts of our bodies, thus giving us the possibiltiy to
control a prosthesis directly from our brain. This has allready been tried
out on a monkey and all the tests came out reasonably well. So a complete
neural interface may be possible in the near future.
LCL fluid:
As for breathability, we allready have a similar fluid that's in use. Clear
like water, it has the capability of containing large amounts of oxygen
within it's self, allowing any animals (and humans) to breath normally in
it. When exiting the liquid, it will automatically evaporate from our lungs
rather quickly, allowing us to return to our normal breathing patterns. As
for separating the soul of a person inside of it from his/her body, that is
highly improbable. We don't even know what is counsciousness, Where it
resides in the brain, or if it can be removed. The possibility of moving a
soul from body to body, or even containing it will be a huge ethical
question when it comes up, probably only Hindu's and Buddists' will be very
interested in this question, since they believe in reincarnation.
"DigitalX" <dig...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
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MBVA
it used for? wouldn't we need gills for it?
"Jonathan Ford" <adm...@galactica.it> wrote in message
news:3e0c3...@corp.newsgroups.com...
Sakaki
news:3e0c44eb$0$7815$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au:
> about that fluid, you said its already in use? what is it called and
> what is it used for? wouldn't we need gills for it?
>
>
>
>
I may be wrong but I do belive it is called:
Oxygenated hydroflorocarbon.
Sakaki
Rudolf Polzer
> "MBVA" <bob...@optushome.com.au> wrote:
> > about that fluid, you said its already in use? what is it called and
> > what is it used for? wouldn't we need gills for it?
>
> I may be wrong but I do belive it is called:
>
> Oxygenated hydroflorocarbon.
Not -fluoro- (then the fluor, chemical symbol F, is contained)?
What does such a molecule look like? Oxygenated hydro carbons are for
example alcohols, therefore they look like
H H
| |
H - O - C - C - H <----------- ethanol
| |
H H
(maybe there can be multiple OH groups). And which special oxygenated
hydrofluorocarbons are used? If I understand the chemical expression
correctly, this is one of them:
F H
| |
H - O - C - C - H
| |
H H
and this is the other possibility with two Cs, one OH and one F:
H H
| |
H - O - C - C - F
| |
H H
--
Ritsuko: "You cooked this, didn't you Misato?"
Misato: "Oh, can you tell?"
Ritsuko: "Yes, by its taste."
MBVA
and i couldn't find anythign related to being able to breathe under this
chemical. could you tell me where you found the info cause i really want to
know more about it.
"Rudolf Polzer" <AntiATFiel...@durchnull.de> wrote in message
news:slrnb0ol1m.73r.Ant...@katsuragi.durchnull.ath.cx...
Rudolf Polzer
> i've tried looking up least a dozen pages on google under hydroflorocarbons
> and i couldn't find anythign related to being able to breathe under this
> chemical.
Neither did I.
> could you tell me where you found the info cause i really want to
> know more about it.
Could you learn quoting correctly first? Thanks.
The chemical formulae came directly from the name, but the name is
inexact and specifies a family of molecules, not a single one. It's just
as unspecific as the words "alcanol" or "alcohol".
--
In diesem Sinne kannst du's wagen.
Verbinde dich! du sollst in diesen Tagen
Mit Freuden meine Künste sehn;
Ich gebe dir, was noch kein Mensch gesehn.
Jonathan Ford
Liquivent", it's commercial name, is manufactured by a Biotech Company in
San Diego. As well as carrying oxygen, liquivent has a gentle therapeutic
effect on the lungs, unlike air forced in at high pressure. The liquid fills
the many tiny collapsed air sacs of the patient's lungs, providing the basis
for the vital exchange of oxygen into the blood.
Due to it's density (it is twice as dense as water) and it's capacity to
carry 25 items as much oxygen than water, it can oxygenate the blood long
enough to give damaged lungs the necessary time to heal. It has enormous
potential for many patients with lung and breathing disorders including
infants with very low birth weight and respiratory distress syndrome. It has
also been used on patients who have been close to drowning, and may even by
used in the future on lung cancer patients.
The drug is currently being tested in approximately 55 paediatric centres
throughout America. The procedure hasn't been performed in Australia yet,
but as the evidence grows in support of its life saving capabilities, it
won't be long before we hear about the first case at home.
Development of Liquid Ventilation Techniques
History
The first reported "liquid breathing" experiments in the 1960's heralded the
promise of an alternative method for supporting distressed lungs.
Researchers found that mice could survive several hours with their lungs
filled with an oxygenated saline solution; subsequent use of oxygenated
silicone oils met with some success, but these fluids were ultimately found
to be toxic. The most significant finding of this period was the potential
for use of perfluorochemical (PFC) liquids. These liquids are clear,
colorless, odorless, nonconducting, and nonflammable; they are approximately
twice as dense as water, and are capable of dissolving large amounts of
physiologically important gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide). PFCs are
generally very chemically stable compounds, remaining unmetabolized
(unchanged) in body tissues.
The first physiological tests of PFCs demonstrated that mice and rats
submersed in oxygenated PFC fluids could survive for prolonged periods.
These findings led to extensive lung physiology studies of liquid breathing
using "tidal" or "total" liquid ventilation. This technique involves the
complete filling of the lungs with a PFC and, by use of a special liquid
ventilator machine, recirculation of the PFC between the patient's lungs and
various mechanical components that perform gas exchange, filtration and
temperature control. The first clinical feasibility study of tidal liquid
ventilation in compassionate treatments of several premature babies was
performed in 1989. While these studies demonstrated improvement in the
patients' lung compliance and gas exchange, further clinical studies were
not pursued due to the lack of a clinically applicable liquid ventilator
system and a pharmaceutical-grade PFC.
Breakthrough -- "Partial Liquid Ventilation"
A breakthrough occurred in 1991, when it was discovered that liquid
ventilation could be performed effectively in normal pigs without the use of
a liquid ventilator. Sustained, highly efficient gas exchange was achieved
by simply filling the lung with a PFC to a prescribed level, and then
reconnecting the conventional gas ventilator. This discovery, along with
expanded studies sponsored by Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp., established the
feasibility of a simplified, practical method of liquid ventilation that
could lead to clinical applications. The PLV technique has now been shown to
produce significant improvements in lung function and viability in numerous
animal studies of diseased or injured lungs. By opening closed alveoli and
keeping them open with lower ventilator pressures and reduced oxygen
settings, and by increasing the flow of blood to the more open portions of
the lung, selected PFCs can apparently minimize lung damage and enable
earlier cessation of ventilator therapy.
Availability of Medical-Grade PFC
Development of PLV therapy for human use was accelerated by the use of
LiquiVent® (sterile perflubron). Perflubron (perfluorooctyl bromide), a
pharmaceutical-grade PFC, is the most appropriate PFC for medical use among
those evaluated to date, due to its combination of high purity, low surface
tension, high gas solubility, moderately low vapor pressure, superior
spreading characteristics, and demonstrated lack of toxicity. Perflubron has
been approved for marketing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an
agent for enhancement of magnetic resonance images of the gastrointestinal
tract. This unique compound is also used in a perflubron-based emulsion,
OxygentT, which is being evaluated in clinical trials as an intravenous
oxygen carrier designed to protect tissues from hypoxia (oxygen deficiency)
during surgery and other periods of acute oxygen deficit.
"Jonathan Ford" <adm...@galactica.it> wrote in message
news:3e0c3...@corp.newsgroups.com...
Jonathan Ford
Jonathan Ford
Controlling Robots with the Mind
People with nerve or limb injuries may one day be able to command
wheelchairs, prosthetics and even paralyzed arms and legs by "thinking them
through" the motions
Belle, our tiny owl monkey, was seated in her special chair inside a
soundproof chamber at our Duke University laboratory. Her right hand grasped
a joystick as she watched a horizontal series of lights on a display panel.
She knew that if a light suddenly shone and she moved the joystick left or
right to correspond to its position, a dispenser would send a drop of fruit
juice into her mouth. She loved to play this game. And she was good at it.
Belle wore a cap glued to her head. Under it were four plastic connectors.
The connectors fed arrays of microwires--each wire finer than the finest
sewing thread--into different regions of Belle's motor cortex, the brain
tissue that plans movements and sends instructions for enacting the plans to
nerve cells in the spinal cord. Each of the 100 microwires lay beside a
single motor neuron. When a neuron produced an electrical discharge--an
"action potential"--the adjacent microwire would capture the current and
send it up through a small wiring bundle that ran from Belle's cap to a box
of electronics on a table next to the booth. The box, in turn, was linked to
two computers, one next door and the other half a country away.
In a crowded room across the hall, members of our research team were getting
anxious. After months of hard work, we were about to test the idea that we
could reliably translate the raw electrical activity in a living being's
brain--Belle's mere thoughts--into signals that could direct the actions of
a robot. Unknown to Belle on this spring afternoon in 2000, we had assembled
a multijointed robot arm in this room, away from her view, that she would
control for the first time. As soon as Belle's brain sensed a lit spot on
the panel, electronics in the box running two real-time mathematical models
would rapidly analyze the tiny action potentials produced by her brain
cells. Our lab computer would convert the electrical patterns into
instructions that would direct the robot arm. Six hundred miles north, in
Cambridge, Mass., a different computer would produce the same actions in
another robot arm, built by Mandayam A. Srinivasan, head of the Laboratory
for Human and Machine Haptics (the Touch Lab) at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. At least, that was the plan.
If we had done everything correctly, the two robot arms would behave as
Belle's arm did, at exactly the same time. We would have to translate her
neuronal activity into robot commands in just 300 milliseconds--the natural
delay between the time Belle's motor cortex planned how she should move her
limb and the moment it sent the instructions to her muscles. If the brain of
a living creature could accurately control two dissimilar robot
arms--despite the signal noise and transmission delays inherent in our lab
network and the error-prone Internet--perhaps it could someday control a
mechanical device or actual limbs in ways that would be truly helpful to
people.
Finally the moment came. We randomly switched on lights in front of Belle,
and she immediately moved her joystick back and forth to correspond to them.
Our robot arm moved similarly to Belle's real arm. So did Srinivasan's.
Belle and the robots moved in synchrony, like dancers choreographed by the
electrical impulses sparking in Belle's mind. Amid the loud celebration that
erupted in Durham, N.C., and Cambridge, we could not help thinking that this
was only the beginning of a promising journey.
In the two years since that day, our labs and several others have advanced
neuroscience, computer science, microelectronics and robotics to create ways
for rats, monkeys and eventually humans to control mechanical and electronic
machines purely by "thinking through," or imagining, the motions. Our
immediate goal is to help a person who has been paralyzed by a neurological
disorder or spinal cord injury, but whose motor cortex is spared, to operate
a wheelchair or a robotic limb. Someday the research could also help such a
patient regain control over a natural arm or leg, with the aid of wireless
communication between implants in the brain and the limb. And it could lead
to devices that restore or augment other motor, sensory or cognitive
functions.
The big question is, of course, whether we can make a practical, reliable
system. Doctors have no means by which to repair spinal cord breaks or
damaged brains. In the distant future, neuroscientists may be able to
regenerate injured neurons or program stem cells (those capable of
differentiating into various cell types) to take their place. But in the
near future, brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), or neuroprostheses, are a more
viable option for restoring motor function. Success this summer with macaque
monkeys that completed different tasks than those we asked of Belle has
gotten us even closer to this goal.
From Theory to Practice
Recent advances in brain-machine interfaces are grounded in part on
discoveries made about 20 years ago. In the early 1980s Apostolos P.
Georgopoulos of Johns Hopkins University recorded the electrical activity of
single motor-cortex neurons in macaque monkeys. He found that the nerve
cells typically reacted most strongly when a monkey moved its arm in a
certain direction. Yet when the arm moved at an angle away from a cell's
preferred direction, the neuron's activity didn't cease; it diminished in
proportion to the cosine of that angle. The finding showed that motor
neurons were broadly tuned to a range of motion and that the brain most
likely relied on the collective activity of dispersed populations of single
neurons to generate a motor command.
There were caveats, however. Georgopoulos had recorded the activity of
single neurons one at a time and from only one motor area. This approach
left unproved the underlying hypothesis that some kind of coding scheme
emerges from the simultaneous activity of many neurons distributed across
multiple cortical areas. Scientists knew that the frontal and parietal
lobes--in the forward and rear parts of the brain, respectively--interacted
to plan and generate motor commands. But technological bottlenecks prevented
neurophysiologists from making widespread recordings at once. Furthermore,
most scientists believed that by cataloguing the properties of neurons one
at a time, they could build a comprehensive map of how the brain works--as
if charting the properties of individual trees could unveil the ecological
structure of an entire forest!
Fortunately, not everyone agreed. When the two of us met 14 years ago at
Hahnemann University, we discussed the challenge of simultaneously recording
many single neurons. By 1993 technological breakthroughs we had made allowed
us to record 48 neurons spread across five structures that form a rat's
sensorimotor system--the brain regions that perceive and use sensory
information to direct movements.
Crucial to our success back then--and since--were new electrode arrays
containing Teflon-coated stainless-steel microwires that could be implanted
in an animal's brain. Neurophysiologists had used standard electrodes that
resemble rigid needles to record single neurons. These classic electrodes
worked well but only for a few hours, because cellular compounds collected
around the electrodes' tips and eventually insulated them from the current.
Furthermore, as the subject's brain moved slightly during normal activity,
the stiff pins damaged neurons. The microwires we devised in our lab (later
produced by NBLabs in Denison, Tex.) had blunter tips, about 50 microns in
diameter, and were much more flexible. Cellular substances did not seal off
the ends, and the flexibility greatly reduced neuron damage. These
properties enabled us to produce recordings for months on end, and having
tools for reliable recording allowed us to begin developing systems for
translating brain signals into commands that could control a mechanical
device.
With electrical engineer Harvey Wiggins, now president of Plexon in Dallas,
and with Donald J. Woodward and Samuel A. Deadwyler of Wake Forest
University School of Medicine, we devised a small "Harvey box" of custom
electronics, like the one next to Belle's booth. It was the first hardware
that could properly sample, filter and amplify neural signals from many
electrodes. Special software allowed us to discriminate electrical activity
from up to four single neurons per microwire by identifying unique features
of each cell's electrical discharge.
A Rat's Brain Controls a Lever
In our next experiments at Hahnemann in the mid-1990s, we taught a rat in a
cage to control a lever with its mind. First we trained it to press a bar
with its forelimb. The bar was electronically connected to a lever outside
the cage. When the rat pressed the bar, the outside lever tipped down to a
chute and delivered a drop of water it could drink.
We fitted the rat's head with a small version of the brain-machine interface
Belle would later use. Every time the rat commanded its forelimb to press
the bar, we simultaneously recorded the action potentials produced by 46
neurons. We had programmed resistors in a so-called integrator, which
weighted and processed data from the neurons to generate a single analog
output that predicted very well the trajectory of the rat's forelimb. We
linked this integrator to the robot lever's controller so that it could
command the lever.
Once the rat had gotten used to pressing the bar for water, we disconnected
the bar from the lever. The rat pressed the bar, but the lever remained
still. Frustrated, it began to press the bar repeatedly, to no avail. But
one time, the lever tipped and delivered the water. The rat didn't know it,
but its 46 neurons had expressed the same firing pattern they had in earlier
trials when the bar still worked. That pattern prompted the integrator to
put the lever in motion.
After several hours the rat realized it no longer needed to press the bar.
If it just looked at the bar and imagined its forelimb pressing it, its
neurons could still express the firing pattern that our brain-machine
interface would interpret as motor commands to move the lever. Over time,
four of six rats succeeded in this task. They learned that they had to
"think through" the motion of pressing the bar. This is not as mystical at
it might sound; right now you can imagine reaching out to grasp an object
near you--without doing so. In similar fashion, a person with an injured or
severed limb might learn to control a robot arm joined to a shoulder.
A Monkey's Brain Controls a Robot Arm
We were thrilled with our rats' success. It inspired us to move forward, to
try to reproduce in a robotic limb the three-dimensional arm movements made
by monkeys--animals with brains far more similar to those of humans. As a
first step, we had to devise technology for predicting how the monkeys
intended to move their natural arms.
At this time, one of us (Nicolelis) moved to Duke and established a
neurophysiology laboratory there. Together we built an interface to
simultaneously monitor close to 100 neurons, distributed across the frontal
and parietal lobes. We proceeded to try it with several owl monkeys. We
chose owl monkeys because their motor cortical areas are located on the
surface of their smooth brain, a configuration that minimizes the surgical
difficulty of implanting microwire arrays. The microwire arrays allowed us
to record the action potentials in each creature's brain for several months.
In our first experiments, we required owl monkeys, including Belle, to move
a joystick left or right after seeing a light appear on the left or right
side of a video screen. We later sat them in a chair facing an opaque
barrier. When we lifted the barrier they saw a piece of fruit on a tray. The
monkeys had to reach out and grab the fruit, bring it to their mouth and
place their hand back down. We measured the position of each monkey's wrist
by attaching fiber-optic sensors to it, which defined the wrist's
trajectory.
Further analysis revealed that a simple linear summation of the electrical
activity of cortical motor neurons predicted very well the position of an
animal's hand a few hundred milliseconds ahead of time. This discovery was
made by Johan Wessberg of Duke, now at the Gothenburg University in Sweden.
The main trick was for the computer to continuously combine neuronal
activity produced as far back in time as one second to best predict
movements in real time.
As our scientific work proceeded, we acquired a more advanced Harvey box
from Plexon. Using it and some custom, real-time algorithms, our computer
sampled and integrated the action potentials every 50 to 100 milliseconds.
Software translated the output into instructions that could direct the
actions of a robot arm in three-dimensional space. Only then did we try to
use a BMI to control a robotic device. As we watched our multijointed robot
arm accurately mimic Belle's arm movements on that inspiring afternoon in
2000, it was difficult not to ponder the implausibility of it all. Only 50
to 100 neurons randomly sampled from tens of millions were doing the needed
work.
Later mathematical analyses revealed that the accuracy of the robot
movements was roughly proportional to the number of neurons recorded, but
this linear relation began to taper off as the number increased. By sampling
100 neurons we could create robot hand trajectories that were about 70
percent similar to those the monkeys produced. Further analysis estimated
that to achieve 95 percent accuracy in the prediction of one-dimensional
hand movements, as few as 500 to 700 neurons would suffice, depending on
which brain regions we sampled. We are now calculating the number of neurons
that would be needed for highly accurate three-dimensional movements. We
suspect the total will again be in the hundreds, not thousands.
These results suggest that within each cortical area, the "message" defining
a given hand movement is widely disseminated. This decentralization is
extremely beneficial to the animal: in case of injury, the animal can fall
back on a huge reservoir of redundancy. For us researchers, it means that a
BMI neuroprosthesis for severely paralyzed patients may require sampling
smaller populations of neurons than was once anticipated.
We continued working with Belle and our other monkeys after Belle's
successful experiment. We found that as the animals perfected their tasks,
the properties of their neurons changed--over several days or even within a
daily two-hour recording session. The contribution of individual neurons
varied over time. To cope with this "motor learning," we added a simple
routine that enabled our model to reassess periodically the contribution of
each neuron. Brain cells that ceased to influence the predictions
significantly were dropped from the model, and those that became better
predictors were added. In essence, we designed a way to extract from the
brain a neural output for hand trajectory. This coding, plus our ability to
measure neurons reliably over time, allowed our BMI to represent Belle's
intended movements accurately for several months. We could have continued,
but we had the data we needed.
It is important to note that the gradual changing of neuronal electrical
activity helps to give the brain its plasticity. The number of action
potentials a neuron generates before a given movement changes as the animal
undergoes more experiences. Yet the dynamic revision of neuronal properties
does not represent an impediment for practical BMIs. The beauty of a
distributed neural output is that it does not rely on a small group of
neurons. If a BMI can maintain viable recordings from hundreds to thousands
of single neurons for months to years and utilize models that can learn, it
can handle evolving neurons, neuronal death and even degradation in
electrode-recording capabilities.
Exploiting Sensory Feedback
Belle proved that a bmi can work for a primate brain. But could we adapt the
interface to more complex brains? In May 2001 we began studies with three
macaque monkeys at Duke. Their brains contain deep furrows and convolutions
that resemble those of the human brain.
We employed the same BMI used for Belle, with one fundamental addition: now
the monkeys could exploit visual feedback to judge for themselves how well
the BMI could mimic their hand movements. We let the macaques move a
joystick in random directions, driving a cursor across a computer screen.
Suddenly a round target would appear somewhere on the screen. To receive a
sip of fruit juice, the monkey had to position the cursor quickly inside the
target--within 0.5 second--by rapidly manipulating the joystick.
The first macaque to master this task was Aurora, an elegant female who
clearly enjoyed showing off that she could hit the target more than 90
percent of the time. For a year, our postdoctoral fellows Roy Crist and José
Carmena recorded the activity of up to 92 neurons in five frontal and
parietal areas of Aurora's cortex.
Once Aurora commanded the game, we started playing a trick on her. In about
30 percent of the trials we disabled the connection between the joystick and
the cursor. To move the cursor quickly within the target, Aurora had to rely
solely on her brain activity, processed by our BMI. After being puzzled,
Aurora gradually altered her strategy. Although she continued to make hand
movements, after a few days she learned she could control the cursor 100
percent of the time with her brain alone. In a few trials each day during
the ensuing weeks Aurora didn't even bother to move her hand; she moved the
cursor by just thinking about the trajectory it should take.
That was not all. Because Aurora could see her performance on the screen,
the BMI made better and better predictions even though it was recording the
same neurons. Although much more analysis is required to understand this
result, one explanation is that the visual feedback helped Aurora to
maximize the BMI's reaction to both brain and machine learning. If this
proves true, visual or other sensory feedback could allow people to improve
the performance of their own BMIs.
We observed another encouraging result. At this writing, it has been a year
since we implanted the microwires in Aurora's brain, and we continue to
record 60 to 70 neurons daily. This extended success indicates that even in
a primate with a convoluted brain, our microwire arrays can provide
long-term, high-quality, multichannel signals. Although this sample is down
from the original 92 neurons, Aurora's performance with the BMI remains at
the highest levels she has achieved.
We will make Aurora's tasks more challenging. In May we began modifying the
BMI to give her tactile feedback for new experiments that are now beginning.
The BMI will control a nearby robot arm fitted with a gripper that simulates
a grasping hand. Force sensors will indicate when the gripper encounters an
object and how much force is required to hold it. Tactile feedback--is the
object heavy or light, slick or sticky?--will be delivered to a patch on
Aurora's skin embedded with small vibrators. Variations in the vibration
frequencies should help Aurora figure out how much force the robot arm
should apply to, say, pick up a piece of fruit, and to hold it as the robot
brings it back to her. This experiment might give us the most concrete
evidence yet that a person suffering from severe paralysis could regain
basic arm movements through an implant in the brain that communicated over
wires, or wirelessly, with signal generators embedded in a limb.
If visual and tactile sensations mimic the information that usually flows
between Aurora's own arm and brain, long-term interaction with a BMI could
possibly stimulate her brain to incorporate the robot into its
representations of her body--schema known to exist in most brain regions. In
other words, Aurora's brain might represent this artificial device as
another part of her body. Neuronal tissue in her brain might even dedicate
itself to operating the robot arm and interpreting its feedback.
To test whether this hypothesis has merit, we plan to conduct experiments
like those done with Aurora, except that an animal's arm will be temporarily
anesthetized, thereby removing any natural feedback information. We predict
that after a transition period, the primate will be able to interact with
the BMI just fine. If the animal's brain does meld the robot arm into its
body representations, it is reasonable to expect that a paraplegic's brain
would do the same, rededicating neurons that once served a natural limb to
the operation of an artificial one.
Each advance shows how plastic the brain is. Yet there will always be
limits. It is unlikely, for example, that a stroke victim could gain full
control over a robot limb. Stroke damage is usually widespread and involves
so much of the brain's white matter--the fibers that allow brain regions to
communicate--that the destruction overwhelms the brain's plastic
capabilities. This is why stroke victims who lose control of uninjured limbs
rarely regain it.
Reality Check
Good news notwithstanding, we researchers must be very cautious about
offering false hope to people with serious disabilities. We must still
overcome many hurdles before BMIs can be considered safe, reliable and
efficient therapeutic options. We have to demonstrate in clinical trials
that a proposed BMI will offer much greater well-being while posing no risk
of added neurological damage.
Surgical implantation of electrode arrays will always be of medical concern,
for instance. Investigators need to evaluate whether highly dense microwire
arrays can provide viable recordings without causing tissue damage or
infection in humans. Progress toward dense arrays is already under way. Duke
electronics technician Gary Lehew has designed ways to increase
significantly the number of microwires mounted in an array that is light and
easy to implant. We can now implant multiple arrays, each of which has up to
160 microwires and measures five by eight millimeters, smaller than a pinky
fingernail. We recently implanted 704 microwires across eight cortical areas
in a macaque and recorded 318 neurons simultaneously.
In addition, considerable miniaturization of electronics and batteries must
occur. We have begun collaborating with José Carlos Príncipe of the
University of Florida to craft implantable microelectronics that will embed
in hardware the neuronal
pattern recognition we now do with software, thereby eventually freeing the
BMI from a computer. These microchips will thus have to send wireless
control data to robotic actuators. Working with Patrick D. Wolf's lab at
Duke, we have built the first wireless "neurochip" and beta-tested it with
Aurora. Seeing streams of neural activity flash on a laptop many meters away
from Aurora--broadcast via the first wireless connection between a primate's
brain and a computer--was a delight.
More and more scientists are embracing the vision that BMIs can help people
in need. In the past year, several traditional neurological laboratories
have begun to pursue neuroprosthetic devices. Preliminary results from
Arizona State University, Brown University and the California Institute of
Technology have recently appeared. Some of the studies provide independent
confirmation of the rat and monkey studies we have done. Researchers at
Arizona State basically reproduced our 3-D approach in owl monkeys and
showed that it can work in rhesus monkeys too. Scientists at Brown enabled a
rhesus macaque monkey to move a cursor around a computer screen. Both groups
recorded 10 to 20 neurons or so per animal. Their success further
demonstrates that this new field is progressing nicely.
The most useful BMIs will exploit hundreds to a few thousand single neurons
distributed over multiple motor regions in the frontal and parietal lobes.
Those that record only a small number of neurons (say, 30 or fewer) from a
single cortical area would never provide clinical help, because they would
lack the excess capacity required to adapt to neuronal loss or changes in
neuronal responsiveness. The other extreme--recording millions of neurons
using large electrodes--would most likely not work either, because it might
be too invasive.
Noninvasive methods, though promising for some therapies, will probably be
of limited use for controlling prostheses with thoughts. Scalp recording,
called electroencephalography (EEG), is a noninvasive technique that can
drive a different kind of brain-machine interface, however. Niels Birbaumer
of the University of Tübingen in Germany has successfully used EEG
recordings and a computer interface to help patients paralyzed by severe
neurological disorders learn how to modulate their EEG activity to select
letters on a computer screen, so they can write messages. The process is
time-consuming but offers the only way for these people to communicate with
the world. Yet EEG signals cannot be used directly for limb prostheses,
because they depict the average electrical activity of broad populations of
neurons; it is difficult to extract from them the fine variations needed to
encode precise arm and hand movements.
Despite the remaining hurdles, we have plenty of reasons to be optimistic.
Although it may be a decade before we witness the operation of the first
human neuroprosthesis, all the amazing possibilities crossed our minds that
afternoon in Durham as we watched the activity of Belle's neurons flashing
on a computer monitor. We will always remember our sense of awe as we
eavesdropped on the processes by which the primate brain generates a
thought. Belle's thought to receive her juice was a simple one, but a
thought it was, and it commanded the outside world to achieve her very real
goal.
"Jonathan Ford" <adm...@galactica.it> wrote in message
news:3e0ca...@corp.newsgroups.com...
Sakaki
news:3e0c78a9$0$7817$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au:
> i've tried looking up least a dozen pages on google under
> hydroflorocarbons and i couldn't find anythign related to being able
> to breathe under this chemical. could you tell me where you found the
> info cause i really want to know more about it.
> "Rudolf Polzer" <AntiATFiel...@durchnull.de> wrote in message
> news:slrnb0ol1m.73r.Ant...@katsuragi.durchnull.ath.cx...
>> Scripsit ille aut illa Sakaki <Alph...@work.com>:
>> > "MBVA" <bob...@optushome.com.au> wrote:
>> > > about that fluid, you said its already in use? what is it called
>> > > and what is it used for? wouldn't we need gills for it?
>> >
>> > I may be wrong but I do belive it is called:
>> >
>> > Oxygenated hydroflorocarbon.
>>
>> Not -fluoro- (then the fluor, chemical symbol F, is contained)?
As for me, I just remember reading about it in a couple of new articles,
where, they were testing it on mice. They could put mice under the "fluid"
and they could breath. They were also trying it as emergency blood
replacement. Mice with a fraction of their blood replace could live for a
long time, with 100% blood replacement they live a day or two.
Of course if you want a non official expiation of this you could watch a
movie. Which at the moment I can't remember. It may have been "Sphere" but
maybe not. Anyway they used it in their deep sea diving suits to help
equalize the internal presser with the sea pressure.
But I never use movies as a source of information. ;)
Sakaki
Jonathan Ford
(personally the divers would end up as popscicles)
"Sakaki" <Alph...@work.com> wrote in message
news:Xns92F1972A92EA...@204.127.199.17...
Lave Voronov
Anatomically, yes, the rest of it is science fiction, but then, so used to
be space travel.
Lave Voronov
Oxygenated hydrofluorocarbon
Lave Voronov
http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn-old/archive2000/posts/April/topic6209
5.shtm
phobos
> "DigitalX" <dig...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
> news:k8NO9.172300$Qr.42...@news3.calgary.shaw.ca...
> > is it theoreticly possible to create an Evangelion?
>
> What aspect? I suppose we could build a giant robot today using Segway
> type stabilization technology. As for the A-10 link, maybe another 20 years
> if ethicists even allowed such a thing to be built.
We'll probably have direct mind links long before we can build giant
robots. As I see it, the problem with building an Eva is really one of
weight. Taking a humanoid form and scaling it up to skyscraper size
just doesn't work - the volume, and hence the weight, goes as the cube
of the scaling factor, while the cross-sectional area of the legs, and
hence the weight it can support, goes as the square. So if I propose a
giant human who is twice our size in all three dimensions, he'll have
eight times the weight and only four times the leg thickness. Such men
have existed, but Robert Wadlow (the tallest giant on record outside
legend) was plagued all his life by trouble with his legs and feet,
and I don't think he was even twice the height of an average man.
OK, we could still build it with current materials. Steel, aluminium,
carbon derivatives... But don't go expecting it to move or anything.
When you take a step you're putting yourself on _one_ leg, doubling
the stress. Also, you cause stresses throughout your body, as various
parts of you are accelerated. The spine is flexible and S-shaped
simply to act as a shock absorber - else the jolts inflicted simply by
walking would run straight up to the skull and start harming the
brain. Eva will shake itself apart unless its component parts are
sufficiently flexible - but AFAIK the only materials that meet the
criteria for supporting the weight tend to be rather stiff. A man the
size of a skyscraper needs bones of steel and muscles of concrete.
Not to mention the fact that getting an Eva to walk would require
enormous power, both in the energy supply and in the motors operating
the joints. Both can be had, but the kind of motor setup you'll need
to have at Eva's knee and thigh will be large and bulky, and I thought
we'd just filled that area with solid concrete just to keep the thing
from collapsing. This is where it helps to be human-sized - meat
muscles can provide all the power necessary to propel such a small
animal, and the pressure on the legs isn't so very great that anything
stronger than muscle around a column of bone is needed.
We won't be building Evas until we have some much, MUCH lighter and
stronger materials. Perhaps the ultimate carbon derivatives - diamond
and buckytubes - would be helpful in this project, but until then Eva
is quite beyond our engineering ability. Even with such materials, it
would be a waste of effort from any serious military perspective.
Without an AT field available, Eva is a tremendously expensive and
extremely large target, moving slowly compared to (e.g) a jet fighter
carrying guided missiles. I'd be inclined to target the legs: kneecap
Eva with depleted uranium! The budget would be far better spent on
old-fashioned tanks, planes and ships (and probably spacecraft - with
Eva materials, spaceflight will be cheap and easy, and hence
strategically important.) This assumes of course that no angels turn
up at any point and need kicking.
All these structural issues didn't pose a problem for NERV, though.
They didn't build the Evas, they just plated them and wired into their
brains. Has anyone got a captive angel handy we can begin
experimenting on?
Kakarotto
our new fandangled cloning equipment and make a giant human, cover it in
coolo looking armour and wire into its brain?
Chris Hutchinson
"Kakarotto" <kaka...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:JZ3W9.33734$F63.6...@news.xtra.co.nz...
phobos
> our new fandangled cloning equipment and make a giant human, cover it in
> coolo looking armour and wire into its brain?
Nope. Bone and muscle aren't strong enough at that scale. As I said, a
skyscraper-sized man needs steel bones and concrete muscles just to
stand up - to actually move about he'd need materials that are beyond
current science. The weight of a man increases much faster than the
strength of his legs as we scale up; the optimum height seems to be
around 1.5 - 1.8m. Much taller and bone starts showing its limits;
occasionally giants are born who grow to well over 2m, and they tend
to develop skeletal problems; the longer your bones, the easier it is
to break them - try it with a pencil. Snap a pencil in half, easy.
Snap one of the half-pencils in half again, much more difficult.
The Eva series were based on cloning angels - perhaps they have
somehow managed to grow buckytubes naturally, or perhaps they support
their enormous structure with an AT field rather than with normal
materials. Either way, not very helpful for us.
Jonathan Ford
should answer the question...
"Even if Angels are made out of different matter, they seem to have a
genetic code 98.******% similar to the human genome"....
"Kakarotto" <kaka...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:JZ3W9.33734$F63.6...@news.xtra.co.nz...
m.davis
aspects. The real issue is financing the research needed to create the
technologies that would allow the creation of such a thing.
any fool can make a rule, and every fool will follow it
don't be a fool!!!
Narf
using new jap tech myomer muscles...
possible i think... infantry can carry more destructive power...
"phobos" <pho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:af26c87a.03011...@posting.google.com...
phobos
> Bird bones are very strong and light. There are solutions to the engineering
> aspects. The real issue is financing the research needed to create the
> technologies that would allow the creation of such a thing.
Chances are we'd still need new materials to build an Eva; such
materials _are_ in the pipeline, but they're a fair way off. Another
major use that such materials would be put to would be the space
elevator - which would be perhaps the single most amazingly useful
structure ever built.
I was wondering about how far bone could be taken, too - I thought I
might have been too dismissive. You're right about bird bones being
lighter than mammal bones... but the largest land birds are not much
bigger than us, while the largest land mammals are elephants and
rhinos. Even so, take a look at an elephant's legs: they're
proportionally much thicker than ours.
Then again, though, birds today aren't that big - but they had some
pretty damn big ancestors. Maybe the best way to go about building an
Eva would be...
Step 1. Clone a T-Rex
Step 2. Armour plate it and hack into its brain
Step 3. Profit!
Jonathan Ford
brains might not be "compatible" with working in a differently formed body.
different parts of the brain control different parts of the body, so if
there was a body part in more (missile launcher) we wouldn't be able to sync
with it. If anyone noticed, the EVA's don't have any weapons that are
attached to them (the prog knife is kept in a special compartment over the
EVA's shoulder, but is not really connected/controlled by the pilot).
Genetic engineering has to make some fast moves forward in order to link
together the structural qualities of different species of animals, with the
humanoid form of a skeleton. As for power, EVA's are organic, they need
energy, but mainly in the form of carbohydrates. As for the SuperSolenoid
(S2) powerplant, we still have to start working on that :)
"phobos" <pho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:af26c87a.0301...@posting.google.com...