Very much like this
Courtesy Jeff HenshawChill out, everybody. I can tell you’re all stressed out about the future, and why it’s not here, and where the flying cars are, and the laser-powered washing machines, and the genetically engineered dog-faced cats, and all that other stuff we were basically promised.
You feel like you’ve been cheated. I can see it on your faces.
Well don’t worry. The future is here, and it’s called Japan. Check it out: a machine that recycles regular old office paper into brand new toilet paper! Finally! A solution to our office paper surplus/toilet paper shortage, and a great new reason to be absolutely horrified of staples!
The new machine, called “White Goat” (because, duh, like a goat, it will eat almost anything, and it excretes something you want to rub on your orifices), will turn 40 sheets of office paper into one roll of toilet paper in about 30 minutes, at a cost of about 11 cents a roll. I’m not sure if this cost includes only the paper, or also the electricity and water the machine needs. That’s sort of important.
White goat costs somewhat more than a real goat (about $100,000), and will likely be much more difficult to eat when it has outlived its usefulness. Still, it seems like a clever in-house recycling thing, and it makes me wonder what sort of similar, and perhaps more practical, devices could be made for organizations with lots of a particular kind of waste.
Here’s the White Goat in action:
Tags : See, when I look at magazines (often), I get all frustrated that, like, the stupid things won't just read themselves at me. Like how the TV reads itself at me.
I am a busy sort of guy, and I don't have time to interpret symbols into words and words into mental images. Let's cut out the middleman, I say. That's exactly why I was so thrilled to see this announcement on the internet for an announcement in a magazine. While the first announcement had to be read the old fashioned way, wasting valuable minutes and brainpower, the latter announcement, the magazine one, will actually be in video format. It will announce CBS's fall schedule, and it will announce how delicious Pepsi is and how you should buy it. (With money, and soon.)
The magazine video uses a 2.7 mm thick LCD screen with a tiny rechargeable battery. The screen has a 320 x 240 resolution, and the chip it's on can hold about 40 minutes of video.
I was kind of thinking that the wave of the future, as far as video-zines go (my term, so hands off), would employ OLED technology, seeing has OLED screens can be super thin and flexible. But OLED displays are still way expensive, and while CBS no doubt wants to impress the New York and LA subscribers to Entertainment Weekly with their extravagance, they don't want to impress them with that much extravagance. Not for Jenna Elfman.
Um... very briefly, I believe that LCD screens work by altering the shape of a layer of film in front of a light to change the color of light that passes through that film. When the film has lots of little cells, the cells can be altered individually to make the tiny dots that form a video image. OLED screens, on the other hand, are sort of like screens made up of thousands of the little LED lights you find all over the place, except the LEDs on the screen are very very small—they're actually made of organic compounds printed on the screen, and they're activated (made to emit light) by having electricity flow to specific spots on that screen. More or less. So, once again, add lots of these little bits of light up, and you have an image. And hopefully someday some brave and proud network will put OLEDs in a magazine, to make it easier for us to learn about season 14 of two and a half men. (At that point it will be 2.5 men because Charlie Sheen will be dead, and his character will be computer animated. A half man, if you will. Or maybe the kid will cross dress every other episode.)
Once again robots do something I’ve been doing for years and everybody gets excited.
Robots are stealing our jobs: Even when our job is to eat bugs.
Courtesy manbartlettYeah, hooray, robots can walk. I’ve been walking for, like, most of my life. A robot can make sad faces. Whatever. That’s practically my specialty. A robot can simulate excruciating pain and horror. So? Nuts to “simulate”—I live it.
Great. It’s all great. Robots are programmed and built to do all sorts of inane stuff, and people love it. But I’ve been able to do this stuff forever, and nobody’s giving me high-fives and kisses. Cool, a robot can remember your name. I can usually so that. A robot can remember your credit card number. I can for sure do that. Give me a chance people, and you’ll see how much better than a robot I am.
But no. Robot development rumbles onward, and, once again, robots are taking a brave new step where I’ve stepped years ago: they fuel themselves by eating bugs.
Some artsy science people in London have designed self-sustaining robotic furniture. The robots digest organic matter (bugs) in “microbial fuel cells,” creating enough power to run a clock (I can do that) or light up lamp (I could probably do that), and eat more bugs (done). Microbial fuel cells, by the way, are sort of like batteries that run on decomposing matter. Chemicals in the fuel cell (I think) pretty much steal the electrons being produced by bacteria as they break down organic fuel. I can’t do this, but, then again, no one is asking me to. MFCs seem like pretty interesting technology, actually. More about them here, if you’re interested.
The designers have made working models of a fly-attracting lamp that works like a pitcher plant to capture its victims, a wall-mounted clock with a sticky conveyor belt, and a table that attracts mice onto its surface and into a trap door, where (I guess) they are digested to death. (I can’t help it… it’s like the Pit of Carkoon! Argh. I’m always going to be this way.)
It’s all pretty neat, although the small mammal attracting and digesting table might be a little much. That one seems like a case of somebody getting a little too arty or a little too sciencey for their own good. I mean, I could lure and eat a mouse, and hold your food for you, but would you want me to?
The future: TVs on bullets, inserted directly into brain
in Life Science, Structure of Matter, Scientific Enterprise, and Human Organism
Not Annie: I tried this on my own eyes, bu they were too gross.
Courtesy tryingmyhardestOh, my goodness. What did I just write?
What I meant was “TVs on contacts, popped directly into eyes.” Except that I would never write “popped” and “eyes” in the same sentence.
Anyway, it’s looking like the future is still a bright place to live. Especially if the TVs stuck to your eyeballs are malfunctioning. See, Ian Pearson, a British “futurologist” (that means that he’s a guy who thinks about living in the future, even though he actually lives in Britain), has gotten some press lately regarding his prediction that we’ll have contact lens TVs/computer monitors within the next ten years. Displays integrated into contact lenses would superimpose images over what we see of the real world (or, as I like to call it, the “real” world), and, potentially, could be powered by our own body heat.
The technology such products would be based on already exists, according to Pearson. It’s just a matter of shrinking it down to size, and sticking it on your eyes. Contact lenses with non-functioning circuits and lights have already been tested on rabbits, which, after 20 minutes of exposure, had no particular complaints.
While the lens TVs might add a slight tint to your eyes, other people (or, as I like to call them, other “people”) would not be able tell what you were watching. So, while everybody might assume that the guy with the glowy eyes is stumbling around watching something very naughty indeed, I’d actually be watching the video of my sixth grade play, Annie. The joke is on you! (Although I suppose it depends where I have to insert the VHS tape—the joke might also be on me.)
Pearson also declared that we all could also have “digital tattoos” in the near future. Aside from letting the world know what you thought was cool the day you got the tattoo, this digital ink could potentially “pick up on the emotions portrayed by actors in TV shows and create impulses allowing us to feel the same emotions.”
I’m really into this digital tattoo thing, and I’ll tell you why. First of all, I have always really wanted to feel what it looks like Will Smith feels like (I’m guessing “sassy” but it’s hard to say at this point.) Also, I’ve found that my favorite emotions are the ones I feel in my skin. Emotions like “humiliation,” and “second degree burn”. Yeah, those are about two of my favorite emotions (so naturally “Home Alone” will be viewed frequently), and I think I’m not the only one. This one is going to take off. Zoom!
Now, it turns out that this report on the future was commissioned by the British electronics retailer Comet. I don’t think that this fact should affect our reception of the predictions in any way (Comet, after all, probably just wants to know what they’ll be selling in a couple years, so it’s in their interest to have an honest report), but I am a little sore that Pearson is getting paid for this sort of thing, and I’m not. Come on, now! I’m always coming up with great ideas for the future.
Instant cat whiskers
Instant cat whiskers… for girls!
TVs on bullets
The last meal you’ll ever eat (trademarked)
Playstation 5
TVs on teeth
Laser-powered lasers
Better spaceships
Hinged money (for folding)
TVs on money (regular money, not the hinged kind)
Non-functional t-800 model robots
Electronic smile cream
The technology exists, people, it’s just a matter of time and engineering. So where’s my freaking check, Comet?
A water-powered jet pack? Say what?
in Energy Transformations, Flow of Matter and Energy, and Human Organism
I didn't have access to the original schematics: so I drew some of my own. That's me up there.
Courtesy JGordonI don't know about this... if God had meant for man to fly, He would have created us with high-power hoses attached to our butts. So unless this guy was born this way, I think he might be committing a crime against nature.
This seems kind of fakey, but also kind of totally awesome. And here's a year and a half old post from Wired.com that seems to be the patent for this very same water jet-powered recreational vehicle.
The future is shaping up to be pretty cool, my friends. Pretty cool.
Prejudice against the rural poor: Well, sure, but a fictional rural poor. This gentleman is an urban musician who shops at trendy surplus stores, and it's too difficult to tell if his parents are closely related.
Courtesy PoodlefaceWell, Buzzketeers, we’re in the thick of the holiday season now—wading through that sticky caramel center of winter festivities, thigh-deep in a swamp of sweater clad relatives, up to our necks in mixed metaphors…
And, you know what? I hope you dig it. That’s my gift to y’all: the honest wish that you are all enjoying your elbow to elbow time with your closest kin. There’s your non-denominational seasonal gift, everyone, I hope you like it. (Personally I celebrate “Wintermania,” during which my family falls into a Wham!-induced frenzy, and then sacrifices anything to our winter deities. We come out of it with a lot fewer pets and household appliances, but it’s an exciting and high-spirited occasion. But I won’t force my beliefs on you.)
There’s some extra thought behind my gift, though. I mean, I know you’ll like it anyway, but it’s practical too! See, it just might happen that, someday, you’ll be bumping more than elbows with your cousins, and working your way up to that may start with the holiday conviviality. So you’re welcome for my making your life easier.
“What?” you say. “I’m not doing… that… with my cousin!”
Nor should you, sensitive Buzzketeer, nor should you. Necessarily.
But you could. Generally not legally, of course. But it turns out that, genetically, the whole “kissin’ cousins” thing might not be as problematic as you have been lead to believe. So says a new article on population genetics in the journal PLoS Biology.
See, the thing about serious inbreeding with close relatives is that it drains your gene pool—it reduces the variety of genes in your offspring. There are a couple reasons to have a nice assortment of genetic traits in a population. If everyone is the same genetically, then they all have the same genetic vulnerabilities, and something like a specialized disease or an abrupt change in the environment could wipe out the whole group. Also, and here’s the kissin’ cousins problem, a lot of genetic disorders result from having two recessive genes matched up in your DNA. If you just have one recessive gene for a disorder, you won’t develop the disorder, but you could pass that gene on to your kid, and if the kid got another copy of that recessive gene from his or her other parent, the kid would develop the disorder. People get disorders caused by matched recessive genes even when their parents aren’t related at all, but if a recessive gene for a particular disorder runs in a family, the chances that a kid in that family will get the gene from both parents is greatly increased if those parents are related.
That’s the idea, anyway. The folks who published this new article, however, say that, in reality, the chances that the offspring of two cousins will have birth defects (caused by recessive genes pairing up) really isn’t as great as most of us think. Specifically, the odds that two cousins would produce a child with congenital defects are only 1-2% greater than those for the rest of the un-related, child-producing population. Women over 40 have a similar risk of having children with congenital defects, the researchers point out, and there are no laws prohibiting them from having kids, whereas 31 states have laws against cousins being married. Laws like these, they say, aren’t based in solid science and reflect “outmoded prejudices about immigrants and the rural poor.”
So there. Do with your present what you will. Try it on for size, or give it to someone else—you won’t hurt my feelings. Merry Wintermania!
A bin of spares: for future-babies.
Courtesy Max SparberIn many respects, the people of my country—we call it “Futureland” or “Futureworld,” depending on the state—are much like Lego men (minifigs). We have round, cheerful faces, chunky, clunky legs, and square, tapering shoulders. And the women… oh, the women of Futureland are the most beautiful in the world, with their round, cheerful faces, chunky, clunky legs, and square, tapering shoulders. Some might argue that they’re only distinguishable from us men by painted on lipstick and eyelashes… but I don’t see why that has to be a bad thing.
And, like Lego people, our arms are removable and replaceable. We can mix and match! Unfortunately, the process of arm removal is often extremely painful and bloody, and arm replacement involves extensive surgery, an anti-rejection drug regimen, and years of physical therapy. Still… replaceable arms! Yes, life in the future is fine indeed.
Oh? You don’t believe me? Well, put on your chronohats and futurnaut undies and join me up here for a moment, so that we might consider the case of one Karl Merk.
Karl was a German dairy farmer until six years ago, when he elected to have his arms removed. Although… Maybe “elected” isn’t totally accurate. Mr. Merk’s arms were detached just below the shoulders by a combine harvester, and he was screaming “Kill me, kill me!” when he was later discovered by a colleague. So it seems possible that the arm-removal could have been an accident.
Regardless, it wasn’t until just recently that a suitable set of new arms could be found to click back into Karl’s shoulders.
It took a team of 40 surgeons, specialists, and support staff 15 hours to reattach the arms of a donor who had died only hours earlier. The arms were filled with “a cooled preservation solution,” and then detached from the donor’s shoulders at the exact point Mr. Merk’s arms were severed. Merk’s arm stumps were then cut open to expose the bone, muscle, nerve tissue, and blood vessels.
The bones were joined first, followed quickly by arteries and veins, to ensure blood flow. Muscles and tendons were then attached, followed by the nerves, and then the skin was finally sewn together.
Click. Click.
I recommend checking out the video in the page linked to above (under “the case of one Karl Merk”). It has a video of Karl with his new arms. The arms are paler than the rest of Karl, and they look kind of muscley. They’re also kind of wet and shiny looking, which is gross. But they work, and over the next couple years Karl should be able to regain full use of the hands and everything. Because so much of his arms were cut off in the accident, there’s a greater risk that Karl’s body won’t accept the new limbs, but so far there doesn’t signs of rejection.
And that’s life in the future. Tons of painful surgery. And maybe some slightly disproportionally large arms.
Buzz has plenty on organ transplants and the like. Check in out here.
Sorry, sir: You may not understand it, but it understands you.
Courtesy aNantaBI think there’s a pretty good chance that the robots that control the Internet will censor this, so read fast, Buzzketeers.
Web 3.0, or as I like to call it, “Skynet,” is looming closer than ever today. It’s like a big old thunderhead, gray-black, full of lightning, and bearing down on us from above. Except when Skynet 3.0 gets here we aren’t getting wet, we’re getting turned into the freakin’ Borg. (Although we might also get wet, if there are real clouds around too.) And as cool as it would be to have a drill hand and a laser pointer taped to my head, I don’t think I could stand being any more pale. And so we must fight. For my sake.
This week the blossoming threat is taking the form of cleverer computers. Computers with huge, muscular, brick-breaking vocabularies. Computers that don’t just know all the words—they know what all the words mean. Computers like robotic English majors, except they can also do math and get jobs.
See, a “semantic map” has been developed for computers—a program that would allow a computer to “understand” words based on their tenses and contexts. A direct application of this technology would be in search engines; instead of being limited to searching for exact word matches, the program could look for something based on the meaning of your words. For instance, if I were to type “The terminator learns some bodacious new phrases” into Google’s search engine right now, I’d get a bunch of worthless nonsense returned to me. But with an engine that used a semantic map, I like to think that such a search would return to me with some clips from Terminator 2, in which John Connor is teaching the T101 some useful new phrases like “Hasta la vista,” and “hands off the merch, bro,” and “Cheese it! It’s the fuzz!” I could then post these clips on a science blog.
And that, incidentally, is the only positive scenario I could imagine coming from this technology. If I’m searching for, say, “sexy Easter bunny,” I just wants me some pictures of the Easter bunny in a speedo—I don’t want my computer to actually understand what’s wrong with me. And there’ll be no escaping their powerful understanding. Even this early semantic map is said to have a vocabulary 10 times the size of the average college graduate. That’s, like, super… not good.
There is still hope, however, so relax your little fret glands for a moment. I have a plan, and you already know my plan if you read the heading of this post: invent new words. But keep them to yourself—I wouldn’t underestimate Web 3.0 so much to think that it couldn’t figure out what was going on after a while. Also, be sure to change the definitions of already existing words, and change them often. It will be like linguistic guerilla warfare; a definition could pop up in one spot (word) fire off a couple shots, and then it would be gone, already looking for a new hiding place. Web 3.0 might send an air strike against this whole paragraph, but it won’t matter—by the time the missiles get here, the passage will mean something else entirely. My meaning will be setting up a new camp, hopefully in a stand of old swear words.
Are you with me, folks? I knew I could count on you! Progress won’t get us that easily!
In the future, motorcycles won’t be cool.
in Physical Science, Scientific Enterprise, Motion, Flow of Matter and Energy, and Human Organism
A motorcycle race...: In the future!
Courtesy Private CustardA student in the transportation program of the < a href=http://www.artcenter.edu/>Art Center College of Design has invented a brand new paradox: a concept-motorcycle that is somehow simultaneously totally awesome and utterly, hopelessly dorky.
It’s a mega future tri-moto electro cyber transporto THX laser blade runner terminatrix rideable machine.
I guess they call it the conceptual exoskeleton motorcycle, Deus Ex Machina. But I think my name for it is still less dorky.
What? You want an actual description of the vehicle? Well, you could just click on the long link above, and leave Science Buzz forever, but we like you here. So at least read the rest of the post before you go.
The Deus Ex Machina is sort of a wheeled tripod, with straps and an integrated helmet to secure the rider. It parks in an upright position, but once it starts moving, the “arms” of the tripod extend forward, so the rider is in a sort of superman position. The motorcycle steers according to the rider’s body position, translating movement to 36 pneumatic muscles. Like, um, Robocop, I think.
The whole vehicle is powered with electricity, using fancy lithium ion batteries and ultracapacitors (check out ARTiFactor’s post for more on ultracapacitors), and is capable of reaching speeds of around 75 mph.
The Ultra Deus Mega Electromachina motorcycle is still very much conceptual, however. That is to say, while all the technological components exist (in some form) the vehicle itself only exists as a computer rendering at the moment. So it’s probably not very fun to ride. The designer maintains that it’s not a fantasy: “It’s a green vehicle,” he says, “and all of the numbers are based in the real world.”
The design itself seems more based in the Minority Report world, but whatev.
There’s a video here, too.
Oh, good. Cyborg monkeys.
in Life Science, Scientific Enterprise, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
The scariest of robots: And how do I know there's a monkey brain inside? Look how angry it is.
Courtesy litmuseOh, you’re probably the same way—how often do you find yourself thinking, “I wish monkeys were more terrifying. Sure, they’re all fanged little were-men, with hand-feet and clever brains, but there must be some way that they could be worse.”
Pretty often, huh?
And, when you watch the news, don’t you constantly find yourself musing, “Hmm. The future is looking a little too bright.”
Well, don’t worry, Buzzketeers. The future promises to be just as dark and bewildering as ever, and horrifying cyber-apes are part of it.
“Now, JGordon, it can’t be that bad.”
Hey! Don’t sound so disappointed; it is that bad. Skeptical? Check it out for yourself—Sciencemen and Techladies have trained two macaque monkeys to control huge robotic arms…using their monkey brains!
Macaques have shown their evil little faces on Science Buzz before (murderous enthusiasm and enthusiastic murder), and I don’t think a refresher on robots is at all necessary—because there’s no escaping them.
Robotic limbs are becoming kind of a big deal these days, but even the most advanced of them rely on nerves remaining in a partial limb, or another part of the body entirely; which muscles to activate for a certain function must be relearned, or an operation like gripping with a robotic hand can be linked to a movement like shrugging the shoulders. It’s tricky to do, and it pushes the brain’s flexibility, especially considering that the only feedback the limb gives might be a hot or poking sensation at the connection point (this in place of a real limb’s feedback, like the pressure, friction, or warmth one might feel through their hands or feet).
Wiring a prosthetic (or any robotic device) directly into the brain—as was the case with these monkeys and their robot arms—overcomes some of the problems with existing prosthetic technology, while adding some new challenges.
With electrodes implanted right into the brain, relearning limb function can come much more quickly and naturally (awful little monkeys can do it, after all). A little too quickly, actually—a monkey at Duke University was similarly wired up this winter to make a robot in Japan walk, and the robotic body actually received the signals to walk before the monkey’s actual body did. Limbs wired the same way could be too fast or powerful for the brain to initially cope with. You might, say, run into a wall before your brain has time to create another route for your robo-legs; the speed of the limb action would be faster than the speed of thought.
However, if the prosthetics operated with a “closed neural loop,” that is to say if they could be made to provide natural feedback to the brain (like heat, pressure, strain, etc), scientists think that the brain could adapt much more quickly, and could even learn whole new pathways of motion. So a person wired up in the right way might be able to control a plane, or a nanosized robot directly with their mind. And it wouldn’t be something where you would think about walking forward and the plane would fly forward—you would learn the plane’s movements of flying, feel the flying, and control it as if you were the plane. That sort of things is still a long way off, and unless new technology is invented to sense and input to the brain in another way, it would require having a bunch of electrodes stuck through your skull and into your neurons.
This, of course, is all scientific blah be de blah, and if distracts from the real issue behind the story: cyborg monkeys. Do you know what the monkeys were actually taught to do with their metal limbs? Feed themselves. How horrible. Why not just teach them how to operate guns with their minds, or remove human brains through our nasal passageways?
In time, that too will come to pass. Look forward to it.
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