The transparent silk film shown here contains small silicon circuits. A mouse (left) has been disinfected (the orange goo) and is ready to receive the film.

Have you ever dreamed of being a cyborg? Sure, it’s a natural part of going through puberty, but it’s only ever going to be a dream unless scientists can perfect a flexible and reliable way to integrate circuitry into the human body. Thankfully, researchers at Tufts University, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and UPenn have developed tiny silicon circuits that sit on a transparent film. When implanted in a body, that silk completely dissolves over time, leaving just the silicon components which are too small to cause irritation. As reported in a recent article in Applied Physics Letters, the end result is a biocompatable, biodegradable circuit that was successfully bonded onto a mouse. The same circuits could one day provide a better nervous system to machine interface. Or LED tattoos. Either way, it’s going to be exciting.

We’ve seen some amazing technology that connects computers to our nervous system: Braingate, epilepsy controlling shock therapy devices, retinal implants, etc. A consistent problem in these devices, or at the least a limitation, is the way in which metal contacts connect to nerve cells. You can place the contact near the nerve, or pierce the nerve with the contact, but getting the two to touch perfectly is difficult. Even when this is accomplished, the long-term compatibility of the metal isn’t always well known or desirable. That’s where silicon-silk circuits could prove very useful. With a biodegradable film that is flexible and dissolves over time, surgeons could get the circuitry much closer to nerves than before, and in harder to reach folds in the brain, without piercing through connecting tissues. Or in a related use, the silk film could be used to produce circuits that rest near the surface of the skin. We could see LEDs that light up when you’re about to have a heart attack, or that usher in the next generation of body-alteration art.

Research was lead by John Rogers of University of Illinois, and David Kaplan and Fiorenzo Omenetto of Tufts. Rogers has considerable experience with flexible and stretchable silicon circuits, while the Tufts team had been exploring the use of silkworm cocoon proteins. In collaboration with other groups, these researchers were able to create an array of transistors that were each about 1mm long and only 250 nm wide. Gold or titanium metal leads were used to connect the circuit to external contacts.

One of the amazing things about silk film is that a simple saline wash, or even water, will allow it to conform very well to a tissue surface. It’s also already been approved for use in medical implants by the US Food and Drug Administration. As it dissolves in the body it leaves behind harmless by-products. The silicon circuits are likely to be safe as well. Their small size (just nanometers wide) prevent them from causing irritation so far. The gold and titanium leads are not biodegradable, but the next generation of contacts the team uses will be. Overall, the system seems poised to provide an electronics system with unparalleled biocompatibility.

When Ray Kurzweil and others discuss the future of humanity, they often suppose that humans and machines will start to become one and the same. On some level, that’s already happened with the advent of mobile phones and hand held computers. But on the visceral cyborg-with-wires-sticking-out-its-eyes level we’re still a long way off from the marriage of biology and silicon. Work like the biodegradable silicon-silk circuit could lead the way to humans placing more of their electronics inside their own bodies. This could be used to great effect in prosthetics, but may be more popular in cosmetics. Come on, admit it: a watch built into your wrist would be kind of cool.

[photo credit: MIT Technology Review]

$10 of hardware and you could get medical lab results in just five minutes. Insane!

In the field of global medicine, laboratories are a precious commodity. Yet even if a remote village doesn’t have access to a local lab or even a doctor, they may be able to get reliable test results…through a mobile phone. Professor Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA has been developing a series of attachments for phones that will act as microscopes, but without lenses. Using hardware that costs less than $10, these mobile microscopes will be able to use the shadows of cells to detect illnesses. Ozcan, through his new company Microskia, is trying to bring these attachments to market and connect them, via the mobile phone, to a database which will then text the phone with results in just five minutes! Doctors, or maybe anyone with a phone in the field, could use the system to make quick, cheap, and accurate assessments of diseases. Check out the video from UCLA after the break.

Most of the emerging cases of HIV are in India and Africa, where access to central labs is infrequent. Checking blood samples in even the most routine cases can take days. Likewise with Malaria, still one of the biggest killers and most feared infectious diseases in the world. Different versions of Ozcan’s mobile phone attachments could help diagnose patients with these diseases in just minutes, providing better opportunities for care. As this technology develops, private use could expand as well. Imagine being able to take a daily blood sample at home and test it daily for pathogens. You could know you were sick before you ever had symptoms. There are other dangerous microscopic particles besides pathogens. Mobile phone microscopy could help researchers find asbestos, lead, or other environmental poisons quickly. With this level of quick analysis, healthcare and longevity would improve dramatically.

Another team at UC Berkeley has developed a similar product called the cellscope. Ozcan’s device however, uses no lenses, and doesn’t take traditional images of cells. Magnification is done digitally, not optically.The system is called LUCAS or Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging. A mouthful to say, an impressive concept to see in action. Using relatively cheap light emitting diodes, LUCAS is able to form a sort of shadow holography, creating detailed images derived from the transparency of cells. That cell shadow contains a lot of information about the health of the cell.

Unlike traditional light microscopy, LUCAS uses shadows of cells to analyze them. These are stained white blood cells.

When LUCAS is used on a sample, healthy and infected cells are shown side by side. In this way, the analysis is more holistic than traditional light microscopy and could assist researchers in forming the database used to recognize illnesses. That database is very important because LUCAS does not produce traditional images. Untrained medical professionals, and even experienced lab technicians, would not necessarily be able to translate the LUCAS images into a diagnosis on their own.

The cell shadow database, and the LUCAS hardware is still under development. As shown in the UCLA video, there will likely be many different forms of the mobile phone attachments, not just to fit with the various phone models, but also to provide different kinds of imaging in the field. There are versions with USB connections for phones without cameras and at least one version with different color LEDs to help with specific disease recognition.

Ozcan’s system is promising, amazingly so. And while I’m excited about possibilities in global healthcare it may one day provide, I am uncertain how long it will take to realize his goals. The LUCAS database will have to be assembled very thoroughly and designed to handle an impressive amount of traffic in order to serve as a world wide diagnostic tool. Even if confined to more traditional forms of microscopy (like that used by Cellscope), mobile diagnosis would still require an extensive technical support system. Still, Ozcan has a few things going for him: his own dedicated brilliance, and the rise of highly sophisticated narrow artificial intelligence. We may one day see mobile diagnostic tools contacting not a doctor, but an AI that can analyze blood samples in microseconds. Oh the possibilities. We’ll let you know if any of it actually happens.

[photo credits: Ozcan via NY Times]
[video credit: UCLA]

You can catch Ben Goertzel and others discuss the future of AI in videos from the AGI 09 conference.

Sure, there are narrow AI programs that can detect credit card fraud, or help a plane land safely, or even translate languages. But where’s the computer that thinks it’s a person? Where’s the human-like artificial intelligence we were promised in movies? Probably in Ben Goertzel’s lab. Human-like AI, called artificial general intelligence (AGI), is a passion that Goertzel shares with research and industry leaders around the world. They’ve started the AGI conference, which had its second annual meeting in March of this year. Videos from that meeting are finally up on Vimeo, and the AGI 09 schedule is here to help you make sense of their order. I encourage you to watch all 36 or so, it’s like a free ticket to the conference. You probably don’t have the time though, so I included one of my favorites after the break – Robert Swain using many scifi references to explain his attempt at AGI, a program called H.E.L.E.N. K.L.R.

Keith Kleiner had a great interview with Goertzel about AGI in February. In it, Goertzel explains that the time for AGI is either ripe, or getting close to being ripe. Narrow AIs (those intelligent programs which only accomplish a single task or kind of task) are becoming increasingly sophisticated and it may only be a matter of time before one becomes so amazingly successful in its field that it sparks interest in a return to creating a general artificial intelligence. At least, that’s Goertzel’s opinion. Yet after watching him speak in Transcendent Man and at its premier I tend to believe in what he says. He’s a smart dude.

For those interested in learning more about AGI, check out the AGI Research Institute Wiki, which has a plethora of information for you to peruse. Enjoy the videos and check back in with Singularity Hub and we’ll keep you posted on AGI 10.

[photo and video credit: Jeriaska and AGI 09]

iRobot is making a healthcare bot, but what will it be?

TEDMED 2009 just passed and with it came some news about the future of robotics and healthcare. iRobot (Nasdaq: IRBT), the company that brought you the Roomba, is set to enter the healthcare business. As discussed in a press release, Colin Angle (iRobot CEO) announced the creation of a robot (or robots) that will help care for the elderly and ill. The details of the robot haven’t been widely announced, and speculation is still running amok. Will the robot be a medication dispenser, an assistant for household chores, or a floating balloon that helps you lift hard to reach objects?

Tod Loofburrow has been hired to head iRobot’s new Healthcare Business Unit. According to press, that division of the company aims to “add a million years of independent living to its customers.” That goal would seem to sync well with Angle’s TEDMED talk which was titled “Will A Robot Care for My Mom?” All would seem to point to robots that help patients with difficult or important tasks in place of more costly human assistants. So, while we could have seen iRobot try to mimic some of the recently discussed healthcare bots from Panasonic, BotJunkie reported that the robot demonstrated at TEDMED was an airborne vacuum that could help you pick up objects or hold them in place. Until iRobot or TEDMED releases the video of Angle’s presentation, we’ll just have to wait and see. Needless to say, as soon as we know something, you will too.

This is a guest post written by Alexandra Carmichael. She is a co-founder of CureTogether, a Health 2.0 company that brings patients with hundreds of conditions together in overlapping data communities. Alexandra is currently an advisor on the Biotech/Medical Board of the Lifeboat Foundation, a guest blogger at The Quantified Self, and a prolific Tweeter on topics of health and chronic conditions @accarmichael.

I spent last week in San Diego for TEDMED, the medical version of the TED conference. It was an incredible experience for me, almost overwhelming at times with the quality and number of amazing people there. Singularity Hub wrote a preview of the event a few weeks ago.

I spent last week in San Diego for TEDMED, the medical version of the TED conference. It was an incredible experience for me, almost overwhelming at times with the quality and number of amazing people there.

Here are my top 10 takeaways:

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1. Disability to Super-Ability – Mullins, Kamen, Angle

Three incredible stories, told back to back, left the audience in tears and on the edge of their seats.

Prosthetically augmented athlete Aimee Mullins gave a moving account of how being “disabled” has affected her life in a positive way. She reframed our thinking: “Adversity isn’t an obstacle to get around, it’s part of our life. We adapt.”

Dean Kamen spoke of his passion to build prosthetics for war veterans that are ultimately better than real limbs, imparting super-ability to the wearers.

iRobot co-founder Colin Angle continued the story of augmented reality by demonstrating how robots will become caregivers for elders like his mother. “In 2030, every person under 65 will be responsible for the care of a person over 65,” Colin said. “Can robots help with this?”

Saving lives, restoring functional living: these are inspiring applications of robotics and engineering. I highly recommend watching these three TEDMED talks when they are released.

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2. Best iPhone Apps for Health – David Pogue

On a lighter note, New York Times columnist David Pogue gave his run-down of the top health-related iPhone apps. Included on his list:

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• UHear hearing loss test
• SoundAmp hearing aid through your earbuds
• PeriodTracker menstrual cycle tracker for women (and their partners)
• Lose it! weight loss aid
• Eyeglasses magnifying glass
• Anatomy Lab virtual human dissection
• Epocrates drug reference
• Airstrip OB remote fetal/maternal heart monitor
• Allscripts Remote EHR
• Lifescan glucose monitor

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David’s favorite non-health apps?

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• Twittaround – shows you who is Twittering around you in real time
• Nearesttube – augmented reality shows underground subways in the UK
• Ocarina – your iPhone becomes an instrument

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3. Putting Geo-Medicine in your EMR – Bill Davenhall

Here’s a simple idea that could change the way you manage your health.

Bill Davenhall of ESRI showed annotated maps tracking his place history (everywhere he has lived in his life) and the prevalence of various toxic chemicals. The correlation was striking, and he discovered that the level of toxicity he was exposed to in his life may have been a factor in his recent heart attack. Had he known about this geography-based risk, he might have taken better care of his health.

Bill advocates for a kind of geospatial medicine in which you and your doctor have access to your place history directly in your electronic medical record. I’d like to add this new dimension to my own Quantified Self tracking.

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4. Two Remarkable Women – Kris Carr and Donna Karan

I got to have dinner one night with filmmaker Kris Carr and designer Donna Karan.

Kris is a cancer survivor who runs Crazy Sexy Life, an incredible community and resource to inspire anyone struggling with disease. A self-described “wellness warrior”, she asks the question, “Why, when we are challenged to survive, do we give ourselves permission to truly live?”

Donna Karan took the stage the next day and asked, “How do you find the calm in the chaos and treat the whole patient?” This question is the inspiration for her Urban Zen Foundation, which focuses on wellness, empowering children, and preserving cultures in New York City. There is strong undertone of peace in Urban Zen. I think this model could have a powerful impact if it were replicated across the country and around the world.

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5. Two Remarkable Men – Jesse Dylan and Aaron Rowe

These two guys are among the most helpful, genuine people I’ve ever met.

Jesse Dylan is the creative genius behind such projects as the Obama “Yes We Can” video with Will.I.Am. He is also the founder of Lybba, a non-profit dedicated to bringing patients, doctors, hospitals, and researchers together in a collaborative, comprehensive conversation on the world’s medical knowledge. He started Lybba after his family’s experience with Chron’s disease, and wants to empower patients with the resources they need to make better health decisions. Hooray!

Aaron Rowe is a biochemistry PhD student and writer for Wired Science. He has an insightful stream of tweets @soychemist, and if I could bottle half of his helpfulness, I’d be a happy camper. Watch for great things to come from Aaron. His thoughts on the TEDMED conference can be found here.

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6. Emotional Learning Curriculum for Kids – Goldie Hawn

As a mother of two daughters, I am very grateful for Goldie Hawn’s foundation and the message she delivered from the TEDMED stage.

“We need to rethink our whole approach to classroom education, integrating neuroscience with the latest social and emotional learning techniques. A peaceful, happy child is the first step toward a peaceful world.”

Social/emotional learning is such an important, often neglected area of human development. This approach should be in the hands and minds of every teacher, every parent, and every legislator, to learn ourselves and to share with our children.

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7. What do People Eat? – Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio

Documentary photographers Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio have published a series of provocative books to make us rethink our perceptions of the world. They tackle food consumption, intelligent robots, eating insects, material consumption, and how women live.

Their newest book, due for release next August, is called What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets. They interviewed 80 people from around the world and gathered together all the food each one eats in a single day. After the photo shoot, they meticulously weighed each item and calculated total caloric content for each person’s day. From the 1300 calorie diet of a caloric restriction/life extension enthusiast to the 6600 calorie diet of a recovering meth addict, the spectrum is broad and fascinating.

I love the visual impact of these books, their global message, and the discussions they inspire among people of all ages and backgrounds.

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8. Building Organs with an Ink-Jet Printer – Anthony Atala

Yes, this is actually being done in the lab of Anthony Atala today. He is the Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina. One of the projects they are working on is building functional, beating heart valves, which they exercise in a bioreactor to help precondition them for implantation.

Anthony showed a video of the regular ink-jet printer they hijacked, using cells to print a heart valve that actually started beating! This was one of the coolest TEDMED demos, for sure.

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9. Visualizing Depression – Alexander Tsiaras

Futuristic medical visualizations from XVIVO and Alexander Tsiaras’ thevisualMD were peppered throughout the conference. One of the most amazing was this one, showing how depression actually causes structural changes in the brain.

From thevisualMD website, “Regions of the brain that may be affected by depression include the ventricles, corpus callosum, hippocampus, and all parts of the limbic system- which is involved with emotion formation as well as processing, learning, and memory.”

Alexander said these visualizations are helping people understand the changes and processes that are happening in their bodies, which results in more patient compliance and hopefully better health.

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10. The Art of the Spoken Word – Sekou Andrews

By far my favorite performance at TEDMED was the opening spoken word piece by the incomparable Sekou Andrews. He elegantly threaded themes from each speaker’s topic into a passionate, soul-bursting anthem engaging the audience to “be well and do good.”

It’s hard to capture in words how electrifying Sekou was, especially from my vantage point in the first row, but I certainly hope I get to see him perform again.

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So these are my top 10 takeaways. Honorable mentions go to HopeLab for the games they are developing to help kids understand and improve their health, and to The Fun Theory for their approach to making behavior change fun.

Where have all the forward thinking business executives gone? They’re in school. We warned you it was coming, and now it’s here: Singularity University’s inaugural executive program began last week at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley. The nine day course will allow industry leaders and MBA students to listen to some of the most innovative thinkers discuss the future of technology. Already, execs have attended classes, explored nearby companies, and driven around in a cherry red Tesla roadster (see the video after the break).

Part of Singularity University’s unique approach to executive training focuses on getting attendees to use social networking to connect their experience to the wider world. You can follow most of what happens in the program on SU’s twitter feed. Making their $15,000 per person program as transparent and publicly accessible as possible is a revolutionary, and some might say, economically dangerous idea. Why pay for the university cow when you get the cyber milk for free? Yet, Singularity University is betting that the uniqueness of their program will continually attract new attendees while recognizing that part of that program is wasted if it can’t be shared with the global community. You get the feeling that SU is trying to show that the new executive must be globally conscience and future-minded.

Video from David Orban, Singularity University Advisor:

Already, SU exec program attendees have heard some great talks. There were big name futurists like Ray Kurzweil who gave an opening address. But you also have innovators like Andrew Hessel, one of the founders of openwetware the wiki for synthetic biology. The curriculum (shared in part with the summer session) is expansive and execs may also get special visits from experts like Jonathan Zittrain (cyber-law guru) and others. If it deals with the future, and fits in a nine-day session, you can bet SU is trying to include it in their executive program.

Of course, one of the great things about short programs such as this one is that they can be repeated fairly regularly. The next session begins in February, and interested parties can sign up at the Singularity University website. With each session limited to 40 people it’s going to be interesting to see how quickly this next one fills up.

Andrew Hessel and David Orban get a chance to try out the Tesla Roadster. Nice perk.

As neither an executive, nor a student with $15k to spend on continuing education, my interest in the SU nine day program is centered less on the curriculum than on the projects that may arise from it. The summer session led to the development of a new car-sharing company (Gettaround, mentioned in our iPhone Zipcar story). With less time, but more industrial clout, I wonder what kind of new products, philosophies, or synergies are being born this week in the halls of Singularity University. A lot could happen in nine days. Especially if those execs stop joy-riding around in roadsters.

*Disclosure: Keith Kleiner (owner of Singularity Hub) is an Associate Founder at Singularity University.
[photo credits: Singularity University, Rod Furlan via David Orban]
[video credit: David Orban]

A few weeks ago I discussed Vitamin D Video, the software system which acts like the human brain to find people and objects of interest in a recording. Vitamin D takes hours of tedious camera footage and reduces it to the few minutes or moments of interest that you want to see. An independent offshoot of Numenta, Vitamin D just launched its free beta release today. I was able to get my hands on a copy of the program, and wow. This is some powerful code and it could make a big splash when the final version debuts in the first half of 2010. Check out the new demonstration video here, or watch the old demonstration video after the break.

Vitamin D Video is out in Beta. The User interface is simple and easy to use, but designing filters is something of an art.

To give you some background, Vitamin D Video uses Hierarchical Temporal Memory architecture first developed by Numenta to help recognize objects of importance even if they are moving, clipped, or otherwise complicated. The beta works with IP cameras or webcams, with user defined filters that you design through a simple interface. People are highlighted in yellow boxes, objects in green, and recording can be triggered as doors open, things move into a space, etc. If successful, VDV could improve the use of security cameras world over, as a computer could be used to actively monitor and sift through video in place of costly (and easily bored) humans. Vitamin D hopes that it will become the cheap, easy, but also sophisticated alternative to the more costly video recognition software already on the market.

While there are enough kinks to demonstrate that it is obviously still in beta, overall Vitamin D Video runs well. I had the software downloaded, calibrated, and running in less than 10 minutes start to finish. Using just my webcam, I was able to test VDV’s object and person recognition scanning and its email and sound notification. Basically, I ran the camera for 3 hours and told VDV to record anytime I walked in the room, or when an object touched my ceiling. These filters were fairly easy to build on my own, though I did have to consult the Vitamin D reference guide here and there.

The crazy thing was, while VDV is built as a means to reduce the amount of video you have to sift through, my filters didn’t work in that manner. Oh, there was some reduction, I went from three hours of footage to a highlight reel that was about one hour long, but’s still too much to watch quickly. Passing through the selected clips at 3x speed helped, but not much. The problem was that my filters were too broad and triggered too easily. That isn’t VDV’s fault, but it does point out an issue with this program. While it is definitely easy to get started, it will take a good period of trial and error before a user feels confident that they are only going to record what they want.

As for the details of my personal experience…well let me preface this by saying that I was giddy getting to play with a new toy. I experimented with different lighting levels, object transparency, and speed of travel. VDV can track a black plastic hair comb as it hits a white ceiling. It isn’t fooled if you walk in backwards or with your shirt pulled over your head. It can even notice if a clear piece of plastic is slowly brought into frame (though it may have triggered off the attached piece of string). Oh, and I can verify that a grown human running at full speed and leaping through the air will be detected. And slightly injured.

There were some limits. The software had trouble triggering when an object was in front of an overexposed white background in strong light. VDV couldn’t always identify objects as objects and people as people (my hair, judging by the green box, is only sometimes human). It often assumed that a hand holding an object was part of the object. All of these limitations may have easy software fixes (I’m still reading through the guide and testing the program to see) but they have even easier user fixes: don’t point your camera at a light source, and take extra care when designing your filters. Ultimately, unless you’re looking for a polar bear in a blizzard I think Vitamin D Video can probably work just fine for any personal or small business applications you can dream up.

Also, why these aren’t limitations exactly, I was instantly annoyed by the audio and email notifications. Again, my triggers were too sensitive, but hearing “person detected…recording video” every five seconds drove me homicidal very quickly. You can use custom .wav files for audio notifications. Hearing Christopher Walken say hello when you walk into a room is fun, but still annoying after 20 triggers. The email system was the same…but with email. I’m sure you can imagine.

Still, I’m happy to report that everything in the beta seems to work, if a bit slowly. VDV takes a long time to load as it organizes your clips for you. I once thought my computer had frozen, but with Vista, that’s pretty much par for the course. VDV also wants to use 25 gigabytes to store data, but I think that’s to be expected considering its function. If you’d like to play with the new software, try signing up for the beta and let me know what you think. For now, I’m going back to testing. I wonder if VDV will recognize a mannequin as a human being.

[photo and video credit: Vitamin D Video]

That little pink patch is Digital Plaster, a disposable and wireless way to track your vital signs.

Patients at a hospital seem to be caught in a web of wires, sticky pads, and monitors, but that may all change very soon. According to the recent press release,  Toumaz Technology, makers of the Sensium biomonitoring platform, are working with Imperial College London to test Digital Plaster, a wireless and disposable patch that transmits a patient’s vital signs. The trial will test to see if Digital Plaster works as well as traditional gold-standard monitors and should finish by the end of this year. If it proves successful, Toumaz could set the industry standard for disposable wireless health monitors.

When I talked with Keith Errey, CEO of Toumaz, this summer the digital plaster concept was just being sent off for large scale production. Seeing this trial underway lends credit to the other possibilities for which the Sensium technology is slated (such as expanding into veterinary, military, and law enforcement).Eventually, the disposable monitor (which already measures heart rate, temperature, and respiration) could be the only piece of equipment on your body when you are in a hospital. Slap it on when you come in, throw it away when you leave, digital plaster could simplify your stay and remove the need for all the wires. Digital Plaster will also allow doctors to have access to patients’ vital signs, or be alerted to their change, via secure link on a mobile phone.

Want to check your patient's vital signs? One day, iPhone could have an app for that.

The trial for Digital Plaster will take place in three parts: non-patient volunteers, then patients after surgery, and general patients with a specific healthcare problem. These sections should give researchers insight into how the technology excels or fails in different situations in a hospital setting. Even if the results from the trial are less than appealing, the basic premise for the technology is sound. As the number of vital signs doctors are interested in increases, and monitors produce more data, it will become very important to have a single point of access to all that information. The Sensium platform, or another technology like it, could be such an access point and help doctors keep track of patients in real time. Hopefully that will lead to healthier and happier hospital visits.

[photo credits: Toumaz Technology]

Computers can now write a baseball news article. America's pastime just went 21st century.

Sports writers are sharpening their pencils and maliciously eying their laptops as researchers in the Intelligent Informations Lab at Northwestern University announce that they’ve created a program that can write a convincing baseball news story without human help. Called Stats Monkey, the new computer software analyzes the box scores, and play by plays to automatically generate the news article. It highlights key players and clutch plays and will even write an appropriate headline and find a matching photo for a few player! Check out a sample story written by Stats Monkey after the break.

Not satisfied with worrying only baseball sports writers, developers say Stats Monkey could be adapted to any situation with a heavy helping of statistical data. Translation: it could work for every sport humans like to read about. Moreover, Stats Monkey could be adapted to write business stories, or conference updates, or other forms of professional journalism that rely heavily on numbers and analytics. Writing, it seems, is no longer immune from automation.

Stats Monkey basically combines two sections of code: the first uses baseball analysis algorithms to determine what actions in the game were important. The second part of code selects from several archetypal narrative arcs (the come from behind win, the landslide victory, etc) and adapts one to fit the stats of the game. It can even write from the point of view of either team. That’s more than can be said of some sports journalists out there.

Without further ado, check out the Stats Monkey story for the October 11th playoff game between the Angels and Red Sox:

BOSTON — Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday.
Guerrero drove in two Angels runners. He went 2-4 at the plate.
“When it comes down to honoring Nick Adenhart, and what happened in April in Anaheim, yes, it probably was the biggest hit (of my career),” Guerrero said. “Because I’m dedicating that to a former teammate, a guy that passed away.”
Guerrero has been good at the plate all season, especially in day games. During day games Guerrero has a .794 OPS. He has hit five home runs and driven in 13 runners in 26 games in day games.
After Chone Figgins walked, Bobby Abreu doubled and Torii Hunter was intentionally walked, the Angels were leading by one when Guerrero came to the plate against Jonathan Papelbon with two outs and the bases loaded in the ninth inning. He singled scoring Abreu from second and Figgins from third, which gave Angels the lead for good.
The Angels clinched the AL Division Series 3-0.
Angels starter Scott Kazmir struggled, allowing five runs in six innings, but the bullpen allowed only one runs and the offense banged out 11 hits to pick up the slack and secure the victory for the Angels.
J.D. Drew drove in two Red Sox runners. He went 1-4 at the plate.
Drew homered in the fourth inning scoring Mike Lowell.
“That felt like a big swing at the time,” said Drew. “I stayed inside the ball and put a good swing on it. I was definitely going to be ready to battle again tomorrow, but it didn’t work out.”
Drew has been excellent at the plate all season, especially in day games. During day games Drew has a .914 OPS. He has hit five home runs and driven in 17 runners in 36 games in day games.
Papelbon blew the game for Boston with a blown save. Papelbon allowed three runs on four hits in one inning.
Reliever Darren Oliver got the win for Los Angeles. He allowed no runs over one-third of an inning. The Los Angeles lefty struck out none, walked none and surrendered no hits.
Los Angeles closer Brian Fuentes got the final three outs to record the save.
Juan Rivera and Kendry Morales helped lead the Angels. They combined for three hits, three RBIs and one run scored.
Four relief pitchers finished off the game for Los Angeles. Jason Bulger faced four batters in relief out of the bullpen, while Kevin Jepsen managed to record two outs to aid the victory.

The news that Stats Monkey is even attempting to replace them should have writers everywhere gathering up powerful magnets and heading to Northwestern’s hard drives to extract some retribution. As it is, many journalists have taken a humorous spin on the situation (some quite defensive). That could be laughter in the face of death. It seems almost inevitable that at least some forms of writing will be automated, and sooner than expected. As such, I’d like to take the time to make a confession: I’m actually a computer program. And not even a very sophisticated one at that. Whew. Feels good to get that off my virtual chest.

[photo credit and quoted story credit: Northwestern University, Intelligent Informations Lab]

What do you get when you combine massive video projectors and lots of time? A pinball machine you can play on the side of a building. Urban Screen, the German company that brought the ‘dreams’ of the Kunsthalle Museum to life have actually been responsible for a bunch of other really cool projects. For the Viertelfest Bremen (a sort of street festival), Urban Screen created Pinwall, the pinball game projected onto the face of a house. It’s augmented reality writ large, with the ball interacting with the countours of the building. Check out the video after the break.

Projectors + Digital Graphics = Augmented Reality Pinball on your house.

In a similar feat, Urban Screen also turned a building into an augmented reality playscape. In “Jump”, the team recorded a group of gymnasts moving through small windows on a blue screen. These images were then superimposed onto a building, giving the illusion that humans were climbing and maneuvering through it. Definitely very cool. A video of “Jump” is below.

Of course, both of these projects are a couple of years old (from 2007), so I’m anxious to see what Urban Screen will cook up next. Make sure to check out their channel on Vimeo and hopefully they’ll keep creating some great augmented reality environments to match our urban ones.

[screen capture and video credits: Urban Screen]

Why do robots need breasts? Why?!

Wow. Just wow. I’m not sure what it says about robotics, toys, or gender studies, but the new Femisapien from Wowwee is ready to blow your mind with its mechanical wiles. Building on the success of their earlier Robosapien robot, Wowwee’s newest creation includes all the innovations of its predecessors wrapped in a feminine shell. The toy bot stands just 15 inches high but its packed with programmed moves, learning capabilities, and the desire to sing. Some of this you’re just going to have to see for yourself, check out the videos after the break.

I don’t know if the Femisapien is the first step to kinky sex androids, but Wowwee definitely infused the bot with plenty of stereotypical feminine attributes. It can perform a hip swaying runway walk, blow kisses, and sing back up to any radio in range. I’m sure someone in academia is going to write a doctoral thesis on the social implications of a gendered robot, but my guess is that Wowwee intended for Femisapien demeanor to be tongue-in-cheek. Either way, at just $90, the womanly automaton could be the 21st century version of a talking doll.

Despite the female frame, Femisapien is all robot on the inside. It comes with three active modes which a user can access by tilting its head. The Responsive mode is the most general, allowing the bot to walk around, perform programmed routines, and avoid obstacles. In Attentive mode, Femisapien will pose for you, sing back up (called the ’shoop feature’), dance, talk, and blow kisses. The Learning mode lets you articulate the bot to record an impressive 80 steps of movement. What can you do with 80 steps? Get two robots to fence, apparently:

So when it comes to robots acting feminine I’m not sure what to think. Kitschy? Offensive? Hilarious? Enticing? However you feel about the Femisapien, there’s no doubt that it’s an impressive feat of robotic engineering. Enjoy the robot and its shapely figure if you like. Just don’t enjoy too much. Mmmkay?

*UPDATE: Robert Oschler has added a link to his indepth review of the Femisapien in the comments section. Robert can get the robot to perform some really really great moves. Check it out.

[photo and video credits: Wowwee]

University of California San Diego is organizing a collectively-created visual model of the mouse brain. Open up, Mickey, it's time to see what's inside.

It may sound like the premise for the next roller coaster ride at Disney Land, but UC San Diego is serious about letting you take a virtual voyage through the brain of a mouse. Their new open source resource, called the Whole Brain Catalog, allows scientists to navigate through a visual model of a mouse brain. Not only that, but each research team can also upload their latest results helping to improve the accuracy of the WBC overtime. UCSD hopes that their new creation will prove to be a valuable utility for scientists all over the world. Watch a brief demo of the catalog in the video after the break.

Much like MIT’s Registry for Standard Biological Parts, or even Google Earth, the Whole Brain Catalog hopes to build off of collective knowledge. Individual research groups contributing to a central repository of information is going to change the way the scientific community works. In the short term, teams around the world will have access to a visual model of the brain that is used most often in their labs. In the long term, the success of WBC could help usher in a new era of the rapid exchange of scientific information. The quicker that researchers can share their results, the faster other teams can benefit from them, and the sooner we will all enjoy the technological innovations they create.

The video tour you just watched is a cool visual trek, but it doesn’t really highlight all of the capabilities that the Whole Brain Catalog will contain. Yes, the resource will be multi-scale, letting you explore the brain as a whole, or in components right down to the subcellular level. Just as importantly though, it will be open source, and downloadable – giving researchers easy access and a chance to edit its contents. Those contents will be searchable, so that you can type in “hypothalamus” and jump straight to that portion of the mouse brain.

Rather amazingly, the WBC will be at such high resolution that it will be able to simulate neural connections. By building off the scientific results of various teams around the world, these simulations could help form a highly accurate model of a functioning mammalian brain. No small feat.

The WBC shares some ultimate goals of human brain simulators like the Blue Brain Project. Mouse brains, however, offer some unique advantages. They are simpler, more easily explored, and researchers in many countries have a shared standard by which they are examined and discussed. Eventually, the information included in the Whole Brain Catalog could make it a unique resource for neurological studies, made all the more special and powerful by its open source nature. It’s much too early to tell if UC San Diego’s attempt will ultimately be successful, but I wish it luck. And if Disney wants to start on making an associated ride, I have some ideas already: 3D Neuron Laser Tag. It’ll be amazing, trust me.

[screen capture and video credit: Whole Brain Catalog]

Complete Genomics is providing 100 whole genomes sequences to ISB. It's the largest genetic association study of its kind to date.

The era of genetic studies based on whole genome sequencing is definitely upon us. According to a recent press release, Complete Genomics will provide the Institute for Systems Biology with 100 (nearly) whole genome sequences to research Huntington’s disease – a degenerative brain condition which affects nearly 1 in 10,000 people in the US. This will be the largest genetic association study of its kind ever. While the genetic causes for Huntington’s are well understood, the study will focus on the unknown “disease modifiers” – genes that cause the variation in severity in patients. If successful, the ISB study will also boost Complete Genomics’ reputation for sequencing.

There are many ways to associate genes with diseases. Companies like 23andMe regularly use SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) to identify individuals with high risks for certain conditions. The ISB study, however, will examine nearly all of the genome – looking at SNPs, and sequences of DNA that cannot be analyzed with today’s SNP technology. As whole genome sequencing becomes cheaper (CG is at $20k and dropping) more and more research institutes will be able to follow in ISB’s footsteps and find important discoveries in the less well known stretches of your DNA. That’s going to lead to a better understanding of the associations between illness and genetics and ultimately provide you with improved healthcare.

Of course, the study isn’t remarkable simply for using whole genome sequences, it’s the number of those genomes that’s impressive. 100 genomes (probably around $20k each) is a substantial research investment. ISB is taking advantage of the patient pool size by looking at volunteers with severe forms of Huntington’s, members that exhibit a family history of the disease, unaffected family members, and control groups. This comprehensive sampling will likely be necessary as the “disease modifiers” could consist of several unknown genes interacting together. The more data ISB collects from CG, the better the associations they can form.

The mountain of data could be a problem, however. Great advancements have been made in lowering the costs of whole genome sequencing, but now the cheaper tests are increasing the size of data sets that scientists have to pour through. Undoubtedly ISB will analyze the data as quickly and completely as they can, but 3 billion base pairs per genome…that’s going to take some major computing power and time.

While ISB’s research may be a boon to sufferers from Huntington’s, the guaranteed winner is Complete Genomics. This is the first large sequence study that CG will attempt with their newly expanded facilities. It also puts them squarely on the path to achieving their goal of sequencing 10,000 genomes by the end of 2010. By expanding the range of DNA analysis to outside the standard set of SNPs, CG and other whole genome sequence companies are allowing geneticists to really examine the exome (protein coding sections) and regulatory portions of DNA. As CG, Illumina, and others make whole genome sequencing more affordable, these associated scientific advantages will become even more desirable. That’s going to mean big business growth in the next few years. Hopefully it will also mean big successes in medicine as well.

[photo credit Nova, PBS]

Adept Quattro - world's fastest packaging robot.

Watch out Flexpicker, there’s a new quick draw robot in town. According to the latest press release from Adept Technology(NASDAQ: ADEP) their new Quattro s650 is the fastest packing robot ever built. Working at over 300 cycles per minute, this new bot sorts, stacks, and places product like a mad man. Check out the video from BotJunkie after the break.

The secret to Quattro’s success is its four arms, one more than Flexpicker, which allow it to move precisely under higher accelerations. It also has a higher load capacity (>2kg) and slightly better range of motion in all three dimensions. Hopefully we won’t see a race to increase arms on industrial robots they way we’ve seen blades added to razors (though the use of “quattro” implies a “cinque”). Still, there’s no doubt that Adept’s pursuit of increasing speed and accuracy isn’t going to stop and is likely to push its competitors towards the same end. Quattro is the fastest, but for how long?

I don’t know if it’s as cost efficient as other industrial robots, but Quattro sure looks impressive. Watch the way it sorts irregular shaped chocolates into a box at 1:05, or the pure speed it displays at 1:32 – this isn’t sped up, it’s in real time! As a competitive nod to Flexpicker, Quattro even takes on pancakes at 1:28.

If moving food around on conveyor belts doesn’t do it for you, the following video shows off Quattro’s metallic balls. With customary agility, the robot precisely moves steel spheres on a tray as it moves. Not a useful skill perhaps, but it’s a great demonstration. Make sure you watch around 1:06 to hear Quattro’s whip-like speed. And is it just me, or does the segment around 3:00 remind you of a certain android’s knife trick?

The automated workforce is no longer a science fiction dream, it’s a manufacturing reality. While bots like Flexpicker and Quattro can vie for the “fastest packaging machine in the world” award, the important thing is that they’ve already surpassed human agility and precision. I’m sure there are many such jobs that these bots can’t perform yet (chick sexing, musical instrument construction, etc)but just give them time. In the meantime, hats off to Adept for upping the ante in industrial robots. Quattro has the title for now, I can’t wait to see what the next challenger can do.

[photo and video credit: Adept Technologies, BotJunkie]

Judging by ROPID's bravado, you'd never know it was 38cm tall.

Some robots get all the girls. Not only is ROPID one of the only toy-sized robots that can run and jump, it likes to walk around with a healthy dose of swagger. The latest creation of Japanese robotics guru Tomotaka Takahashi, ROPID has all the cuteness of an anime hero and some of the moves too. Using voice commands, you can get the robot to run, skip, jump in place, or strut while maintaining perfect balance. Not bad, little guy. Check out some of his moves in the videos after the break.

Humanoid robots are starting to divide into two categories: robots that will work, and robots that will endear themselves to humans. There’s no doubt that Motoman is one of the former while ROPID fits firmly in the latter. Much like Hanson Robotics’ Zeno, ROPID’s appeal is somewhat in its small size and cuteness. At only 38 cm (15 in) tall, the little bot makes the most of its big eyes and high pitched voice. Robotics engineers sometimes worry about how humans will accept mechanical workers in their presence, but I’ve got to say, just give them big eyes and I’m sure we won’t have a problem.

You can check out ROPID’s voice response moves in the press meeting video below from Robot Watch Impress. While I’m impressed that the little bot can do so much, it’s pretty clear that the voice recognition is still in beta. The operator has to repeat himself fairly often. Perhaps that’s due to ambient noise? Still, watching the bot jump in slow motion is pretty cool.

Those familiar with Takahashi or his Robo-Garage line of robotics will notice that many of ROPID’s moves, even his style and swagger, are copied from earlier models. As you can see in the video of Chroino (another Robo-Garage bot), ROPID owes a lot to its predecessors. I’m not going to include them all here, but if you look at other Chroino videos on YouTube, you can see that almost every movement ROPID makes, Chroino did first.

Which isn’t to say that ROPID isn’t new and innovative. We’re definitely looking at some great speed and dynamic balance that is unique, and the voice commands are a nice feature. I guess ROPID is really just another step towards…who knows…a robotic companion for your child? Or maybe a robotic child? I wouldn’t put it past Takahashi. The guys knows cute bots. Still, no matter what role humanoid toy robots will eventually fill in our lives, we’re likely to see many more of them in the future. Maybe they’ll teach me how to strut around and be cool.

Unlikely.

[photo credit: Robo-Garage]
[video credit: Robo-Garage, Robot Watch Impress]