Larry Page, Google's CEO, talks about the bets the company took and how to ambitiously dream big.

In a talk titled “Beyond Today”, Google’s CEO Larry Page infused Zeitgeist 2012 attendees with a healthy dose of optimism and a call to make ambitious bets, be better organized and work harder to accelerate technology and improve people’s lives. Donning a Google Glass prototype, he began his talk casually demoing the tech by saying, ”If you guys are going to take my picture, I’ll take your picture too.” Then with a voice command and the tap on the side of the frame, he shared it with everyone at Google. That simple action captured the flavor of his two-part talk, which highlighted Google’s current efforts and cast a vision for where Google is headed next, guided by a slogan he borrowed from a University of Michigan summer leadership course: “Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.”

We’ve been painting a picture of a bright technological future here at Singularity Hub, and now Larry Page is here to bolster our argument.

Dropping a handful of mantra-like sayings, such as “Our job is to make the world better,” Larry explained that since his return to the position of CEO about a year ago, he has helped sharpen what Google should be doing by focusing on important things that would make a difference. Under his direction, Google has been becoming more streamlined by letting go of about 30 projects and picking out about four areas of focus: Google+, search, mobile, and integration across services.

You can watch the whole presentation below:

Describing Google+ as the “social spine of Google”, Larry said, “We think that it’s important that when you are using Google, you be able to easily share things.” He explained that he could share the photo he took with Google Glass easily because he used the circle for the company he set up in Google+. “Everything in Google gets better by being able to share and have identity.” As a social network, Google+ now has 170 million users and has grown “much faster” than any other social network ever has.

Illustrating a key improvement to search – personalized search results – he mentioned how much easier it is now to find his co-worker “Ben Smith” in his search results now that Google recognizes Ben as a person and not a string of characters. “If you used Google [search] from five year ago, you’d be astounded at how bad it was. Search has gotten a lot better. You don’t always see it, because we change it every day and try not to distract you too much with changes.” He then went on to talk about his excitement for the latest search upgrade, Knowledge Panels, which are generated from Knowledge Graph and aim to synthesize knowledge. “What we’re really trying to do its get to the point where we can represent knowledge and do much more complicated types of queries, like ‘What are the 20 deepest lakes?’ or ‘What are the highest market cap companies?’”

Painting a picture of how far Android has come, Larry pointed out that Android is “really on fire now” and gave insight into how transformative mobile technology is: “It’s exciting to see that everyone in the world is going to get a smartphone now. For most people probably in the world, it’s going to be their first computer. It’s not a question of if now, it’s a question of when.”

He also said Google is focused on making an “amazing, beautiful, seamless experience” across its applications, citing how Chrome instantaneously syncs between mobile and desktop as well as how Google Play removes the need for downloading apps or files to each device if you want to play games or watch movies.

Having started his talk by casting a bird’s eye view of all the change that technology is bringing, he said, “It’s easy to think about technology as being relatively static…but that’s not really what’s happening. I think the pace of change is really accelerating.” In the second half, he returned to this future-focused viewpoint, giving insight into how Google decides what to focus on by using what he called the Toothbrush Test: “Do you use it as often as you use a toothbrush?”

Pointing to the $1.4 billion purchase of YouTube, he said it was a big bet but Google knew it was a popular service and fortunately, YouTube has been doubling revenue for the last four years. He also mentioned having the courage to fail, citing how AdSense was the result of a failed experiment to understand the web. He encouraged the listeners to be prepared to try new, crazy ideas, saying, “It’s often easier to make progress when you’re really ambitious. The reason is you actually don’t have any competition because no one is willing to try those things. You also get all the best people.” He used the Google self-driving car as an example of a crazy project that has enormous potential to change. Finally, he said, “Anything you can imagine is probably doable. You just have to imagine and work on it.” He pointed to Google Translate, which developers initially said couldn’t measure up to a human translator, but now, 64 languages can be translated into one another instantly and for free.

Altogether, Larry’s 20-minute talk presents some insights into the Google worldview, both in terms of where the company invests its energy and how it is shaping the future. But his real message extended beyond Google’s accomplishments and aimed squarely at encouraging people to make bold dreams that take advantage of the amazing opportunities modern technology provides and is capable of. The moments in his talk when his excitement came through earmarked an insider’s vision of a rapidly approaching reality that will be amazing.

Who knew Larry was a Singularitarian?

[Media: YouTube]

[Sources: YouTube]

The Dragon docked to the International Space Station Friday and SpaceX made history.

The era of commercial spaceflight has begun.

Early Friday morning SpaceX, a private company with less than 2,000 employees and and average age of 30, entered a domain that had until now been – literally and figuratively – occupied by big governments with really big budgets. Their Dragon spacecraft successfully docked to the International Space Station, the first privately funded spacecraft to do so.

But not without difficulty.

Before the Dragon was reeled in it performed a series of test maneuvers to show that it could be controlled from both the ground and the ISS. The first test included an approach towards the station. At some point astronaut Andre Kuipers sent it an abort command, after which the Dragon stopped its approach and returned to its hold position 250 meters from the station. But the test wasn’t a clean pass. Kuipers had sent a command for the Dragon to move to a position 235 meters away, but problems with the Dragon’s thermal camera made the gumdrop-shaped craft move to 250 meters away.

In another test, the Dragon’s LIDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors were fouled by reflections coming from the Japanese Kibo experiment module on the station, causing it to miscalculate its position. SpaceX engineers got around this by narrowing the LIDAR’s detection range and focusing on the path it would take to during its approach to the ISS. Mission control was still worried about the now-limited LIDAR and were prepared to abort should it fail.

But it didn’t. The Dragon, at a standstill 10 meters from the station, awaited as astronaut Don Pettit reached out to it with the robotic arm. Capture was confirmed at 6:56 a.m. PDT. For the next two hours the Dragon was slowly drawn towards the station. When it finally attached to a docking station at 8:52 a.m. over the skies of Australia, the Dragon became the first private spacecraft to deliver cargo to Earth orbit.

The Dragon, being drawn in by the International Space Station's robotic arm.

Pettit said, “Looks like we’ve got a Dragon by the tail,” and jubilant cheers erupted in mission control in Houston and SpaceX’s control center in Hawthorne, California.

The Dragon had brought 1,014 pounds (460 kilograms) of cargo, including food, water, and computers. Purposefully, none of the supplies are essential given that there was no assurance that the Dragon would successfully complete the trip. Also on board was an experiment devised by 14-year-old DC native Kyra Smith that the astronauts will perform to test if bacteria can be used to purify water. The astronauts will fill the Dragon with 1,367 pounds (620 kilograms) of cargo before sending it on its way back to Earth. The historic splashdown is planned for May 31 in the Pacific Ocean.

As routine as it may seem in an age where shuttle launches have long since ceased to be headline news, getting to space is still wrought with mishaps, delays, and occasionally disaster. The Dragon’s original launch date was planned for February 7, but was scratched due to a number of problems including software glitches. And last Saturday one of the Falcon 9 engines showed an unusual buildup of pressure, prompting the launch to be aborted just half a second before blastoff.

And SpaceX still has a lot of work to do if they’re going to be more than just a cargo lift. Transporting astronauts is vastly more technically challenging than transporting freeze-dried ice cream. But SpaceX founder Elon Musk, buoyed by the successful docking, is already talking about flying people to Mars, other planets, the stretch of the solar system. The indomitable Musk, who also designed the electric Tesla Roadster and was instrumental in the creation of the company which became Paypal, said SpaceX could be ready to fly astronauts by 2015. SpaceX will have to prove itself first, though, and they’re slated to begin doing just that this September with the first of 12 deliveries to the ISS contracted with NASA.

But maybe the best part of all this is that SpaceX is just one player in the larger movement towards the privatization of spaceflight. NASA is funding three other companies in addition to SpaceX to develop vehicles to fly astronauts to space. Orbital Sciences Corp plans on launching its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule later this year.

The Dragon’s docking certainly marks a new era in spaceflight. No longer is it solely the provence of governments. But the shift in the spaceflight paradigm can be mapped to 2004, with Burt Rutan’s claiming of the Ansari X PRIZE. His SpaceShipOne became the first privately-built manned spacecraft to reach space. Instead of costing billions or needing a team of thousands, SpaceShipOne required just $26 million and thirty engineers. Rutan’s company, Scaled Composites, demonstrated that individuals can do the job just as good if not better and more cheaply than governments.

Wearing protective masks and goggles in case of lose debris, ISS commander Oleg Kononenko and astronaut Pettit opened Dragon’s hatch early Saturday morning and floated through. The Dragon and its contents were perfectly in order, and Pettit said it smelled “like a brand new car.” Fitting for the brand new era of spaceflight that the Dragon has also delivered.

[image credits: NASA and MSNBC]
images: NASA and MSNBC

YouTube is growing exponentially thanks in part to mobile access.

It goes without saying that YouTube has become the quintessential online video source for amateurs and professionals alike, but on the service’s seven-year anniversary, Google made quite a startling announcement: 72 hours of video are uploaded every single minute. That’s three entire days worth of cat videos, webcam rants, conference proceedings, news interviews, and company marketing fodder that is quietly swelling hard drives that already serve up four billion videos a day.

According to the YouTube statistics page (which still needs to be updated with the latest numbers), more video is uploaded in one month that the three major networks in the US have generated in 60 years and over 3 billion hours of video is watched per month. Yikes!

However, the biggest surprise of all is that YouTube, which was founded in 2005, is not only growing, but it’s growing exponentially. With the ease of access the Internet provides and the growing number of people gaining access through mobile devices, media is clearly accelerating, but just how fast is fast? A growth chart to the right from Forbes makes it quite clear that uploads are going exponential. This is likely fueled by mobile access, which gets over 600 million views a day and tripled in 2011.

YouTube has become part of the culture to the extent that both national and local news routinely pull videos from it for segments instead of producing their own. There’s so much video that for April Fool’s 2012, the site jokingly advertized the option to buy the entire “YouTube Collection” video library on DVD, which would come out to be 555,000 discs.

But it’s hard to say whether this amazing growth trend can continue or whether it will eventually flatten out. Considering that Google has invested $200 million to partner with select media groups to create specialized channels, priming YouTube into a more robust competitor to television, and positioning itself along with Netflix and Hulu to encourage people to ditch their cable for good. Of course, with every video comes the opportunity for Google’s AdSense to bring in the advertising dollars, and companies like Vevo introducing much maligned commercials before music videos. YouTube has also started expanding merchandise opportunities to all of its partners using CafePress, which is yet another avenue for it to monetize its free video offerings.

Google has been on a tear lately breaking another growth milestone with the recent finding that Google Chrome has become the most used web browser, surpassing Microsoft Internet Explorer for the first time. So if you’re apt to reminisce about YouTube’s journey over the past seven years, check out this celebratory video:

[Media: Forbes, YouTube]

[Sources: Forbes, YouTube]

After being injected with the telomerase gene, adult and old mice lived 24 percent and 13 percent longer, respectively.

Scientists are doing their best to give us the gift of immortality. The latest in the fight against ever dying is a gene therapy that gives mice a healthy dose of telomerase, the enzyme that keeps our chromosomes – and thus our cells and bodies – “young.” The therapy extended the lifespans of mice by 24 percent and, at least so far, the therapy appears to be completely safe.

As we age the dying cells in our body are replenished through cell division. But with each cell division the bits of DNA at the ends of chromosomes – the telomeres – deteriorate. At some point the shortened telomeres signal to the cell that it’s time to stop dividing, leading to tissue degradation – one of the hard facts of life for the now aged cells. But now scientists have given cells a kind of molecular fountain of youth – at least in mice. They injected the mice with the telomerase gene which then slowed the cellular aging process by extending the dwindling telomere ends. They gave the gene therapy to one year old mice, considered adults, and two year old mice, considered old. The lifespan of the one year olds were extended by 24 percent, the two year olds by 13 percent. Not only did the mice live longer, but they reaped beneficial effects across a range of conditions associated with aging including insulin sensitivity, osteoporosis, and physical coordination.

An inactive form of telomerase had no effect on lifespan, confirming that its telomere-lengthening enzymatic activity was crucial. The study was led by María Blasco at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre and published in EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Dr. Marìa Blasco, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre

The treatment involved replacing the genes of a virus with the gene for telomerase. This viral vector had several advantages. First, viruses are good at getting into the body and infecting a large number of cells. Inserting telomerase into a small handful of cells won’t have much impact on an organism’s lifespan. Second, the gene remains active for years. And lastly, the viral DNA did not insert itself into the DNA of the mouse cells. Past attempts at gene therapy that work this way run the risk of insertion errors that turn the cell into a tumor, as was the case in the trial which caused leukemia in two of nine participants testing a gene therapy for “bubble boy disease.”

Longevity through telomerase is nothing new. Adding telomerase to human cells in culture allowed them to extend their lifespans by at least an extra 20 divisions. And mice genetically engineered to make telomerase lived 40 percent longer and showed improved glucose tolerance, coordination, and less inflammation compared to normal mice. But genetically engineering people isn’t an option (yet), so a treatment form of telomerase such as the injectable virus in the current study – extending the lifespans of adult and old mice – is a much more conceivable approach.

Aging is a complex process with lots of components, many of which we might not even be aware. But if telomere shortening is really so powerfully rate-limiting to our lifespans, then it could turn out to be as close to a silver bullet for longevity as we’re likely to find. Maybe telomerase treatments could buy us those extra years crucial to reaching Aubrey de Grey’s “longevity escape velocity” beyond which new treatments will save us from the disease of death – indefinitely.

[image credits: Science Daily, publico.es, and Science Creative Daily]
images: Science Daily, publico.es, Science Creative Daily

Coffee turns out to be good for your health...as long as you drop all the bad habits that go with it.

Older adults who drink coffee have a lower risk of death by about 10 percent, according to a large observational study of over 400,000 people published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study, which followed participants aged 50 to 71 during a 14-year window, examined common causes of death, including heart and respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections. For each life-ending ailment, coffee drinking correlated with lower risk of death in both men and women, with cancer being the only condition that showed no correlation in women and a slight increase in risk of death for men who are heavy coffee drinkers.

However, while it would be easy to draw the conclusion that drinking coffee helps you live longer, the raw data from the study actually shows coffee drinkers die younger. Why? Because a number of bad habits and detriments to longevity are associated with coffee drinking, likely negating any benefits from coffee itself.

The study was conducted by researchers at the National Cancer Institute and funded by the NIH and AARP as part of a diet and health study in older Americans (unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall, but you can access the abstract here). The data were collected via a baseline questionnaire that gauged demographic and lifestyle characteristics along with diet, then monitored until they died or the study ended.

When the data were first analyzed, coffee consumption was associated with an increase in the mortality of both men and women. To arrive at the result that coffee drinking may lower the risk of death, the researchers accounted for particularly damaging vices that coffee drinkers are more prone to engage in, such as smoking. It was only after accounting for the statistical contribution that smoking adds to increasing the rate of mortality did they arrive at the result that coffee drinkers have increased longevity.

Analysis of the study generally showed that the more coffee consumed, the lower the risk of death. (image: LA Times)

A quote from the study indicates the bad habits that coffee drinkers are guilty of:

As compared with persons who did not drink coffee, coffee drinkers were more likely to smoke cigarettes and consume more than three alcoholic drinks per day, and they consumed more red meat. Coffee drinkers also tended to have a lower level of education; were less likely to engage in vigorous physical activity; and reported lower levels of consumption of fruits, vegetables, and white meat.

With over 170 million Americans drinking coffee and over 1 billion coffee drinkers worldwide (coffee is the second largest commodity in the world, after all), the effects of coffee on health have been researched and disputed for a long time. Previous studies have shown that coffee has multiple benefits that can fight depression, prevent diabetes, protect against liver fibrosis, and even help fight cancer, but the scope of this most recent study helps to take a much broader view of its benefits, even taking into account the known problems with observational studies. Although this study shifts the tug-of-war between the health benefits and risks of coffee back toward the healthy side, the particularly damning observation that the health benefits of coffee are negated by a slew of poor lifestyle choices is a lesson for both coffee and non-coffee drinkers alike.

But ultimately the issue of this study is, if coffee is preventative medicine, drink it up. If it’s poison, everyone should avoid it. Simple, right? Well, not exactly.

The question of whether coffee is good or bad for you is inherently a complex one. The process of roasting coffee produces over 1,000 compounds — some of which are antioxidants, while about 19 are known rodent carcinogens. These compounds create the taste and aromatic richness associated with different roasts. But the fact remains that the vast majority of these compounds have not been tested individually for their health effects and likely won’t be for a long time to come.

Furthermore, the study suffers from another longstanding problem from large-scale statistical analyses, which the authors admitted: correlation does not mean causation. In other words, it is impossible to tell whether coffee itself directly contributed to extending the lifetimes of drinkers or if coffee drinking is part of a lifestyle of people who tend to live longer.

But coffee drinkers in general can help their longevity through some simple lifestyle changes, such as quitting smoking (in case you haven’t heard that before) and joining the 35 percent of coffee drinkers who take it black, which eliminates the milk and sugar both of which are detrimental if you’re drinking 4-5 cups a day.

This study illustrates just how tricky it is to fish out all the lifestyle factors that impact health. But in the end, one thing is clear: coffee’s reputation isn’t as black as previously labeled.

[Media: flickr, LA Times, sxc]

[Sources: Coffee Chemistry, NEJM, Science Daily]

And you thought your vintage Swatch was a fashion statement.

Like to keep track of time and enjoy music on your iPod nano, but can’t tolerate those cumbersome bands and straps? Just surgically implant magnets into your wrist and attach your nano – strap-free.

That’s what Dave Hurban did. The two posts embedded beneath his skin are attached to a pair of magnets each. Hurban measured out the location of the magnets so that they’d fit the nano precisely – the carpenter’s rule, “measure twice, cut once” being oh so important.

Hurban is calling his little bit of self-mutilation in the name of technology iDermal. A body piercer himself, he’s already had his fair share of piercings. So sticking the metallic posts, or “micro-dermal anchors” as he calls them, isn’t so drastic a fashion statement to him as it might be to most. But still, why’d he do it?

As he told Digital Times, because he “thought it would be cool.”

Judging from the comments on the YouTube video not many people are with Hurban on that one. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say he probably doesn’t care what other people think. But take a closer look and you realize that the video has been viewed nearly 2 million times with almost a 2-to-1 ratio of “likes” to “dislikes.” Is that because people admire Hurban’s rebellious shrug of convention or does it speak to a broader movement towards body augmentation in general? We’ve already seen Skinput that turns your forearm and fingers into a control pad. The Pebble smartwatch is (surprisingly?) seriously popular, raising more than $10 million in its Kickstarter campaign. And Google Goggles will make it so uncool to ask for directions in the future. We’re slowly and sometimes stylishly changing into cyborgs. Hopefully most of our augmentations won’t involve as much blood as Hurban’s.

[image credits: iDermal via YouTube]
[video credit: iDermal via YouTube]
images: iDermal
video: iDermal

**Update** The submission deadline for RFF 2012 has been extended from June 7th to June 15th!

It’s about time that the future of cinema reflected the future of the world. The second annual Robot Film Festival is gearing up to take NYC by storm on July 14th. While dedicated to showcasing films that feature robotic characters and themes, last year’s RFF included a huge range of movies. Documentaries on lunar explorers, tongue-in-cheek rap videos, heartfelt tales about robot affection – RFF 2011 proved to the world that robot-themed cinema has as much to offer as the film industry as a whole. The 2012 Robot Film Festival looks to be even better. Two headlining films have already been announced: I’m Here by Spike Jonze, and Robot & Frank starring Hollywood legend Frank Langella. And things are just getting started. Aspiring filmmakers can still submit their robot inspired works to RFF 2012 thru June 7th June 15th. Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of one of the most promising new film festivals in the world.

To get you excited for July 14th, Singularity Hub has gathered a collection of videos for you to watch below, including previews of the two headlining films, and many of last year’s winners. Enjoy!

First, here’s the trailer for Spike Jonze’s I’m Here – A Love Story in an Absolut World. All the eccentric excitement you’ve come to expect from a Jonze film, just with more robots:

The other headlining film, Robot & Frank by Jake Schreier, is a compelling story about the bonds that can develop between man and machine. Frank Langella plays an aging father facing a loss of memory, mental flexibility, and freedom. Is his new live-in robot helper a key to a better life, or a very shiny shackle? Here’s a clip:

Part of what made the inaugural Robot Film Festival so interesting was the variety of films that made it in. Moonrush by Jonathan Minard at Deepseed Media, is a documentary look at the work and vision of William “Red” Whittaker, a world-renowned roboticist with designs on getting automated explorers to the moon. In sharp contrast is the winner of Best Picture 2011: The Machine by Bent Image Lab. A morality play and creation myth wrapped up in the trappings of artificial life, The Machine is a compelling piece of animation. It’s amazing that you can have both documentary and campfire fiction play so well together in the same film festival. Both shorts are available to watch in full below:

Much of what works for the Robot Film Festival is the balance between films that tug on your emotions, and films that expand your mind. In the first category belongs my personal favorite, Chorebot by Greg Omelchuck, available to watch on Vimeo here. Also in the emotional category is Waiting for Name Assignment by Alvaro Gavan, which won an award for best human playing a robot:

In the mind expansion category I would include Absolut Machine: Absolut Quartet by Jon Lieberman and Don Paluska, which shows a group of delightful designed automated instruments. There’s also Operation daVinci by LCSR Robotics (winner of the Audience Award) which showcases the real world daVinci surgical robot:

Finally we have those videos which just sort of fry your mind a bit to watch. Saturn by iStave Creative is visually stunning with a dynamic audio accompaniment that really makes it feel like a trippy music video. It’s also not really safe to view at work – you can watch it here. I’ll end with a film that fries your mind in a completely different way: with brain-twitching groaning and meta-ironic smirking. Me and My Robots by Jay Kila is either the worst or best thing you’ll see from the 2011 Robot Film Festival. You can decide for yourself:

RFF 2012 promises to be even better than the opening year. The headliners are great, the production team is enthusiastic, and the buzz around the web is favorable. If you or someone you know has a robot-themed short film that they want to share with the world, submit now. The June 7th June 15th deadline is looming. For the rest of us, watching the 2012 Robot Film Festival should be excitement enough.  Not sure what you’re doing July 14th, but if I can be in NYC, I know how I’ll be spending my time.

[image credit: RFF 2011/2012]
[video credits: as listed above]
[source: RFF]

The Leap 3D-motion sensing device looks to take gesture control to the next level.

For the last six years, game consoles have been the developers hot spot for motion control, but finally good old computers are getting some love. A startup called Leap Motion has announced the development of the Leap 3D motion control device that is sensitive down to 1/100 of a millimeter – that’s 200 times better than other sensors (read: Kinect). At this resolution, the Leap software is able to resolve the motion of individual fingers, allowing for intuitive gesture controls like pinch-to-zoom, highly accurate virtual drawing, and manipulation of 3D models. The device, which is just about twice the size of a USB thumb drive, sensitively detects motion via infrared light within a space of 4 cubic feet, which is effectively the working space in front of a desktop or laptop.

Available for preorder now for $70 (over three times less than the Kinect for Windows) and expected to release this winter in limited supply, the Leap sensor is a huge step forward toward the era of Minorty Report-esque computer interfaces.

For a look at the sensitive and responsive capabilities of the Leap, check out the demo:

The possibilities with the Leap seem endless, especially since the hardware is small enough to work with mobile devices and other things that are now using touch screen interfaces, like appliances. In a statement, CEO Michale Buckwald said that the inspiration for the Leap came from working with 3D models and the frustration in “the gap between what’s easy in the real world but very complicated to do digitally.” In light of this, Leap Motion is focused on building an ecosystem of software around the device by making developer kits available for free. This strategy is likely one of the reasons that the startup received $12.75 million in Series A funding recently, adding to the $1.8 million it already raised.

The Leap device arrives at a perfect time now that motion control has seen widespread adoption. It started with the Wii Remote motion controller, which was released by Nintendo in 2006 and made more sensitive with the MotionPlus attachment in 2008. In November 2010, the Microsoft Kinect sensor hit the shelves and helped vault the Xbox into an entertainment platform. Although a PC version of the Kinect became available in February of this year, it’s retail price of $250 puts it out of reach for many computer users who can stick with the technology they are most comfortable with: the mouse.

Compared to the Kinect, the Leap Motion technology brings 200 times greater sensitivity in a smaller device at a third of the price in just two years. Wow.

For a second look at what the device can do, you can watch this video from CNET:

One group of people that will likely gobble up the Leap is the robotics community. We’ve highlighted a number of Kinect hacks that developers have created to enhance robots, such as making an iRobot see the world, having a robot mirror someone’s actions, and the Kinect-hack competition from ROS. Imagine what robots can accomplish when the sensitivity is so much greater in the Leap.

Functionally, the Leap opens up the possibilities to perform specific, gesture-friendly tasks much more easily than is currently possible. Digital signatures, for example, are sloppy with a mouse and, though USB drawing tablets work well, are pricey and can be challenging to find other uses for, that is, if you aren’t an artist. The demo makes it pretty clear how much easier it could be just to move a pen or a finger in the air to sign something.

Still, as cool as the Leap device seems to be, the keyboard and a mouse have persisted because they are the easiest ways to get things done on a desktop (and why the pen stylus never got traction). For Leap to change that, a host of powerful software needs to be developed that allows for common tasks to be done not just in a cooler way with gestures, but in a much more efficient way like touchscreen technology has accomplished. And that’s a tall order for current operating systems that are designed around the 2D interface of a monitor. Still, interest in developing a Minority Report interface inspired a Kinect hack over a year ago at MIT, so it’s much more likely that the Leap or some other gesture technology will eventually be embedded into a keyboard, allowing for the best of both worlds.

The technology from Leap Motion just shows how far precise 3D motion sensing and gesture control has come. When these kinds of sensors are combined with voice recognition software, we will be stepping into a science fiction movie right at our desks.

[Media: CNET, YouTube]

[Sources: CNET, Leap Motion]

Welcome back to Accelerated Tech News. For the past six weeks Singularity Hub has been experimenting with a new way of sharing its content with humanity: video. With a rapid review of the week’s past top stories, Accelerated Tech News is the easily digested version of Singularity Hub’s world-class science and technology news. Watch ATN to find the stories that entice your brain, and then go back to Singularity Hub to read the full length articles and learn all you need to know. It’s that simple. Stay tuned for more Accelerated Tech News in the weeks ahead. Production value is going to get better and editing will improve as well. We make no promises, however, about the host’s sense of humor. Some malfunctions simply cannot be fixed.

The Argos system has allowed researchers to track wildlife for years, but the time has come for a new system.

Satellite technology is a modern-day “Wonder of the World.” Consider that currently over 1,000 active satellites orbit the Earth, communicating with ground-based transmitters and receivers for a host of applications, such as delivering scientific measurements, weather information, and television programming, to name a few. Since the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, satellite technology has increasingly connected people together, whether in the same town or on opposite sides of the planet, effectively making the world flat.

One of the increasingly employed technologies is GPS tracking, which many of the world’s 6.6 billion mobile subscribers (over 90 percent of the world’s population) have come to rely on. For the last few decades, scientists too have utilized satellite tracking to monitor wildlife to better understand their migratory patterns and the impact humans have on their environments. Recently, for the first time, satellite tracking has provided insight into the last of the marine megavertebrate species to be monitored by satellite: the giant manta ray.

Although this latest study is a success story for a technology that has matured over two decades, it also highlights just how far behind satellite tracking of animals is compared to humans and how desperately that needs to be changed.

The research, published in PLoS ONE (read the full article for free here), described how six manta rays were tagged with trackers as they traversed nearly 700 miles around the Yucatan peninsula and were monitored for up to 64 days before the trackers fell off. The researchers discovered that the manta rays predominantly remained in warmer water (26-30°C) of less than 50 meters deep, but spent nearly 90 percent of their time outside of Marine Protected Areas where human contact is minimized.

Satellite tracks of three of the six manta rays show their movement over a 1-2 month window.

Because manta rays are currently listed as ‘vulnerable’ to extinction by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, knowing the degree to which they intersect with human activities is essential to understanding their long term survival. This is especially important as the rays are often at risk of being hit by shipping boats, chopped up by fisherman for use as shark bait, and hunted for their cartilaginous gill rakers that are used in Eastern medicine practices.

Furthermore, manta rays are exposed to humans increasingly in the megafauna tourism industry that offers scuba divers a chance to swim with the rays. A study by The Manta Ray Of Hope Project estimated that a single manta ray brings in an income of $1 million to local ecotourism over its lifetime. The global tourism value of manta rays is estimated at $50 million a year, while the market value for the ray’s gill rakers is $11 million, so the study concluded that there is much greater financial value to the tourism industry in keeping the manta rays alive. Unfortunately, though current population sizes are unknown, it is believed that giant manta ray numbers are dwindling rapidly.

Slate put together a video highlighting the study:

For over 30 years, the migratory patterns of marine animals, including sharks, turtles, and now giant manta rays, have been made possible by the Argos satellite system. Launched in 1978 as a joint venture between the French Space Agency, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), this system was originally intended for meteorological and oceanographic studies only. But in 1986, the system, which employs a number of satellites, was commercialized, allowing researchers to propose new uses for the system.

Since that time, satellite tracking via Argos has become a vital research tool for studying marine biology and ecology, with over 3,000 animals currently being tracked by Argos. A 2009 review in the journal Endangered Species Research found that satellite telemetry of marine megavertebrates was maturing into “an operational science.” Tracking has helped researchers follow leatherback turtles making a 7,500-km journey across the South Atlantic, manatees trekking from Florida up to Rhode Island, and a host of  sharks, which have seen an 80 percent population drop in the last 50 years. But the study also revealed a rather shocking truth: only 92 studies using satellite tracking were reported in the literature between 1987 and 2006 with less than a quarter of these studying marine mammals.

In other words, we really have very little idea of what’s going on under the sea.

As with other species that call the ocean home, it is difficult to gauge exactly what impact humans are having on marine life, but it doesn’t look so good. We’re doing a horrible job at managing the oceans between the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, whose size is exaggerated but still considerable, the loss of 10,000 shipping containers to the sea every year, and overfishing which has been projected to cause a global collapse of fish species by mid-century if action isn’t taken. A recent study discovered that something as innocuous as replacing native trees along the coast of an atoll with non-native palms produced a cascade of effects resulting in a massive decline of seabird, plankton, and manta ray populations. It’s also conjectured that humans cause extinction at a faster rate than new species can evolve, and though the rate of extinction may not be as rapid as some believe, increasing pressure on the ocean will only add to the 16 known marine species that have become extinct since 1972.

The ocean is considered by many to be the last great frontier on Earth, full of numerous resources and mysteries about life on Earth, so it is imperative that related technologies can be transferred rapidly to enhance marine studies. Recently, James Cameron made a well publicized dive in partnership with National Geographic to the Mariana Trench in a new submarine, beating Richard Branson to the punch and demonstrating how far submersible technology has come since the first dive in 1951 to the bottom of the ocean. Other projects are underway to use the power of modern technologies to explore the ocean, such as the development of underwater drones, which could turn out to be as successful as military drones have been.

New satellite tracking systems are also gaining momentum. An initiative called the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS) is focused on small animal tracking using radio transmitters (much smaller than the larger Argos tags) and hopes to be monitoring 1,000 small animals by 2014. Previous tracking of marine life using the 27 GPS satellites has been difficult because the tags are detectable only in shallower water and GPS can take at least a minute to coordinate a signal. However, newer Fastloc technology has reduced the amount of time considerably down to around a tenth of a second and extended the depth to 1,000 meters.

Still, if we will have smartphones soon that will be able to track our position down to the inch using a whole host of technologies, including wireless, GPS, and Bluetooth, to coordinate position, surely there must be a way to do something similar for wildlife monitoring. Satellite tracking has proven to be such a powerful technology that it’s clear what’s needed is an advanced telemetry and coordinated tracking system to monitor multiple species in real time.

And while it may seem like a tall order, such a system will be in place for humans in the near future, even in the face of international issues, legislation, and privacy concerns, so can’t we find a way to monitor the rest of life on Earth as well?

[Media: NASA, National Geographic, WFU, YouTube]

[Sources: Argos, LA Times, PLoS One, Shark Savers]

A study of over a hundred thousand trial participants showed that gene variations which change levels of HDL have no effect on heart attack risk.

The revelation that high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, is the “good cholesterol” has suffered a major blow. A meta-study involving over a hundred thousand participants used two different strategies to see if genetic mutations that increased levels of HDL also decreased risk for heart disease. In both cases the answer was a resounding no. The researchers were shocked when they saw the data. Now it’s their turn to shock HDL proponents and drug companies looking to cash in on the HDL craze.

The study, which was published recently in The Lancet, is causing quite a stir in the field. As Dr. James de Lemos, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, told the New York Times, “I’d say the HDL hypothesis is on the ropes right now.” Dr. de Lemos was not involved in the study.

So what’s the story here? How is it possible that LDL/HDL dichotomy has propagated so powerfully through conventional wisdom that even the CDC refers to them as “good” and “bad” cholesterols and pharmaceutical companies like Abbot Laboratories are working hard to get in on the HDL cash cow?

Past studies have shown that much of what increases our risk for heart disease, like obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, and insulin resistance, is correlated with low HDL. It was a logical conclusion, then, that by increased HDL levels we could decrease those risks. But correlation doesn’t mean causation, and the takeaway conclusion from the current study is that decreased HDL is simply a sign of increased risk for heart disease but the level of HDL doesn’t actually affect heart disease.

In the most recently published study researchers used genetic, lipoprotein, and heart attack outcome data from some thirty odd studies to see if a genetic mutation known to increase HDL levels decreased the chance of heart attack. They focused on the gene for endothelial lipase. Past research has shown that when endothelial lipase has certain single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) it leads to increased levels of HDL. Looking at study data from 116,000 participants, they saw that 2.6 percent of them had the SNPs and confirmed that their HDL levels were significantly higher than average. But when they compared the incidence of heart attack between the two groups they found no difference whatsoever.

The second part of the study took a similar approach, but instead of limiting analysis to one gene the researchers looked at 14 gene variants know to affect HDL levels and asked if the variations affected cardiovascular health. Again, the amount of HDL did not affect whether or not a person suffered a heart attack.

But even with such a high sample size, it’s possible that the methodology of the study was somehow flawed. Using low-density lipoprotein (LDL) – the so-called bad cholesterol – as a control, the researchers analyzed gene variants among the participant pool and confirmed that decreased levels of LDL lessened the chance of a heart attack, validating their analysis of the HDL data.

Think twice before you reach for that bottle of HDL-boosting Niacin.

This may come as a shock to many, but another study published last year suggested that HDL was not so “good” after all. The trial tested the effects of niacin, a drug that increases a person’s HDL levels, on over 3,000 patients at risk for heart disease. Because niacin stimulates the production of HDLs they were expected to improve the cardiovascular outlook of these high-risk patients. Two years into the study researchers confirmed that the group’s HDL levels were increased. At three years, however, the study was stopped prematurely due to “lack of efficacy.”

But while the research may be “on the ropes,” not everyone’s throwing in the HDL towel just yet. Dr. Steven Nissen who is the Cleveland Clinic’s chair of cardiovascular medicine and conducts HDL research himself told the New York Times that he is “hopeful,” reasoning that HDL is “complicated.” In 2010 the Cleveland Clinic received a $11.6 million grant to study the benefits of HDL, so it’s easy to see how the current study would indeed “complicate” things.

Cardiovascular disease is the world’s number one killer. Responsible for 30 percent of all deaths globally, it claimed the lives of nearly 16 million people in 2008. The pharmaceutical giants all have their own version of cholesterol-lowering statin: Merck’s Zocor, AstraZeneca’s Crestor, and Pfizer’s Lipitor, which has become the most profitable drug of all time at sales of over $130 billion. It’s no wonder then that companies have been busy trying to reap the rewards of HDL-boosting niacin.

Abbott Laboratories, which offers a version of niacin called Niaspan, responded to the halted trial by saying it might not work for the chronically high-risk, but it remains to be seen if others won’t benefit. But like Dr. Nissen, I suppose Abbott can take momentary solace in the fact that these are, after all, just two studies – albeit one a very large study. But if others begin to confirm the current findings, the “good” in HDL will become “good riddance.”

[image credits: Healthy Living, DoctorSaputo.com, and Benefits of Niacin]
images: Healthy Living, DoctorSaputo.com, and Benefits of Niacin

Genetically modified T cells which attack HIV have been shown to be both effective and safe after more than a decade.

A clinical trial testing a gene therapy for HIV patients is now 11 years old. Recently, the researchers running the study published an examination of the patients after all this time. Of the study’s 43 patients, all were healthy, and 41 of them confirmed that their immune cells which received a genetically-altered boost were still performing as hoped more than a decade after the initial infusions.

Researchers first collected some of the patients’ T cells, the type of white blood cell that fights infections and tumors. They then added a retroviral vector to the cells that inserted its DNA into the cells’ own DNA. The important part of the new DNA would cause the T cells to recognize a protein found on HIV and target the virus for attack. The modified T cells were injected back into the patients between 1998 and 2002.

One of major concerns with gene therapies is the risk that the inserted DNA will cause cell replication errors and turn the cell cancerous. Years ago, in a different study, two out of nine young boys developed leukemia after undergoing gene therapy for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (“Bubble Boy disease”). But there is a key difference between that trial and the current one. The earlier trial involved genetic modification of blood stem cells. As none of the participants in the current study have developed cancer after 11 years, the researchers are concluding that the type of cell makes all the difference. “T cells appear to be a safe haven for gene modification,” Carl June, one of the lead researchers of the study said in a press release.

The study was co-led by Bruce Levine, head of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility at Pennsylvania University’s Perelman School of Medicine. It was published earlier this month in Science Translational Medicine.

Eleven years of being both effective and safe is a gene therapy breakthrough. But as promising as the study is, there’s still room for improvement. Patient viral loads were not reduced to undetectable levels, something routinely achieved by drugs. This could be due to an inadequate dosage of T cells. But now that T cells have been shown to be gene friendly, a higher dose could be tried in the future. Also, they tested function of the modified T cells in lab dishes. But while there was no direct confirmation that the cells are performing effectively inside the body, the fact that all 43 patients are healthy seems to be pretty rigorous evidence.

The trial was led by University of Pennsylvania researchers Bruce Levine and Carl June.

So how is it possible that the modified T cells are still chugging along after 11 years? Human T cells can live for years, and they divide,  passing their genetic material on to their cellular progeny. In fact, the current level of gene function in the patients indicates that over half of the original modified T cells or their progeny should still be functional for 16 years following infusion.

Even though the modified T cells in the current study haven’t proved more effective than drugs, they may still yet as higher doses are tried. HIV can be effectively controlled with drugs but patients are often required to take multiple pills at specific times of the day for the rest of their lives. And the drugs often have unpleasant side-effects such as nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. Even if HIV levels aren’t rendered undetectable, as they weren’t in the current study, just decreasing a patient’s dependency on drugs would be a major accomplishment.

The promising results a decade out isn’t just good news for HIV patients and clinicians alone. Gene therapies targeting other diseases could benefit from the protocol. Any malady that can be helped by setting the molecular sights of T cells on a target should be fair game. In fact, Levine and June are already reprogramming T cells to seek out and destroy leukemia tumors. In a paper published last October they reported how cancerous cells in three patients were wiped out in just three weeks. As in the HIV trial the T cells were modified to recognize and attack cells expressing a specific protein. CD19 is a protein found on leukemia cells but not on healthy ones.

It’s about time gene therapies began delivering on the promise that so many have hoped for. Researchers are busy trying to find out why gene therapies turn stem cells into tumors but behave so well in T cells. Answering that question could open the door to gene therapies in other cell types. The current study is the latest in a spurt of good news for gene therapies. Other trials have stopped bleeding in hemophilia patients, successfully treated Parkinson’s symptoms, and helped the blind to see. Let’s hope we’re entering an era in which successful gene therapy trials are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

[image credits: Scientific American and Philly.com]
images: Scientific American and Philly.com

By tapping databases and connecting people, places, and things Google's Knowledge Graph enriches your search experience.

This week Google is rolling out a new search tool: the Knowledge Graph. Breaking with the old strategy of keywords and webpages, Knowledge Graph makes use of the vast amounts of online data to give you persons, places, and things that are related to what you’re looking for. This new search philosophy of “Things Not Strings” ceases to treat your query as a random string of characters, and treats them as real world ideas instead. And it’s only the beginning of the move away from having to wade through website after website to find what you’re looking for.

Without Knowledge Graph, Google search results are keyword-based and direct us to websites that contain our keyword or related keywords. But as we know words are often ambiguous. For example, if you type in “mercury” you could be interested in the elemental liquid, the planet, or the fleet-of-foot messenger of the Roman gods. By being connected to a network of relevant material, results become more narrow, getting us to our relevant “mercury” more quickly. They’re richer too, allowing us easy access to information about the first planet from the sun.

Now, instead of Googling to get to the Wikipedia page, much of the information you’re looking for will already be displayed in the results – a Googlepedia. Sort of.

When searching for a book, dog breed, or planet, an information panel will appear in that empty white space to the right of the results list. The section will contain a brief description, a collection of facts, the highest-ranking related images, related searches, and other related information such as a map, an upcoming concert for a band, or recently Google+ posts from people in your circles.

The information display won’t be nearly as complete as a Wikipedia page, and not all topics get an information display. Easily packaged subjects like specific sports teams, movies, locations, and famous people get a display. Cars, video games, and companies do not.

Of course, your facts are only as good as your sources. The Knowledge Graph draws from multiple online data sources including Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook, and Freebase, an open database generated by Metaweb, which Google acquired in 2010. Wikipedia has nearly four million articles, and Freebase has data on over 24 million people, places, and things. Subject-specific information is gathered from sites like Weather Underground for weather and the World Bank for global economics. As before, data from Google searches are used to make educated guesses of what people are searching for and what webpages they want to see. They’ve only just started building it up, but already the Knowledge Graph includes 500 million people, places, and things with connections to 3.5 billion attributes. And the bewildering network of connections will be honed by people using it with a feature that allows users to point out incorrect or irrelevant information.

Like the real world and information about it, the Knowledge Graph is a work in progress. Here’s a short video that describes how Google is reshaping itself from an “information engine to a knowledge engine.”

What will Google look like after the Knowledge Graph has had 5 or 10 years to gobble up databases? If it’s true that Google was already making us dumber, get ready to donate a few more IQ points for the sake of convenience.

For many searches we probably won’t notice the “extra knowledge” in the results (incidentally, the Graph has yet to grace the Google page on my laptop), but already we can see where all of this is going. Along with Google, tools like WolframAlpha and Siri, have conditioned people to expect more out their software – they want useful information and they want it quick and easy. Google Chrome’s text to speech function makes that happen, and so do Google Glasses. It doesn’t get any easier than looking at things and talking to yourself. The Knowledge Graph adds to these as part of Google’s effort to both shape the direction that people interact with technology, and to stay relevant and competitive in this increasingly AI-driven world.

[image credits: Google via YouTube]
[video credits: Google via YouTube]
images: Google
video: Google via YouTube

A neural interface device allows patients to control a robotic arm with their minds.

Cathy Hutchinson hasn’t moved her limbs of her own volition for 15 years, but by imagining she was using her own hand, she controlled a robotic arm to pick up a thermos of coffee and took a sip. The technology is a neural interface system called BrainGate2, currently in clinical trials, which connects Cathy’s brain to a robot. The device is the result of over 10 years of research at Brown University and an extension of the first BrainGate in 2006, which allowed patients to control a computer cursor on a screen.

Cathy was one of two patients on the study, which was recently reported in Nature, who suffer from tetraplegia, a condition in which communication between the brain and the rest of the body is disconnected either through a stroke or damage to the spinal cord. Prof. John Donoghue, principal investigator on the BrainGate project, described their approach to Nature: “Our idea is to bypass that damaged nervous system and go directly from the brain to the outside world, so the brain signals cannot control muscles but machines and devices, like a computer or a robotic limb.” When Cathy controlled the arm with her mind to bring the coffee over for her to drink, the team was amazed.

Check out the video to see the moment for yourself:

As we previously introduced, BrainGate2 has three components: a sensor, a decoder, and assistive technology. The sensor consists of an array of 96 hair-thin electrodes the size of a children’s aspirin that is surgically implanted into the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls body movements. Neural activity is relayed through a gold wire to a computer (the decoder), which interprets the signals and produces a command for the robot arm. Two robotic arms have been tested in the study: the DEKA Arm System and the heavier DLR Light-Weight Robot III arm from the German Aerospace Centre.

Cathy has had the BrainGate sensor implanted in her brain for the last five years, as she was involved in previous studies with the system. During testing that took place one year ago, Cathy was able to successfully raise the coffee and drink from it using BrainGate2 four times out of six attempts. In another test of the BrainGate2 system, the two patients had to reach out and grab a ball in a 30-second window, and Cathy experienced better success with the DEKA arm (46 percent success rate) than the DLR arm (21 percent).

Prof. Donoghue explained to Nature that controlling the robotic arm is much more complicated than moving the cursor on a screen in the original BrainGate study: “To move from this type of two-dimensional movement to movements involving reaching out for an object, grasping it and then guiding it in three-dimensional space is a huge step for us. It seems like more than one additional dimension in complexity.” He emphasized that a lot of work needed to be done to improve the rate and accuracy of motion as well as improving the decoding algorithms for more complex motions.

The Brown researchers already have plans to make the sensor wireless and improve the robotic arm to allow for more complicated tasks, such as brushing teeth. In the long term, an alternative approach is being considered in which the signals from the decoder are transmitted to the patient’s muscles, allowing them to reuse their own limbs.

This is a huge stride for the field of brain-computer interfaces, and will undoubtedly inspire more surgical and nonsurgical approaches. Controlling objects with the mind makes for great science fiction, but people who suffer from conditions that prohibit motion due to spinal cord damage are on the cusp of regaining a part of themselves that they thought was lost forever. Furthermore, similar technologies will open up even more possibilities for mind control of objects as the programs that can translate neural signals into instructions become more sophisticated.

“All of us were standing in awe, more or less, because we’re watching her drinking the coffee,” Prof. Donoghue commented in the video. “It was really such a stunning scene.”

[Media: YouTube]

[Sources: Arstechnica, BrainGate, Nature, Nature Video]

Will the future involve wiping your memory of any copyrighted works you haven't paid for?

What will post-Singularity life be like in 2052 if you died and your mind was uploaded to a computer? Possibly mired in data rate throttling, advertiser-sponsored consciousness, immoral thought extraction, and memory wipes of copyrighted material.

A new witty video called “Welcome to Life” offers a little glimpse into what it might be like for your mind to awake in a digital world after your biological self has expired. Taking jabs at the Apple experience, terms of service agreements, and all the legal hurdles one might anticipate that could hinder future existence, the video humorously approaches a subject that is rather difficult to imagine. The creator of “Welcome to Life”, Tom Scott, is also responsible for a parody of the Google Glasses video, which captured over 2 million views on YouTube.

Here’s a glimpse into your possible future:

For me, the most intriguing part is the end with the question, “Do you wish to continue?” When the technology becomes available to upload our minds and never fear failing health or aging, we can answer “Yes” to that question perpetually, so long as our service providers can keep the lights on.

Thanks to Noah, a Singularity Hub member, for sending the video to us!

[Media: YouTube]

[Sources: Tom Scott]