Hey, how are you today?
I just saw a new gadget from Google Labs: Google Body.
It is like google earth for your body.
Especially useful for people in need of human anatomy knowledge.
It needs google chrome to load. You may take a look of it at this link
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Without dispute Microsoft Kinect is one of the hottest gadgets around this time of the year (late 2010)
In fact I really enjoyed playing with it in some stores that had a demo display of it.
Nevertheless the real excitement with such gadgets comes when gadget geeks like me take the soul out them and hack them and use for other than the intented purpose!!!!
Take a look below what Virtopsy team has created.
This would be especially useful in cases where a surgeon is sterilized but wants to use radiographic images.
Great work Virtopsy!!! Keep on the good work.
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Below you will find a video with IBM’s predictions for 2015.
Enjoy it (especially devoted to those that are in love with gadgets like me)
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By using images from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity JPL has crated a simulation of an accelerated sunset in Mars.
Dust particles make the Martian sky appear reddish and create a bluish glow around the sun.
Enjoy it below before the real Martian habitants of the first Martian colony.
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This is a concept gadget for the visually impaired which connects through bluetooth to the phone and then creates word to braille translation with a tactile feedback on the visually impaired user.
Unfortunately this is still a concept. Wonder when if ever will it be available to the market.
Thimble – There’s a Thing for That from two times three on Vimeo.
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Have you heard about augmented reality?
Where reality is augmented by phone applications through information overlay through your device’s camera? This sounds very cool and it is since it seems to be the future of smartphone applications.
There are many applications of augmented reality for smartphones one of them by google ( the google goggles ) but one I have seen lately and seems extremely cool is the Word Lens app.
This app uses letter recognition to overlay automatic translation on the go throuigh your phones camera!!
I always will be in the need for that app during my trips!
Look the video below for an intro:
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This is a very difficult question.
First of all we have to define consiousness.
If you try to define consiousness you will find yourself in a territory that none has ever managed to demystify. I deliberately use the word demystify because there is no widely accepted definition of consiousness.
How would you define consiousness? Is it alertness? Personality? Brain reactions to environmental stimuli? It is all these and much more.
The fact is that scientific efforts towards immortality have become mainstream the latest years. There are many schools on these efforts.
Some teams believe that immortality will be achieved through medical advances which will augment longlivety beyond what is currently possible.
Most teams believe that the body is irrelevant to immortality and what is the essence to immortal being is the brain.
Towards this direction many teams are already trying with much success to reverse engineer the brain. You may look at Blue Brain Project where neuroscientists along with computer engineers try to simulate neocortical columns on supercomputers.
Or you may take a look at the connectome project where scientists are creating machines that will be able to scan your brain’s connections and decode the neuronal connections to function of the brain (sci fi note: maybe copy the connections in a latter stage to create a copy of your brain? )
Or, much more far fetched, the terasem foundation which has created the LifeNaut website where you may transfer your memes, that is your ideas, and your personality traits and create an Avatar which will respond like you ( maybe even, when you train it a lot, it will be you… Do not forget to google lifenaut, register in it and see what I am talking about). In fact there are more sites like lifenaut.com and I will write a whole article about these. (some of these websites are even sending these memes of yours into space occasionally, so you may find yourself in an alien culture some light years away… 
)
I have devoted a whole chapter about immortality and nanomedicine in my book ” The Era of Nanomedine” which you may read by clicking here.
I believe that we will achieve immortality as species and this will happen during this century. It will take place through simultaneous advances in nanomedicine, genomics and proteomics and through reverse engineering of the brain. “Our brain on a chip” will also be our travel to space vehicle (no more frosty boxes for space travel ) where in silico brain substrates, which in fact are immortal, will be our carriers to interstellar space if the light velocity is the ultimate limit. This way we will not be in need of sensitive life supporting systems for space travel (the 7/10 of the weight of International Space Station is life support systems)
The effects of immortality to our society will be profound and this will be the theme of another article here….
Waiting for your comments. Let’s light up the conversation here.
L.A>
PS: See what Michio Kaku has to say about this matter in the video below:
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Have you ever wondered what is going on behind the scenes in automated parkings?
How your car disappears, where it is taken and how it is brought back?
Click here to see a behind the scences video from Wohr Parking Systems.
You now know….
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You now have the opportunity to watch them online @ http://vimeo.com/siai
These are videos on the state of the art about singularity concept.
For example take a look at the video below featuring Ray Kurzweil who is an authoritative figure on singularity concept.
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How targeted search beams for mobile phones could multiply the battery life of a cell phone. Click here for more
How studying the flow inside coronary arteries could reduce the cost and complications of stenting. Click here for more
How chronic pain can be fought with an implantable chip. Click here for more
How mathematics can help with your heart problems. Click here for more
news from Physorg.com
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Recently came upon a great nanotech news site @ http://nextbigfuture.com
Futuristic news relevant to nanotech provided in an elegant manner with references and a lot of commentaries.
Definately recommend this site!
See for example a reference for a nanorobot design paper from Freitas et al in NextBigFuture.com site by clicking here
You may also see an artistic video of Freitas concept robotic phagocytes (nanorobots fighting plaque and infections)
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Recently came upon an article on futuremedicine.com site
It is about the prospects of molecular machines in medicine for targetted drug delivery.
Targetted drug delivery is about delivering a drug in the right tissue in minimal doses just those needed to cure. Th targetting may take places with specific key proteins on the surface of nanoparticles or with external means as magnetism for magnetic nanoparticles.
Learn more about magnetic nanoparticles targetted drug delivery in the video below :
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I really love the future for all the surprizes awaiting in a lab to change our lifes…
I am training almost 5 years till now to become a vascular surgeon.
I am a fan of futuristic technologies although I feel intimidated by them sometimes as a professional.
For example look at a robotic surgeon in the video below:
Neverthless, I think nanotechnological advances will get first and replace us rather than robotic surgeons.
Although I am a trained surgeon I believe that the future of surgery is that we will need no surgery at all.
I have written a chapter in a ebook on the subject.
You may take a look at http://www.nanotechgalaxy.com/
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Take a look at the video below on how a spanish bank leveraged the latest on robotics and other technologies to create a unique experience for its visitors.
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Google has been secretly testing autonomous driving cars in our cities some time now.
Of course there were human supervisors inside cars
You may remember the DARPA’s urban challenge some time ago.
Google seems to have licenced some of Stanford’s team from the above competition and invested in autonomous driving cars. So what should we expect from google’s vast resources on this project?
Autonomous cars seem to be the future promising enhanced safety and elimination of road congestion.
I really love driving cars but is seems that I would most enjoy getting driven by my autonomous car to my workplace while drinking my coffe and watching morning news…
Wouldn’t you like it? Tell me what you think below…
adapted from a post at http://robotzeitgeist.com
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Take a look at the video below. It is great as introductory material about nanotechnology.
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There is no better way to learn something other than playing games.
Nanomission.org has created video games that are very good at teaching you the basics of nanotechnology through playing.
There are modules like Nanomedicine where you will be trying to cure a patient with nanoparticles, nanoscale game where you will get a feel of nano scale and nanoimaging game where you will find yourself playing with various microscopes at the atomic scale.
I definately recommend these games. If you are a teacher you may use them to help your students get acquainted with nanotechnology.
See the videos below for a preview of the games and visit nanomission.org to download them
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In order to conquer immortality one has to understand the mechanisms of mortality.
There are many theories on why we die. Most of them concentrate on the fact of accumulation of errors on bio molecules such as DNA and proteins. Others say that there is an internal clock (telomeres) in cells that tells them to die after certain time span.
In order to learn more about the theories of aging look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing
The most important question is this: What the biological reason of dying? Is it necessary or is it an internal out of date programme of the nature in order to recycle the necessary elements for the biological species to reproduce?
In order to achieve immortality one needs only to preserve the mind of the individual.
There are many efforts today to reverse engineer the brain such as the mapping of the neuronal connections (connectome) of the brain
http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/
or the simulation of a brain tissue in a computational substrate
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/
When we will be able to reverse engineer our brain and simulate a certain brain in a computational substrate then we will be very close to achieving immortality.
We may not be able to sustain our biological tissues for ever due to accumulated damage, but we may be able to conserve our deepest ego, our thoughts, our personality and our traits in a computational substrate.
Then we may be able to achieve immortality by “downloading” our connectome to a new brain into a new body.
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You may have heard about this new microbe revealed by NASA astrobiology team.
What is so important about this microbe? It uses Arsenic instead of Phosphorus (more exactly it has the capability to use both).
Scientists at the astrobiology team of NASA are scanning the universe for substances and elements with spectrography. Till now they limited their search in Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulfur. From now on they may expand their search.
The last few years we have discovered organisms living in such extreme environments we once thought it would be impossible for a living organism to flourish. These organisms are called extremophiles.
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We also discovered a possibly habitable planet in the near vicinity of our universe around 20 light years from our sun.
So if you combine the power of life to emerge nearly everywhere and the discovery of this planet very near to us what can we deduce from these facts? Maybe that life is everywhere in the universe?
So what about the Fermi Paradox?
Where are all these aliens? Well, this is a matter of another post….
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Scientists from the Netherlands have proposed the use of a molecular assembly to drive a molecular motor and receive a feedback on its rotation.
Molecular motors are very sensitive to heat and difficult to control so this conceptual design is theoretical, nevertheless many parts of this concept already exist.
You may see the paper describing the motor here.
Molecular motors have been described for first time from Eric Drexler as a computational and theoretical entity in his books which I definitely recommend especially the “Engines of Creation” which is a popularized book for those that are interested in a nanotechnology.
Enjoy the schematics for these molecular motors below…
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