I'm not dead yet!

I think I'll go for a walk now...
I feel happy! I feel happy! I... *thump*

Hey DNI isn't the only thing I've neglected. I haven't even had time to sit down and do my bills, which I realized when my electricity abruptly shut off yesterday at 11am. Whoops!

So just a quick wave hello and a thinking point.

Sleep researchers have been quietly warning about the proliferation of electronic devices (further) damaging our sleep habits. How? Well, we're wired to get sleepy as the sun goes down - less light leads to more melatonin. Light to melanopsin expressing ganglion cells in the retina (and some rods and cones) to the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus (where pacemaker cells reside) to the pineal gland to some rockin melatonin release.

Increase the length of daylight and you stay up late because, after all, the length of the day varies throughout the year. Deprive rats of light and their schedule drifts into what scientists now call the "Grad Student Sleeping Schedule", or around the equivalent to a 26-28 hour day length. Add light and the rats lock back on to a 24 hour schedule.

Why am I mentioning this? The iPad. Touted as the end all be all of ebook readers, the one place it ironically falls short is when you can read it. Not only are LCDs notoriously tough to read in direct sunlight, but reading before bed means exposing this light sensitive circadian rhythm pathway to a slab of light. The iPad is no worse than staring at a computer screen, but E-Ink clearly has a niche here. Sure you need light to read, but a single LED book light isn't anywhere near the number of lumens as the the iPad's screen.

If you do have an iPad, fear not. Most ebook reading apps have come ability to adjust colors or brightness, so be cognizant of the idea, since most people, including myself, love displays with high contrast ratios.

DNI: Dumb Name iPad

Ah yes, been a while, but I thought I would suckle on the sweet, sweet nectar of iDevice frenzy. “Wha?!?! That’s not BCI related!” you say. I know, but I’ve posted in the past about my search for the perfect ereader, my love of tablets, and general techno-fetishism. How could I not post?

Want the short version? Completely unimpressed.

Sure the, oh gawd, do I have to actually type this name…., grrr… Sure the iPad could never live up to the hype the preceded it, but really, the iPad barely lives up to the abilities of the Apple Newton. Really? Sure the iPad has fancy things like color and 3G, but but the Newton had handwriting recognition and a PCMCIA card slot. Otherwise, both rely on a specialty OSes unable to run full desktop apps, cost about the same, and have the same ridiculous bezel to screen ratio. Okay, enough with the kinda ridiculous comparison.

What’s the bright side of the iPad’s annoucement?

I’m actually excited about the iPad. Not the iPad itself, but the interesting apps it inspires. Remember how unspeakably crappy the smartphone market was before the iPhone? It was mind-numbing. If you approach the iPad from the ebook reader perspective, you can see where that market is going.

10 hours of battery life while watching movie. Yes, very nice. Whether this is still true after a month of burn in and OS patches, we’ll see. There are a few magic numbers for battery life: 3 hours – plane ride, movie plus other activities, usage during single ‘events’. 6 hours – leave the house for an outing and recharge when you get back, equal to all day for semi-infrequent daily use. 10 hours – effective all day use for always on, but sleep capable devices. 16 hours – all day use with regular-heavy usage. After that it’s a matter of days between each step. There are netbooks that have made the 10+ hour mark, but cheers to Apple for being there right from the get go.

Really, that’s about it for the pluses. Minuses?

If you approach the iPad from the netbook perspective, there are plenty of app launchers on Windows that do everything from simulate the OSX dock, the iPhone springboard, and about a million other crazy options. How much access Apple will give devs to the GUI is yet to be seen, but if the iPhone or OSX are any indication, you’ll be lucky if they allow you to change the clock’s font.

The worst, unApple-like thing about the iPad is the near total lack of inspiring features. Where are the revolutionary interaction techniques, the device-centric interface reimagining, and those little bits of the unexpected? iPod – the navigation/click wheel. iPhone – multitouch, accelerometer, proximity sensor. iPad – ? Did they run out of ideas? Just make it a big fucking iPhone. That’ll be good enough. Um, no.

For all the crap that Microsoft has taken for the early tablet PC implementations, the iPad is downright embarrassing in comparison. They just took Windows and slapped a pen in your hand. Hey, at least you got a pen…

Which brings me to that. A stylus. The iPad could have gained all the whiz-bang features of a… pad of paper. It could have been used for class note taking, composing messages, drawing/sketching, and so much more. Instead you get an awkward keyboard with no tactile feedback (not even an attempt to make a keyboard you could use while standing up?) and fingerpainting. Not sure if they figured out a way to make the touchscreen pressure sensitive, but if not, what a mess.

Other quibbles are mentioned in this excellent rundown on Gizmodo titled 8 things that suck about the iPad. Enjoy your dongles, iKids. I’ll be over doing something exotic, like running TWO apps at once, swapping out a battery, opening an actual file, or placing an icon on the bottom of the screen before there are 20 above it. Put that on your SD card and… oh, no expandable memory slot. Right.

Back on the attack

Ah, that's what I needed. A little reprieve from the guilt of being a bad blogger and not updating the site on a totally self-imposed schedule does wonders. So, as I slowly get back into the swing of things, including my RSS feeds, postings will become more frequent.

Right now I have two advisees, a bunch of MatLab code, and a #$*@-ton of neural data to attend to, so this is a quick announcement that DNI lives on.

Super Paper Friday will hopefully resume next week, since I need to migrate and sync all my paper lists, and catch up on the past 6 months or so. I'll also be sticking with Mendeley for citation management, but also post an EndNote file to my public DropBox.

A few random other personal things...

Great to meet folks at SfN! Ah, Chicago. And to the person that gave me swine flu, I wish nothing but the worst for you! j/k, though no idea who it was. I ended up staying with family an extra few days in Chicago because I was too sick to fly. Thankfully the bug hit on the last day of the conference. If you got sick, don't blame me! Our whole lab was a sea of virus shedding nerd phlegm, it was a pretty widespread thing.

Windows 7 is spiffy. Installed it on 4 PCs and they're all popping along pretty happily. 64-bit Business edition. No driver issues with any of the 11-ish devices I have here (list at bottom of post), x58 chipset (x2), Core2Duo laptop, and G45 chipset (x1). Matlab's happy, installed (but haven't messed with) Visual Studio 2010 Public Beta, PeerBlock being all PeerBlocky (replacement for PeerGuardian that has a signed driver, meaning no more booting in Test Mode). Performance is slightly better than Vista on computational stuff, but where 7 really blows away Vista is in I/O. In Vista, you'd boot and then your hard drive would be thrashing for 20 minutes after on some mysterious process of no consequence - even on my RAID 0 Velociraptors. In 7 you boot, and, like a normal computer, everything loads and settles down after 30 seconds (even on my laptop's 5400rpm HDD). Only two programs gave me trouble: Instant Eyedropper (gets values of colors anywhere on the screen), and Eraser 6 beta (secure file deletion program - haven't tried the stable v5 yet). Other than that, about 30-40 other programs launched and worked fine during the minimal testing I did.

So, posts will be forthcoming. Apologies for being all meta again.

(Devices: Logitech: G19 keyboard w/ color LCD, G9 mouse, Illuminated keyboard, G13 Gamepad, Quickcam 9000, Quickcam Pro for Notebooks. iPod Classic, iPhone, Wacom Bamboo tablet, Connexion3D SpaceNavigator, Gateway docking station.)

Another school year begins

Ah, the wafting aromatic waves of beer and cardboard boxes could only mean one thing: the kids are back in town. Here are a few minor updates on my end of things (major for me, minor for readers, I suppose)...

Mendeley sadness
My schedule has become too packed and unpredictable to keep up with the Mendeley work, so I decided to leave my Community Liaison job (on good terms). I kept thinking, "As soon as I get over this next time crunch, I'll be ready to really give Mendeley the attention it deserves." But, those crunches just kept coming and I don't see them becoming any less crunchy in the near term. The folks there are great, the product is great, and I really wish I had the time to work on it more. I expect really big things out of that group, and will continue to sing their praises. Okay, maybe not sing. Limericks? Nah. Too many syllables in all the keywords ("There once was a bibliographic... shit, ran out of syllables already").

My Project/Thesis/Thing
I've begun running some of the experiments that I've taken lead on (I don't want to say they're 'my' projects because so much feedback has gone into the process that, like all good experiments, I don't think one person deserves all the credit). I would go into more detail, but you know how it is in research and especially FDA/clinical trial situations. Still, these are 'mah babies' and so far things are looking really good. Now to get to the data! Big thanks to Jessica (my 'med school minion') for putting up with my odd schedule and all the great work. Hrm, I could use another DNI contributor or two...

On the topic of putting together kick-ass experiments, I've been meaning to post that there is a whole field out there that many scientists are completely unaware of called "User Experience", or UX. UX is kinda an amalgamation of user interface, HCI, psychology, feedback, and design that looks at how all those fields converge into the subjective experience of the user. Fascinating stuff, though more on the 'web design' end of the spectrum, and I've been really loving the bits and pieces I've been coming across. This field is set to explode with the continually expanding emphasis being put on web apps, mobile apps, and even OSes in general. Which brings me to another nice tidbit of knowledge.

2 copies of Windows 7 for $30 (for students)

Yeah, right! No, really! Thinking of getting a new PC, but wanna wait for Windows 7? Don't want to reinstall your system halfway through the semester just play with all the fun new built in toys? (Shuddup Mac people. some of us prefer a different flavor of Kool Aid.) Well, you'll love this.

Join IEEE as a student for $30 (1-year membership), and get access to their MSDNAA software library for free. This includes the Windows 7 RTM version. RTM? That sounds like a beta. Nope, RTM stands for 'Release to Manufacturer'. Buy a PC on Oct 23, and this is same version of Windows 7 that will be shipping on it. Not beta, not RC. I've gone through this process, and it works as advertised. Buy the membership, wait about 7 days for the MSDNAA specific email to show up with your login and password (mine took about half that long, maybe because I used my university email address), and go get em, tiger.

Only the Business versions (32 and 64-bit) is up as of this posting (don't waste your time with the RC, and Ultimate isn't much better than Business, unless you need the language packs, which I think can be purchased separately). Supposedly, the 'in place' upgrading has undergone some major upgrades, and Vista users may not even need to do a clean install, though I always recommend it. Mine installed fine - took about 30 minutes and activated without issue.

Here are the linkies:
Source of the info: SlickDeals
IEEE description: here

Data Visualization
I plan to add more on this in the future, but an interesting (free) iPhone app to check out is Roambi, which basically allows you to upload 'data' to their site, and then spit is back in some really visually pleasing, interactive displays on the iPhone.
Try the app's built in demos for a better idea.

EEG consumer BCIs spanked by the Schwartzinator

Forbes has a fun little story on the state of consumer BCIs that hits on the major consumer players, but also throws real BCIs researchers John Wolpaw and Andy Schwartz into the fray. Each echos the officially sanctioned position of their respective scalp electrode versus implanted microwire/fancier probe electrode camp.

I prefer to call this the Head-Computer Interface versus Brain-Computer Interface debate. I try to be even keeled on the subject. EEG is obviously a worthwhile endeavor because there's none of that messy surgery involved, and thus appeals to a very large audience (at least in the near term). Hey, if you get a signal that can be controlled by the user reliably and with an acceptable level of precision, you have something useful. BUT, EEG is a degraded, garbled, sloppy signal prone to nearly limitless interference sources. Anything that can bork an implanted BCI can bork an EEG-based system, but EEG throws the doors open to the world because you are essentially wearing an antenna (or several).

One major problem with EEG is the fallacy that somehow destroyed information can be recovered by some form of fancy filtering. This is simply not so. Think of the electrode as a point of convergence for all electromagnetic signals of a measurable intensity. Even after narrowing frequency bands and implementing funky probabilistic decoders, any squiggle can be the convergence of several squiggles of indeterminable sources. In other words, at a specific time, a signal of amplitude +5 can be two signals of +4 and +1, -2 and +7, or 5 signals of +1-4-2+3+7. And don't even start with harmonics.

The second problem is population size. I know we like to think that motor cortex responds to only movement. It makes life easier. What life? Life in La-La-Land. MI responds to visual stimuli, movement preparation, auditory stimuli, imagined movements, movement related words (heard, internally rehearsed or spoken), reward, attention, cutaneous and proprioceptive feedback, and a bunch of other factors I'm not even mentioning. Until the impact of these influences is understood and quantified, there will not be any BCI that translates the neural activity for "move my arm to point x,y,z". EEG will never have the fidelity to isolate the differences feedback has at the single neuron level, so the nature of the recorded signal will never allow the 'direct' mapping of neural activity to output. That is, the activity that once gave rise to movement can never be harnessed with an acceptable degree of control to recreate the movement. Yes, I am using the word never. Never. There, I said it again.

Like I said, this isn't an attack on EEG, just reality. Different uses for different technologies. I can drive a car on a road. That doesn't mean I can drive a road, or that a road has no use.

BCI for the kids

Yup, it's finally happened. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is going on in Las Vegas, NV and I'll post a research/cool gadget wrap up later. But, I thought it was worth noting that there are not one, but TWO BCI devices being marketed towards children. Both use EEG, so I'm sure they won't offer a frustrating and imprecise experience (note the sarcasm).

The most notable is the Mattel MindFlex. The user wears a headband with what looks like electrodes over the temples (+ ground to the earlobes), and navigates a ball around an obstacle course. The folks over at Switched (part of the Engadget universe) tried it out and found it almost completely unworkable. More coverage here, here, and a video here.

The second is marketed as The Force Trainer, a Star Wars toy, and all it does is train you to raise and lower a ball in a tube. Wheee! Ball goes up! Wheee! Ball goes down! What will your child will do after he or she 'masters' this game or decides that it's boring? I don't know, but whatever it is, I'd bet you could find out within 5 minutes of giving them this. These Gizmodo reader comments pretty much sum it up:
simi510: does it work or is a gimmick? IMO both. It works as a gimmick.
hofmann: My kids would honestly play with that for 5 minutes and then beat each other with it, and they actually like Star Wars.

What IS interesting about these toys is that there will be a generation of kids that have this idea of using neural signals to control external objects. If you read this blog, you probably grasp the basic concepts behind BCI systems pretty 'natively', but ask your average Joe on the street, and chances are you would have to explain the most basic ideas repeatedly before he/she could wrap their head around it.

The second interesting bit to come out of this is that no one knows the long term impact of 'training' yourself to repeatedly activate particular rhythms. I'm not being alarmist - oh noz! Johnny is dead from over training his brain! - but if you had a kid play with one of these for days, weeks, months, what changes might occur? We know that repeatedly engaging in 'mind altering experiences' (meditation, drug use, chronic stress, etc) can alter behavior significantly. What happens when a kid eats, sleeps and breathes The Force Trainer is unknown. Would it make them more docile and calm, or unable to focus on critical thinking? I guess we'll find out!

Quick Notes

My desktop PC is borked right now, so updates may actually be more often in the short term. I tend to post from my laptop more for a couple reasons. Looks like I installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, upgraded, downgraded, and ratcheted things until Vista decided I should be punished by inexplicable freezes. In fairness, I have installed a couple hundred different programs, 2-3 dozen devices for product reviews (man, must have been about 8 keyboards alone!), AND the whole thing is an original, launch day install of Vista on an NVidia mobo 1st gen Intel SLI version with two different generation NVidia GPUs (NVidia's crappy-slow response to Vista's driver changes accounted for almost 1/3 of all crashes, according to the crash reports sent to MS). I'm amazed it lasted this long. There's one more thing I might try, but it is looking like a reinstall is needed, and that ain't happening.

So, second note, related to the first. The Intel Core i7 CPUs and chipset are out, and expensive. There is no upgrading from the previous generation - CPUs have different pins and some (I think all as of right now) motherboards support only DDR3. Important to note: If you are planning on buying/upgrading anytime soon, be aware that there is another major socket introduction in ~6 months. By socket, I mean the physical shape and number of pins that mount the CPU to the motherboard. These, too, will neither be compatible with the current (now 'old') crop, NOR the current i7 boards. The current i7 is Socket1366. The upcoming is something like Socket1066. The two i7 sockets will exist at the same time, with the 1366 marketed at enthusiasts and workstations (read: awesome pwnage machines), and the 1066 aimed at consumer and general use machines (read: nublet, whiney l00sorZ). Both will be major upgrades from the current architecture (Socket775). The 1366 has an on dye memory controller, similar to AMD's Hypertransport, meaning massively fast communication between CPU and memory, and no dealing with the rest of the device bus. I believe the 1066 has the memory controller on the mobo, but still dedicated to CPU-RAM communication only. Basically, on dye means faster performance, more upgradable, more transistors on the CPU wafers, and more complexity to manufacture, hence the two lines. So, if you want a blazing fast computer but heard that there is a new upgrade coming out in 6 months, unless you want to wait for the price drops (and that is a legit concern, since mobos are running AT LEAST $200, and the top of the line CPU is $1500 alone), the current 1366 i7 is the way to go. The mainstream 1066 will still be very fast, still outpacing the current architecture (775 that is), so don't think of this as a "Pentium versus Celeron" situation at all. It is more along the lines of the Xeon versus Pentium (not really, but you get the idea). I'll be upgrading to it within the next month, and no, I'm not aiming at the $1500 CPU, thank you very much, but I will post my experience. Maybe a few build pics to go along with it?

Next, as I said, Mendeley is on top of things, and they snuck out an update - 0.6.1 - which resolves the file renaming issue and a couple other bugs. I'd bet that the syncing has been addressed as well, but haven't tried that feature. The site doesn't list it prominently, so just download the installer that is listed in the usual download section. Oh, and the metadata extraction is at least 100x's faster than the 0.5.X versions. Nearly instantaneous. And I didn't notice before, but now you can query the DOI identifiers for metadata that is incorrectly identified. Again, haven't tried it yet, but there seems to be some type of new online check that runs after the metadata extraction that cleans up a ton of minor errors and inconsistencies. I dropped 40 papers in and it failed to extract data from 2, and had slightly messy recognition for 2. The others were perfect. Also, more accurate metadata means less chance of renaming files to ridiculous lengths, though it doesn't look like there is a check in there yet (still gives the fill title name).

Aaaaand... today's SPF will be the last for the year, probably.


Aaaaand... I will be in Iceland for the New Year's celebration, and giving a talk. Details will be posted as I get them. Probably at a nice bar, with drinks to follow. General audience. Come help the Icelandic krona rebound!

Aaaaaaaaand... oh! Almost forgot. Another computer bit. If you want to try a really spiffy music program with all the slickness of iTunes, plus the add-on capabilities of Firefox, and the responsiveness and limited resource use of Notepad (okay, lil more memory, but still great), definitely check our Songbird. This open source, Firefox code based, cross platform, iPod supporting, iTunes library syncing bundle of awesome is, um, awesome! After using iTunes for so long, I forgot what it was like to open my music program in 2 seconds and have buttons click as I click the mouse, rather than 5-10 seconds afterwards (Apple software on Windows machines sucks goat nads). And, it doesn't need 3 different background processes loaded into memory when not in use, oh, AND you don't have to download a crappy video player *coughQuicktimecough*, oh, and it integrates with a bunch of major music services, like Last.fm. No, there is no iTunes store, so iPhone users are stuck there. When my desktop gets working again, I will try syncing my iPhone's music to see if the only issues are app installing and Outlook syncing. I'd expect Outlook syncing to come in the form of an add on sometime within the next 4 months, or so. Anyhow, very excited about this app, as you can tell. I tried it in early beta and was less than impressed, but it has really matured.

OCZ NIA gets nekkid

Some pics to whet your appetite (much better pics to follow)...

Meh on the construction. Look ma! No metal. Good thing they're not trying to conduct electri... oh wait...
The amp (sans warranty!)


3 Prongs for the headband piece. Probably the center channel grounded via USB and the side channels recorded differentially.

Note the mystery connector.

OCZ NIA in da house

It was here when I got home, so yay!


Initial impressions:
- Very nice packaging
- Decent build quality
- Obviously a work in progress on the hardware side (anytime I see holes in the frame that were obviously used for an external power plug, but lacking a connector behind them, I know things are in their version 1.0 form)
- Software isn't horrible, but definitely needs more options (for instance, the 'Pong' game used to train can only be played with the muscle signal)
- The glance control is abysmal (eye movement detection/EOG)
- Grounding is problematic - I could only use it is I had my hand on the box
- Amplifier overload is waaay too sensitive - if you wiggle out of the detection range, there is a lockout of several seconds
- Needs more and better manual controls
- Needs more and better feedback - depending on how you count them, there are 8 control signals, but you only get an analog trace for muscle activity

All in all, it is pretty much what I expected. Right out of the box it is nearly impossible to control, and you really need to sit with it for a good hour to get a feeling for how to modulate the signals. I will say that it has a decent amount of potential, but from what I can tell, it will not be replacing a mouse anytime soon.

For instance, once I began to get 'good' at the Pong game I started thinking of funny ways to bring up the device in lab meeting. Of course, that made me smile, which blew my control right out the window. When I realized what was happening, I tried to suppress the smile, which must have engaged antagonist muscles because it was just as bad. I had to relax and stare blankly at the screen, which kinda scared me.

Why? Because in order to use this interface, I had to be completely devoid of emotional reaction. Holy Dystopic Futures, Batman! Some nutjob will interpret this as ALL BCIs requiring this 'feature', but that isn't the case. Still, I couldn't help but think of zoned out emo teens staring blankly at their screens, and they disaffectively advance military robots on the other side of the world.

So, there needs alot more work on an adaptive filter for the NIA. That's a problem with most EEG (and less for EMG) devices, and really a requirement when compared to intracortical recording. Basically, EEG is listening in on millions of neurons, and those neurons have 5,000 - 10,000 synapses. The resulting slow wave rhythms are the aggregate signal of all that mess.

People like to use the stadium analogy - that you can tell what is happening in a sports match by listening to the cheer of the crowd and knowing who the home team is (EEG), but you get more information by listening a single person (single unit activity) - but that analogy has one major flaw. It ignores that there are signals of far more diverse frequency and amplitudes, and that inhibitory signals are part of the mix. In essence, you're listening to a stadium at 2,000 feet with an "As seen on TV" sound amplifier, with an unknown distribution of home-to-away fans, of which a random distribution have laryngitis or transplanted dolphin vocal cords, and many of which are watching other games on their portable TVs and cheering more for that game as much or more than the game you are observing. And then there are random nutjobs just running around screaming for completely unknown reasons. (Security must be very lax at this stadium!)

See why single units are better? No nutjobs. Oh wait, no, I mean more info per channel. Pull out 20 random fans and you might be able to figure out things like the score.

Anyhow, enough EEG ranting. If you can filter out all the garbage, which you can't, you could theoretically get a good signal. But, you can't. So devices like the NIA should be looked at purely from a functional standpoint. If I could do a little training, have the cursor follow my eye (for games, this would be the mouse/look control), assign two keys to muscle activity (forward and backward/W and S keys), and alpha waves to left click (shoot), I would be happy. As it stands, I can't. I can get some very basic muscle, poor neural, and essentially no EOG control. That makes me a sad panda.

I'll play with it some more over the week and post regarding any changes. Ah, operantly conditioned association... you will have to be my friend a little longer... (Hats off to the Fetz crowd!)

(I should mention that if I had to decide today between the OCZ Actuator and Phil Kennedy's system, I would go with Phil's. I never posted a review because of some concern regarding the use of lab items for review purpose, which I think is fair, but the Neural Signals device (EOG, EEG, EMG, piezo-switch, light touch switch) was really snazzy. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a link to it anywhere on their page.)

Neural Impulse Actuator incoming!

Okay, screw OCZ's PR department. The dry electrode based Neural Impulse Actuator BCI aimed at gamers has been out a couple weeks now, so I ordered one. It should be here later today. I am not expecting much, but hey, I thought I should own the first consumer BCI. They run $150-200. Buy.com has the lowest price right now, @ $150.

Also, I coined a new word today: Neurd. :D

I broke down

... and for an iPhone :D

It is a wonderful little gadget, and one of those few items that make me take note because I know I will be looking back at the time before I got it, wondering how I was able to operate. If you're on the fence, just go get one. I've already hit the impassible Apple iWall - that point where I wish there were advanced options for all the settings. Everything is either too simple or, like jailbreaking, too iffy. Guess I'll have to actually simply use the damn thing.

I know I've been saying, "Updates coming soon!" but I swear they are! Oooo... I woinder if Blogger and Google Reader work on it... ~o.O~

(My background is above)

Updates a-comin'

I know, I've been bad. Updates coming this week, along with a monolithic SPF. I've been alternating between out-of-town and stressed beyond my gourd the last two weeks.

In the meantime, enjoy these bits:
- Multimodal image analysis on iPhones. (You ARE getting a 3G iPhone, right? Sweeeet.)
- Coffee is so powerful that just the scent can kick start genes.
- The latest computing speed barrier was broken. That's news to neuroscientists because it is being used to simulate the visual system. The program is called PetaVision, which sounds way too close to a name an international 'video' network worthy of heavy UN sanctions might have.

Neural Impulse Actuator shipping

OCZ's Neural Impulse Actuator, is supposedly shipping. This is the headband of dry electrodes that's being marketed for gamers, with claims that it uses "brain signals" to control your standard PC games. I'm on the waiting list, so we'll see...

Here's a link of the first review of it (directly to the video/testimonial page).

Store yer bits

Why do I love storage so much? No idea. Maybe it's because you can never have enough. 3 things in the news recently...


1) Seagate says they will have 2TB drives (traditional magnetic spinner types) by next year. The last major advance was the second generation perpendicular recording which gave us that quick jump from 500GB to 750GB to 1TB, where things have remained stagnant. I have not heard much on the research front to indicate that things are lined up for anything above 2TB, but I have no idea what allowed the doubling this time.

2) Intel is hopping happy about their new 32GB NAND flash chips. Current max is 16GB, so flash drives will be doubling in capacity within the next 6 months, if not sooner.

3) Lastly, if you are looking for a super easy, no fuss 4-drive disk array, the Drobo's price has been slashed by a good chunk. It was waaay overpriced before, and is now reasonable. I'm a control freak and like to know everything that goes on, but if you like technology magic, the Drobo is a nice option. A little add-on dock allows you to turn it into a NAS device, too.

Free wheelin'

Here are the articles related to wheelchairs that have been clogging the tubes...



First, the laser guided docking wheelchair.

Next, the NOA wheelchair. Discussed more here.


The Pegasus wheelchair concept can extend to a near standing position, which I have been told is not comfortable for people

A semi-old New Scientist article on EEG controlled wheelchairs. (Medgadget has a video.)

And lastly, extreme wheelchair sports (I feel like I posted this already, but it was still in my reader.)

Evolve

Continuing with the purging of links to interesting stories, file these under "Evolution" or "Rockin Darwin's Doodle".


Awesome, awesome, awesome article on the complexity of evolution at Wired. What I love about it is that it completely axes the idiocy of sticking to a strict Darwinian perspective. We all know it doesn't work that way exactly, but that getting the knuckle draggers to understand that much has been an effort spanning decades. This article is refreshing, thought provoking, and a must read. If anyone knows of more like this, complete with some conceptual inter-meshing of self-emergence, multi-level selection, and complex system rules, please post in the comments.

An interesting little (Darwinian) evolution demonstration technique has made its way around the net recently, too. An interesting little classroom oriented setup emulates/performs 'evolution' using a controlled microenvironment and RNA + enzymes. Tweak a variable in the substrate, watch the concentrations of 'adaptive' [my words] RNA increase, isolate the 'adapted enzymes', stress them similarly, wash, rinse, repeat. Medgadget has a nice graphic and rundown, and I saw the story first on Science Daily.


Coming via Mind Hacks, Scientific American has an article about a report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (link to FREE special issue on Evolutionary Dynamics of Wild Populations) postulating that schizophrenia is evolutionarily beneficial.


As a side thought, if bacterial evolution is any sign, the increasingly effective treatments for disorders in general make them less important in determining the fitness of an organism. So, as the environment forces us to evolve, the forces that once kept our survival in check (disease, 'bad genes', weak resistance to +5 fire damage, etc) impact us less. So, the medical hurdles ahead of us are even more difficult to solve and simultaneously the population will require more care. An interesting thing to just consider is identifying the line where we stop pursuing A because the advances made are just too small. Example? The common cold or strep throat. We seem to say, "Meh, good enough. Let's move on to cancer." If we could stop the growth of malignant tumors with 100% assuredness, would we say, "Meh, good enough. Let's move on to AIDS." We all know that the medical industry doesn't make money on actually curing a problem compared to maintaining an acceptable level of homeostasis, so the next time you're opening up to say Ahhh, think about the Good Enough Line. Now, throw schizophrenia back in there, or any cognitive disorder. How will we know the Good Enough Line?

By the way, WTF is up with legitimate sites not linking to the primary literature when they report on a finding. Obnoxious. Instead you have to look up the journal, hope "this month" means the issue in press and not the ahead of press articles, or end up searching for the author, etc.


The Daily Galaxy asks if robot evolution is mirroring the evolution of life. The questions is interesting. If it is, does that mean science is conceding that life has a "designer"? If we say no, aren't we ignoring the impact of our environment on the design of robots? And if we say that they are one in the same, aren't we just dirty, granola eating, sandal wearing hippies? Seriously, though, it might speak to appearance of ordered evolution from many chaotic variables.

Two papers to point out: RNA editing, DNA recoding and the evolution of human cognition in Trends in Neuroscience, and Parallel evolution of cortical areas involved in skilled hand use in J Neuroscience.


And a few fun ones.
- Darwin "Photoshop tennis" on Flickr.
- If you are in New York, the Museum of Modern Art has a special exhibit on technology and science called Design and the Elastic Mind the runs through May 12, 2008 (if you read this after that date, you can find it in the "Past" link on the left).
- Fun tshirt.
- Expose gravity for the scientific conspiracy it is!
- Darwin plush doll. Awwww...


Enjoy, and keep on evolving! You have no choice!

(Update: Just saw that Philadelphia is declaring this The Year of Evolution. Rock on!)
(Update 2: Darwin's papers have been digitized to posted to the web for the first time. Enjoy!)
(Oh, and I would like to add: Fuck Ben Stein for lacking a 1st grader's understanding of science.)

Quicky

Just noticing a bunch of deals for 1TB hard drives for <$200. If you're looking for one, you know what to do.

SPF and TII (Tuesday's Interesting Item) will be up a little later tonight probably. How can I be sure? Installing Final Cut Pro Studio is estimated at 19 FRIGGIN HOURS, and there's no way I have that much distraction built up to prevent posting.

Excuses, excuses, and a few tech items

Going forward...

So, updates have been slow in coming, but as of today, things should be running smoothly. I will post the weekly link dumps next week, because I forgot that it requires that I post for the preceding week (in order to post the stories I didn't report on, I have to fail to report on them first).

Also, posts will probably be slightly shorter. Of course, enough coverage of an item will mean larger posts.


Excuses, excuses...

Reasons for the lull? Cross institution project, prelim (make it stop!), meetings requiring progress reports, laptop dead-received-installing junk saga, major tech site changes (including restarting the podcast, which you should subscribe to, and all the technical issues with getting my mini-studio up and running again), computer upgrades (more below), new lab computers for tasks we've never done, lots of general tech stuff I'm learning about and was previously unfamiliar with (video conferencing standard, serious data security, HD semi-pro film editing hardware/software, etc.), and actually plenty more that I can't remember. I've honestly gone out for 'fun' once in the last 3 weeks, making other friends a little worried, and causing those obligatory "I'm doing great, just lots of work" social sessions. At least that's how I justify playing WoW with the guild, the Tipplesplitters ("Fear the Muffin!"), for 5 hours last night :). I'm not complaining, since all this is actually really fun to me, but you get the idea. Side projects like this blog took a back seat. And, there's also a film project I might be involved with, but that's still in the planning stages.


Upgraded PC setup

My computer is now set up in such an uber-radical way that I am in awe. That's rare. Not every piece is latest and greatest, but I decided to put off assembling a new one until the end of the year at the earliest for tech reasons.

New laptop:
Gateway C-141XL with - Penryn 2.4GHz, 250GB HDD, 3 GB RAM, Vista Business x86, ATI Radeon Mobility x2300 HD w/ 128MB dedicated, Wacom digitizer, etc. Probably the fastest and most feature rich 14.1" widescreen tablet out (neck and neck with the Toshiba). (edit: nevermind, it is now the ONLY 14" tablet, since Toshiba discontinued the M7 and R10. Still love t, even though it is a bit heavy.)

WORTH NOTING FOR ANYONE WITH A LAPTOP AND DESKTOP: Get Synergy2. It's a small, open source, free application that you run on any number of computers of any OS (Win XP/Vista, OSX, Linux, etc) and allows you to use one mouse and keyboard seamlessly with all of them. It is awesome. There is a paid for Windows only app called MaxiVistaPro that supports a few other things like file dragging, but Synergy works great for me.

Desktop changes:
The laptop is mounted below the right 20.1" LCD in my new 3-friggin-monitor setup, so that when I'm home it is used as my scratch pad and reference for notes. All three LCDs (all Dell, 2x20.1", 1x24") and the laptop/tablet are supported by new Ergotron LX100 arms, which are just top notch quality and have no problem supporting everything. Monitors arranged in 20"-24"-20" setup.

The central/main monitor is driven by an 512MB EVGA Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS, which uses the G92 chip (used in the 9XXX series, smaller dye, etc). I decided I don't play enough games, and I have 2 consoles, to warrant springing for a 9800GTX, and didn't want to deal with the power issues of the 9800GX2 (dual GPU card).

The triple-display/triple monitor drama
I had an EVGA Nividia GeForce 7950GX2, which is two 7950GTs in one card allowing for two of such cards to be used in a Quad SLI setup (4 GPUs fused into one monster, single monitor driving GPU). Originally I was thinking of putting that card into SLI mode (could only drive one monitor then), using it to drive my main monitor, and getting a cheap-o dual DVI second card to drive the other two. After a shit-ton of research (literally hours, possibly days if you include the many other checks into this setup), I decided to do an about face and do the opposite - get a new, reasonably priced card for the center monitor that performed as good or better than the 7950 in SLI (I was surprised that the 8X00 series is JUST catching up to it). The reason? Everything I read on getting the previous setup to work screamed "HACK!" and I knew that I would one day update a driver and none of it would work. My main concern was whether trying to keep the 7950 in SLI would cause the drivers to attempt to lump the second GPU in with the mix, causing either errors, or not letting me use SLI in the first place, but there were other concerns. My motherboard has two PCI-Express 16x slots so I might as well use them. (Asus P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe, based on the NForce4 Intel x16 chipset, which actually has a second PCI-E mini-bus and bridge chip. It was the first chipset for Intel chips with 2x16x lanes, so it was slightly a hack job in itself.) More importantly, the PCI graphics cards were all older, which means drastically different drivers. If I went with an NVidia card, there would likely be problems with the main monitor, if system files got overwritten with the older chipset files, and if I went with ATI there's always the possibility that down the road a driver update or installer would check the system, and as soon as it saw a non-NVidia or non-ATI card it would either not try to install or assume the drivers were old and uninstall them or something worse. The only option I considered was getting an ATI card and doing alittle dance between safe mode boots in which I disable one GPU, install the other's drivers, disable the other and install the opposite's drivers, enable SLI with the ATI disabled, cross my fingers and hope that everything works. There are reports of this working, but by the number of steps, you can tell it isn't a 'supported feature', and who knows if I could change the display resolution without a million reboots.

Instead I got the 8800GTS 512 - an excellent overall performer and the best bang for the buck - for under $200. The two side monitors are driven by the EVGA 1GB Geforce 7950GX2. I decided that since I'm mixing DirectX 9 and 10 cards, I would split the 7950GX2 (leave it out of SLI Mode) and not run DX10 apps on the side monitors (I should note that this is NOT a triple-monitor GAMING setup, just a triple monitor WORK setup with excellent single monitor gaming). I thought that of all the possibilities, this was most likely to work and offer the performance I was looking for, in the configuration I wanted, and at a reasonable price. Got the 8800, installed it, booted, and bam! Worked out of the box with no driver updates. There were a few odd things in the NVidia control panel application, but updating to the latest beta drivers (174.74, I think it was) fixed all those issues (only real oddity was that only one 20" monitor was configurable in the NVidia app, but worked fine in the system Display Control Panel). Totally happy. Totally in awe of the monster I had created.

(Other general specs: 2.66GHz Core2Duo (E6700 Conroe, watercooled), 3GB 800MHz DDR2, ??TB in HDDs (I've lost count, around 5TB), external 5-bay eSATA enclosure, Soundblaster X-Fi Elite, Logitech Z-5500 speakers, and prob missing something - oh well)

I will post pics soon.

~o.O~ new keyboard just got here! Must go play.

In the meantime...

... go get yourself a brainlamp! Made with a 3D printer and MRI of the creator. No price listed.

More on the inevitable robot uprising

Perhaps Houdini's historic struggle against our soon to be metal masters should be put in context. What if the great art works of our time reflected a world where man and machine lived side by side?

The time for wondering those thoughts is GONE! We must not be weak! We have already given them a taste of human blood as machines of battle and industry, even at our own insistence. Imagine death from above, as the our diminutive circuit board superpowers that be watch from the skies.

But, are we willing to give up our newly revitalized BattleBots TV shows (OMGOMGOMG YAY!) and Roombas (and their knock offs) in exchange for this? And what if they combine their consumer level powers to form monstrosities truly terrifying, like videoed below? Keep idolizing them, sharing them with our children, and reporting on science for 1 freaking minute out of 5 hours of news material, and I'm sure this day will sneak up on us, just as we taught them. Now get me another beer, beerBot!



Sources:
BoingBoing
Mind Hacks
DVice
Gizmodo
Switched
Robot Gossip (love it, but needs more updates!)
Etsy