Lifeboat Foundation

It seems that biofeedback is a thing of future. By having brain activity feedback, you can train meditation, attention, improve sleep, control gadgets, artificial limbs, carts for impaired, and even computer I/O. Everything starts with proper biosensor and controller. Biological signals are very low voltage – microvolts. In order to distinguish them from noisy environment, a precision electronics is required. Brain activity signals are somewhat different from myograms or ECG, they can be analyzed as power spectrum that represent brain activity phases like Alpha, Beta, Theta. There has be a numerous modules developed to acquire brain signals. If you want low to develop sensors by yourself, you could grab a Neurosky platform which is a small size PCB with sensor and microcontroller interfaces.

With it you can read raw EEG signals with sampling 512Hz and do with them what you want. USART interface enables you to connect it yo Arduino or Raspberry Pi where you can calculate all sort of things and extract control signals. Of course you can read processed power spectrum as well to detect activities like attention, meditation and other activities. Eye blink detection is also an option. Great thing is that you can use this module to read ECG activity as well. Module incorporates AC noise filter which can be configured for 50HZ or 60Hz.

Continue reading “Affordable EEG biosensors to control physical things” »

A recent newspaper article under the headline “High street eye test can provide early indication of dementia” highlighted yet another complex connection between the eye and the brain.

This important eye-brain interface is still being researched and many disciplines are now working together to make fresh findings. But while most of us know that regular physical activity and eating healthily can help maintain or improve our well-being, few are aware of the importance of feeding our eyes with the right kind of light. Indeed, not experiencing the right quality and quantity of light could have adverse effects on hormonal changes, sleep patterns and may even be linked to obesity.

Novel treatments for neurological diseases might be possible with a flexible mesh that can prod individual brain cells.

Aurora Flight Sciences is flying a Cessna Caravan fitted with a robotic copilot as it completes work under Phase 2 of a DARPA program to demonstrate automation that could reduce the crew required to fly existing aircraft.

Under DARPA’s Alias (Aircrew Labor In-cockpit Automation System) program, Aurora has also demonstrated its technical approach on a Diamond DA42 piston twin and is installing the system in a Bell UH-1 helicopter.

Continue reading “Watch: Robotic Copilot Demonstrated By Aurora Flight Sciences” »

There’s a new Air Force space spy in the game.

Technique to create alcohol from thin air has applications in renewable energy.

Henrik Fisker’s new battery company — Fisker Nanotech — says it has found a way to combine supercapacitors and batteries and produce them inexpensively.

In a development beneficial for both industry and environment, UC Santa Barbara researchers have created a high-quality coating for organic electronics that promises to decrease processing time as well as energy requirements.

“It’s faster, and it’s nontoxic,” said Kollbe Ahn, a research faculty member at UCSB’s Marine Science Institute and corresponding author of a paper published in Nano Letters (“Molecularly Smooth Self-Assembled Monolayer for High-Mobility Organic Field-Effect Transistors”).

Could we see this technology offered via subscription as the a new home screening method to check for cancerous polyps or cells in the stomach, colon, or esophagus?

The human intestine is a nearly 8-m-long cache of bacteria, both good and bad. When disease-carrying microbes colonize different sections of the gut, they can cause problems like inflammation and diarrhea. Researchers have now developed tiny, self-propelling, biocompatible robots that could deliver drugs or imaging agents to a targeted section of the intestine (ACS Nano 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b04795). When swallowed, the devices pass through the stomach, travel a preset distance, and embed themselves in the intestinal lining.

A team led by Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang of the University of California, San Diego, created 15-µm-long, 5-µm-wide hollow cylinders made of gold and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene). They filled the tubes with magnesium particles and a fluorescent dye as cargo and then coated them with a pH-sensitive methacrylate-based polymer. The methacrylate coating protects the tubes from the acidic gastric fluid in the stomach, but starts to dissolve in the neutral pH intestinal fluid. By tuning the coating’s thickness, the researchers can control how far the devices travel via natural gut movement before the coating dissolves completely; thicker coatings last longer.

Continue reading “Self-propelling motors could target cargo to the gut” »