How does today’s tech compare to the alternate 2015 visited by Marty McFly, and which modern marvels could never have been predicted back in the ’80s?
This short video (with some fun integrated graphics) is from an interview I did with El Pais (the largest newspaper in Spain). It highlights some of the emerging technologies and approaches which have the potential to shift health, medicine and biopharma from its intermittent and reactive physician-centric mode, to an era of more continuous data and a proactive approach, in which the individual is increasingly empowered and integrated into personalized wellness, diagnosis and therapy. The video is below and some associated thoughts follow:
Diagnostics- Era of the digital black bag: Ranging from an eye, ear and throat exam (from connected devices designed for the patient like CellScope, MedWand and Tyto) to cardiac exams enabled by low cost EKG’s (AliveCor and Kito), digital diagnostics is coming to the home. Some will even do automated interpretations (i.e. the EKG interpreted by the app and send to the cloud), where the diagnosis and management of disease will increasingly be enabled outside of the usual clinic, ER or hospital. Wearable patches that integrate multiple vital signs, such as those developed by Vital Connect and Proteus Digital Health will enable more complex disease management and monitoring with ICU level data (EKG, respiratory rate, temperature, position and more), outside of the clinical environment.
UK pedestrians in Chesham will experience a first when they stroll around. Virgin Media is behind the initiative of a Smart WiFi Pavement, to provide people with Wi-Fi access. Residents will be able to “streetsurf,” according to the news release. Virgin Media is a provider of all four broadband, TV, mobile phone and home phone services in the UK.
The company is out to make a name in improving out-of-home connectivity. The Virgin Media news release said, “Chiltern District Council and Virgin Media have joined forces to blanket Chesham’s high street with superfast WiFi. The unlimited WiFi service is available to residents, businesses and visitors passing through the center of Chesham; the service even covers parts of Lowndes Park – Chesham’s 36 acre park space.” The pilot is available to all the 21,000 residents and businesses of Chesham.
Speeds of up to 166Mbps are highlighted; the number is seven times the average UK broadband speed.
Created by Russian engineer Nikita Chen-yun-tai, the new Apis Cor 3D printer is powerful enough to print a building in one day, yet small enough to be moved with minimal preparation and transportation costs. This portability allows users to print a building in one location and easily move the Apis Cor the next day to another spot. It promises to revolutionize the use of 3D printers in construction, especially in developing nations where low-cost, efficient printing is critical.
The 3D printing of houses is not a new idea — companies have been using the tenets of additive manufacturing for years. What makes the compact Apis Cor printer unique is the unit’s small size — it measures 16.4 ft by 5 ft, weighs 2.5 tons and can be assembled within 30 minutes. As a result, the Apis Cor can be moved easily without the need for an expensive method of transportation and setup. It requires no site preparation and no testing before use, which means it can be dropped on site and deployed right away after assembly.
Related: A Chinese company assembled this 3D-printed home in just three hours.
Remote driving could be a good halfway step to fully autonomous vehicles, but it feels pretty weird.
In the drive to miniaturize electronics, solenoids have become way too big, say Rice University scientists who discovered the essential component can be scaled down to nano-size with macro-scale performance.
The secret is in a spiral form of atom-thin graphene that, remarkably, can be found in nature, according to Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues.
Usually, we determine the characteristics for materials we think might be possible to make, but this time were looking at a configuration that already exists, Yakobson said. These spirals, or screw dislocations, form naturally in graphite during its growth, even in common coal.
.
The first attempt at using gene therapy to prevent regular aging allegedly happened last month in what could spell the beginning of a new era in do-it-yourself genetic modification.
CEO and founder of BioViva Sciences USA Inc, Liz Parrish, claims she underwent gene therapy at an undisclosed location in Latin America where she received two forms of treatment, including muscle mass enhancement and therapy to increase the length of the telomeres, the DNA caps which protect the chromosome from deterioration and are associated with longer life span.
Parrish announced in a Reddit AMA that she had gone through the therapy and if successful she plans to roll out a public offering in three to five years despite neither treatment being FDA approved. The results of the therapy are yet unknown and she says she feels no different so far but believes it will be months before any changes occur. If successful her body, in theory, should begin to de-age.
Cinema Space Tribute
Posted in alien life, media & arts, military, space travel
Music: Hans Zimmer — Mountains (Interstellar Soundtrack)
Lyrics: «Do not go gentle into that good night» by Dylan Thomas.
Voice: Anthony Hopkins.
FILMS:
«2001: A Space Odyssey» (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
«Alien» (1979, dir. Ridley Scott)
«Aliens» (1986, dir. James Cameron)
«Armageddon» (1998, dir. Michael Bay)
«Avatar» (2009, dir. James Cameron)
«Battleship» (2012, dir. Peter Berg)
«Cargo» (2009, dir. Ivan Engler, Ralph Etter)
«Elysium» (2013, dir. Neill Blomkamp)
«Europa Report» (2013, dir. Sebastián Cordero)
«Event Horizon» (1997, dir. Paul Anderson)
«Gravity» (2013, dir. Alfonso Cuarón)
«Guardians of the Galaxy» (2014, dir. James Gunn)
«Interstellar » (2014, dir. Christopher Nolan)
«Lockout» (2012, dir. James Mather, Stephen St. Leger)
«Lost in Space» (1998, dir. Stephen Hopkins)
«Man of Steel» (2013, dir. Zack Snyder)
«Mission to Mars» (2000, dir. Brian De Palma)
«Moon» (2009, dir. Duncan Jones)
«Oblivion» (2013, dir. Joseph Kosinski)
«Pandorum» (2009, dir. Christian Alvart)
«Prometheus» (2012, dir. Ridley Scott)
«Solaris» (1972, dir. Andrey Tarkovskiy)
«Solaris» (2002, dir. Steven Soderbergh)
«Star Trek» (2009, dir. J.J. Abrams)
«Star Trek: Into Darkness» (2013, dir. J.J. Abrams)
«Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope» (1977, dir. George Lucas)
«Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi» (1983, dir. Richard Marquand)
«Starship Troopers» (1997, dir. Paul Verhoeven)
«Sunshine» (2007, dir. Danny Boyle)
«The Fountain» (2006, dir. Darren Aronofsky)
«The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy» (2005, dir. Garth Jennings)
«The Last Days on Mars» (2013, dir. Ruairi Robinson)
«The Signal» (2014, dir. William Eubank)
«Thor: The Dark World» (2013, dir. Alan Taylor)
«Transformers: Dark of the Moon» (2011, dir. Michael Bay)
Bigger isn’t always better, but in this case it might be. Research has found that a large hippocampus gives you a memory boost and may shield you from dementia.
The hippocampus is rooted deep in the brain and deals with a range of things, but it’s also a major seat of neurogenesis; making new brain cells. The seahorse shaped structure plays a leading role in translating your experiences to long term memory and it’s made up of two sides. The left helps you record language, and the right hippocampus deals with spatial memory, like an interior google map.
The seat of memory?
Electrocorticography (ECoG) was pioneered in the early 1950s by Wilder Penfield and Herbert Jasper, neurosurgeons at the Montreal Neurological Institute. The two developed ECoG as part of their groundbreaking Montreal procedure, a surgical protocol used to treat patients with severe epilepsy. The cortical potentials recorded by ECoG were used to identify epileptogenic zones – regions of the cortex that generate epileptic seizures. These zones would then be surgically removed from the cortex during resectioning, thus destroying the brain tissue where epileptic seizures had originated. Penfield and Jasper also used electrical stimulation during ECoG recordings in patients undergoing epilepsy surgery under local anesthesia. This procedure was used to explore the functional anatomy of the brain, mapping speech areas and identifying the somatosensory and somatomotor cortex areas to be excluded from surgical removal. This week we learned that Google has filed a patent relating to this medical field titled “Microelectrode Array for an Electrocorticogram.”
Google’s patent FIG. 6 noted above shows an application of the microelectrode array 1 according to the invention when recording an electrocorticogram of a human being. The microelectrode array is wirelessly connected to an electronic control device 10, which comprises in particular an amplifier for the electrode signals and a data acquisition system. The microelectrode array, implanted e.g. below the patient’s scalp, has an energy receiving coil 60 and an antenna 61 for bidirectional data transfer between the microelectrode array 1 and the electronic control device. It is also possible for the energy receiving coil simultaneously to be used as an antenna, such that no separate antenna is required.