My ideal date should be: 1] very sexually experienced 2] moderately sexually experienced 3] somewhat sexually experienced 4] sexually inexperienced 5] doesn't matter

The TV lounge at the Hotel Beverly seated forty patrons "just like a small movie house," except with "the added convenience of seats with a large arm rest to hold sandwiches and beverages." That's right, there was food service in addition to the cocktails.

As a further service . . . [the hotel's general manager] has initiated a "coming events" mailing list. Patrons will receive a weekly schedule of video highlights "as a personal reminder, and a convenience in arranging parties at the Beverly."

Epileptics visiting the forum clicked on links to the images — which masqueraded as links to helpful medical websites — and were confronted with blinking images that induced migraines and seizures. Other posts contained the flashing images already. It's not yet known how many people were affected, but the FBI is now investigating and the website is being monitored. It is the first known example of a website attack that was also in essence a physical attack.

According to AP:

The hackers who infiltrated the Epilepsy Foundation's site didn't appear to care about profit. The harmful pages didn't appear to try to push down code that would allow the hacker to gain control of the victims' computers, for instance.

"I count this in the same category of teenagers who think it's funny to put a cat in a bag and throw it over a clothesline - they don't realize how cruel it is," said Paul Ferguson, a security researcher at antivirus software maker Trend Micro Inc. "It was an opportunity waiting to happen for some mean-spirited kid."

In a similar attack this year, a piece of malicious code was released that disabled software that reads text aloud from a computer screen for blind and visually impaired people.

Hackers Posts Cause Seizures [AP via PhysOrg]

Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer [Wired]

Together with the recent development of an automatic anesthesia machine, the automated robot surgeon presents an eerie prospect for the operating room of tomorrow: it may be completely uninhabited by people except you, the patient. Perhaps a technician will look on from behind a two-way mirror; perhaps not.

There's a long way to go before that happens. For example, robots will have to learn to adapt to unforeseen complications during surgery. But what would you think if the OR at your local hospital looked more like an assembly line at General Motors and less like a place where people are healed? Would you trust a robot to cut you apart then sew you back up, good as new?

Source: PhysOrg

Image: Medgadget

If you want to analyze taste, you can't just perform a chemical analysis of the food. Taste as experienced by humans includes the physical changes food undergoes as it is chewed (increasing surface area), chemical reactions with enzymes in our saliva, and volatile compounds that reach our olfactory receptors. This new artificial mouth is an attempt to take all these factors into account and create a situation very similar to what happens to food in a human mouth.

Why? It could be a first step toward codifying taste, allowing food scientists to test and create flavors in a laboratory kitchen without the time and effort of human taste tests. At some point, we might be entering flavor codes into the machinery at food production plants. Can Trek-style food replicators be far behind? Of more immediate concern is food safety. An artificial mouth can test the food supply for problems that might not show up until the food is chewed, although following that idea to its logical conclusion would seem to suggest a need for an artificial stomach as well.

Hungry robots. Yeah, that's not scary at all. Image by: American Chemical Society.

Effect of Apple Particle State on the Release of Volatile Compounds in a New Artificial Mouth Device. [American Chemical Society]

According to PhysOrg:

Lloyd explains how classical RAM works: "Lets say you have a gigabyte of RAM. That means you have one billion memory slots, each with an address. When you wan to access one, an address is given, let's say it is about 30 bits long. The first bit will throw two switches, the next will throw four, and so on until a billion switches are thrown at once."

"The conventional design is incredibly wasteful. And it is susceptible to noise and interference. We saw that this wasn't going to work at all in terms of quantum RAM," Lloyd continues. He and his colleagues set to work on their bucket brigade design.

"It is a sneakier way to access RAM," he explains. "In the same gigabyte RAM, we send the first bit of the address along a path. Once the first layer is accessed, the next bit comes, following the path of the first bit, until it reaches the second layer. The third bit then traces the two paths before it. In this way, all the bits of the address only interact with two switches."

There are problems with this set-up, however. Even though the experts at Texas Instruments agree that it would work, they point out that the energy saved using QRAM would not offset the larger energy problems associated with classical computing. Besides, Lloyd admits, the QRAM set-up is a little slower than the RAM. "You'd have to be willing to make that trade-off."

That brings Lloyd back to the idea of quantum Internet search. "If you had a quantum Internet, then this would be useful," he points out. "This offers a huge decrease in energy used and an increase in robustness." The other interesting aspect is the possibility of completely anonymous Internet search. Not even your service provider would know who you are or what you search for.

This system actually sounds a lot like the Tor Project, which allows users to surf the internet anonymously by setting up a chain of intermediate servers between your computer point A and your destination web page point B. The servers only communicate with the two others directly adjacent in the chain, so your traffic can never be traced all the way through.

That system works pretty well, but it'd be pretty cool if the entire internet were rebuilt to make sure Big Brother couldn't watch us. Plus, "Quantum Internet" just sounds awesome.

Source: PhysOrg

Budd says:

The PIMs act a bit like a sponge when hydrogen is around. It's made up of long molecules that can trap hydrogen between them, providing a way of supplying hydrogen on demand.

Imagine a plate of spaghetti - when it's all coiled together there's not much space between the strands. Now imagine a plate of crispy noodles - their rigid twisted shape means there are lots of holes. The polymer is designed to have a rigid backbone, and it has twists and bends built into it. Because of this, lots of gaps and holes are created between molecules - perfect for tucking the hydrogen into.

The holes between the molecules give the polymer a very high surface area - each gram has a surface area equivalent to around three tennis courts. The molecules in the polymer act like sieves, catching smaller molecules like hydrogen in the gaps between them. The holes created in the polymer between molecules are a good fit for hydrogen. Hydrogen molecules stick in these holes and are kept there by weak forces - this means they can be released when they are needed.

Hydrogen is most sticky when it is cooled down to low temperatures. When the hydrogen is needed to power the car, the system would just raise the temperature to free up the hydrogen molecules.

In case you can't read the small print, here's the money shot:

Today's telephone system, solid state devices, miniaturization, and the new science of space rocketry and communication will be melded together so that no one wearing his telephone can ever become lost in the woods.

McGill anesthesiologist Thomas M. Hemmerling, who helped develop McSleepy, says:

We have been working on closed-loop systems, where drugs are administered, their effects continuously monitored, and the doses are adjusted accordingly, for the last five years. Think of "McSleepy" as a sort of humanoid anesthesiologist that thinks like an anesthesiologist, analyses biological information and constantly adapts its own behavior, even recognizing monitoring malfunction.

I still can't decide if I'd feel safer or less safe with a robot monitoring my anesthesia. At least it wouldn't fall prey to human error — only to operating system crashes.

McGill News via The Biotech Weblog

More than a product, the electric corset was science in action. Let's hear from a satisfied user, in this case, a fashion writer from the New York Times who tried the corset out (or at least took Dr. Scott's advertising to heart) in 1887:

The improved corset which is attracting so much attention from the lady portion of the community which values a corset for its ability to perform the duties demanded of it, is the electric corset which Dr. Scott has introduced, to the everlasting benefit of its fair wearers. These corsets are constructed on purely scientific principles, and while they are thoroughly charged with electro-magnetism, they impart no shock to the body, but rather a delightful sensation, rendering instant relief in many instances from the severe aches and pains to which all flesh is heir.

While there are several bizarre items in the nano-cookware category such as "antibacterial cookware," and the "nano silver teapot," the best items are the nano health supplements that just reek of futuristic quackery. How about the "LifePak Nano" supplement, that promises:

Lifepak® nano is a nutritional anti-aging program formulated to nourish and protect cells, tissues, and organs in the body with the specific purpose to guard against the ravages of aging. Lifepak® nano offers the highest bioavailability with a first-ever nanotechnology process and advanced levels of key anti-aging nutrients in a comprehensive formula.

This technology is called NSSL (Nano-sized self assembled structured liquids), which is a development of minute compressed micelles, which are called nanodrops. These minute micelles serve as a liquid carrier, which allows penetration of healthy components (such as vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals) that are insoluble in water or fats. The micelles are added to the food product, and thus pass through the digestive system effectively, without sinking or breaking up, to the absorption site. The minute micelles carry the phytosterols to the large micelles that the body produces from the bile acid, where they compete with cholesterol for entry into the micelle. The phytosterols enter the micelle, thereby inhibiting transportation of cholesterol from the digestive system into the bloodstream. This advanced technology was applied in the development of Canola Active oil, produced by Shemen Industries.

You can search through the nano-product goldmine at the E-Nano Project for yourself.

Consumer Products [Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies]

A code stored in the machine is linked to the keys of the typewriter. The machine listens to each sound spoken into the microphone, codes it, and when it matches any symbol in the stored code the corresponding keys are struck.

Measuring 12 inches long by 6-1/2 inches wide by 2 inches deep, and weighing a mere 3 pounds, the World typewriter was roughly the same size as many of today's laptop computers. Instead of a keyboard, however, the World used a dial; users chose a character with the right hand, then used the left to operate a lever that pressed it into the paper. Yet another lever was used to make spaces between words. Even so, the World typewriter was said to be

. . . readily mastered, so that after a month or two of practice any one of ordinary intelligence, by application, can acquire a speed of forty words per minute, or about twice the number that a rapid penman will write with the pen.

Flowers's device tried to recreate the human ear and hand. As explained by Scientific American:

In his apparatus a telephone diaphragm takes the place of the human ear drum; instead of the fibers, he employs a set of steel reeds, respectively tuned to the different overtone frequencies of the alphabet; for nerves he uses electric currents, and for the human hand [on the typewriter keyboard] a bank of solenoids.

According to the official Exmocare site:

By interpreting an information-rich, individually-tailored physiological context, we can determine the emotional state of a person wearing an Exmocare device. Emotional information, very simply, can be characterized in two dimensions.

* Arousal: How excited is the person?
* Valence: How positive is the person?

Different emotional states are revealed through patterns of these two dimensions. How? Any emotional state leads to a specific change in our body. We can detect these patterns, and to an even greater extent, differentiate between them.

The BT2 Control Panel runs silently from your taskbar in reporter mode. In reporter mode, the software checks your physiological and emotional data for dangerous situations and sends status updates and alerts to the website automatically.

From the Evaluation Kit website, you can monitor anyone's physiological and emotional data from anywhere in the world. You can also view their full history and assign and resolve alerts.

BT2 [Exmocare]

When the full system of 27 SAGE computers was deployed in 1963 (each site actually consisted of two of the behemoths, one running and the other serving as a backup), long-distance telephone lines connected them with over 100 radar defense sites across the country. Perhaps not surprisingly, J.C.R. Licklider, the man who initiated research that ultimately led to the ARPANET (the granddaddy of the internet), worked on SAGE. According to another former worker, today "a seven dollar throw-away hand calculator will easily out perform the SAGE computer; and use watch batteries to do it."

At $345 (roughly equivalent to $1800 today), the LC8's price was out of reach of many consumers. But that was a comparative bargain compared to the crop advertised above, in 1969. In 2008 dollars, the prices range from approximately $2200 to $7200.

With the advantage of hindsight, too, we know that things were going to get much, much smaller than the three-pound "space age baby" advertised in 1970.

On the other hand, those of us who grew up in the 70s will never forget the first time a deep-pocketed relative with one of the new "pocket" calculators typed in the number 07734 and made us look at it upside down. hELLO!! Yeah, kiddies, that was hundreds of dollars of fun right there.

A google brain implant could work in lots of ways. With technology we have right now, people could wear a brain-computer interface helmet like the one sold by Emotiv, and use that to control the cursor on a wearable computer with a tiny monitor that's attached to your classes. So the thing wouldn't be implanted in your brain, but it would be responding to electrical signals from your brain. More sophisticated wearables like those described in Vernor Vinge's novel Rainbows End might allow you to google via subtle movements of your body, and then display results in special contact lenses.

A more far-future implant might actually have a direct neural linkup to your brain, allowing you to see google results on your retina. No matter how the instant, subtle, brain-controlled access to google works, the same benefits and problems are likely to exist.

PRO:

Ability to "remember" many details about a person or issue in the middle of a conversation, so that you can marshal facts quickly and check the accuracy of what other people are saying.

CON:

The person you're talking to could much more easily pretend to be somebody they are not by googling information and feigning expertise.

PRO:

You will never get lost because you've got maps at your synapse tips, and you'll always know what's playing at your local theaters. You'll also get the latest news headlines and stock quotes at the twitch of an eyelid.

CON:

You'll spend so much time in your head reading google news and watching YouTube that you'll zone out during conversations and forget to pay attention to what your best friends are telling you (unless they're telling you in the form of a google news alert).

PRO:

Instant access to infinite data storage allows you to quickly store your every interesting thought, and search through them instantly. More innovative ideas result.

CON:

Over reliance on "offloaded" memory means people make less of an effort to remember important things and therefore brain flexibility actually erodes. Ideas become boring repetitions of what you've thought up before, or what other people have thought up and posted on the Web.

PRO:

You can cheat on tests.

CON:

You can cheat on tests.

PRO: Need something desperately and can't get to the computer to order it? Just buy it through Froogle.

CON: Google ads are constantly running in your head, perhaps designed to respond to thought patterns.

PRO: Every time Google ads a cool new service, like Gmail or Picasa, you've got instant access to it in your brain.

CON: Google is famous for its "silent update" system, which occasionally results in pretty buggy services. Imagine what it will be like when Google silently updates your brain.

Zenith introduced the first television remote control in 1950. Presciently named the "Lazy Bones," the device was attached by a wire to the television set. When consumers complained that whatever convenience the Lazy Bones offered was negated by the number of times they tripped over its cord, Zenith's designers went back to the drawing board. This time they came up with the wireless Flashmatic (1955), which aimed a beam of light at sensors located on the set. Alas, sunny days wreaked havoc with the system.

But Zenith's intrepid techs were not about to be outfoxed by a wayward sunbeam. The Space Command remote was introduced the following year. Using ultrasonic waves, the Space Command needed no batteries or wires. "Is it magic?" read an early ad, "It's like nothing you have ever seen before—anywhere!" A 1961 patent for a "tiny" microphone (miniature by standards of the day; photos show a device about the size of a paperclip) led to improved remote control performance, hence the promotional film clip above and its emphasis on seven different functions (among them tint, fine tuning, and color).

There was a drawback, however. A tabletop television set plus Space Command remote control cost $259.95; a console model was $550 (roughly $2,000 and $4,000 respectively, in today's money). Certainly, price was one of the reasons it took so long for remote controls to infiltrate American households. According to the New York Times, as late as 1976, only 9.5% homes had one.

Originally a luxury toy, today's infrared remotes are indispensable and omnipresent. Zenith estimates that as of 2000, 99% of television sets and 100% of DVD players are equipped with them. Couch potatoes everywhere salute you, Eugene F. McDonald!

"Let the reader imagine a cylindrical tube eight feet in the clear, bricked up and whitewashed, neat, clean, dry, and quiet," explained Scientific American in early 1870. The car itself fit snugly within the tube (there was an inch and a half clearance) and carried eighteen passengers at a cost of 25 cents each. "The weirdest thing about the subway project . . .," opined the New York Times in 1911, "is that the car was to be blown to and fro . . . by means of a big blowing machine." (In 1911, you could write things like that with a straight face.) The vacuum created when the air current was reversed pulled the car back in the opposite direction.

Over 400,000 New Yorkers took a joy ride underground during the three years the pneumatic subway was open for demonstration. But public enthusiasm couldn't protect inventor Alfred Beach and his Beach Pneumatic Railway from the wrath of Tammany Hall. Even though a bill proposing extension of the subway for the entire length of Broadway as originally planned was supported by state lawmakers, Governor Hoffman caved in to Tammany interests and vetoed the project. (In his exhaustive and fascinating history of the Beach Pneumatic Railway, Joseph Brennan suggests that Beach himself may have started the now-accepted-as-true story that Tammany Hall forced the closure of his railway.) When Beach finally gained approval in 1873 (after Tammany Boss Tweed's death and a new governor's inauguration), a stock market crashed killed financial support and thus the pneumatic subway.

In 1912, workers on the new BMT subway line reached Broadway and Warren Street, where they found the pneumatic railway tube, intact and well preserved. According to NYCSubway.org, the tunnel was almost certainly destroyed to make way for progress.

Size, for one thing. We're used to the petite but powerful microwave ovens that nestle on our kitchen counters, but early models were behemoths that varied in size "from a unit smaller than a home refrigerator to one somewhat larger," according to the New York Times in 1946. Pictured is one of the more compact models from 1947; a demonstration model from 1949 was five feet high, two feet wide, and two feet deep.

Price was another problem. In 1949, the magnetron tube alone cost $500 to manufacture (roughly $4400 today), thus the first generation of microwave ovens were marketed for restaurant and industrial use. A Radarange for the home was introduced in 1955 but at $1,875 for a tabletop model and $2,975 for a wall console ($14,500 and $23,000, respectively, in today's currency), it was prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-heeled consumers.

There were other drawbacks, too. The Times noted in 1946 that baked goods were crustless and roasts "gray rather than brown." But it was fast, fast, fast! Microwaves cooked steak dinners in 35 seconds, hot dogs in buns in 15 seconds, and baked gingerbread from batter in 26 seconds. A 1962 Raytheon ad imagined what this meant to the harried housewife:

Four unexpected guests for dinner? Mother better set the extra places at table first or the food will be ready before she is. Popping four large potatoes in to bake will give her just two minutes before they are steaming, fluffy, ready to serve. And the juicy, tender, mouth-watering sirloin steak with which she wants to impress her guests will be done to a turn in nothing flat. Twenty seconds to be exact!

Even so, sales didn't take off until the mid-1970s, when technological advances led to lower prices and more compact ovens—and the American public learned that the microwave was best suited for reheating leftovers and frozen foods than cooking gourmet meals.

In the future, human soldiers may see the battlefield through a World of Warcraft-like interface, complete with tagged enemies and multiple channels of chat. Plus, human rights workers will use covert computer technologies to get information about war zones out to the public before censorship regimes can stop their internet traffic. This is just a snippet of what got discussed at Technology in Wartime.

Prominent computer scientists, robotics experts, and tech policy experts argued for an entire day about the ethics of building computerized weapons, and how to defeat closed regimes with sneaky software. Some suggested that you could program ethics into a weapon, while others argued passionately that you should never take money from the Department of Defense to fund your work. What's great about these videos is that you can see all the participants' presentations, as well as their discussions with members of the audience. There's really nothing like watching Bruce Schneier arguing with a covert operations expert from the Navy. Or watching Cindy Cohn from EFF jump up and down while yelling about AT&T. Or watching Kevin Poulsen tease Herb Lin about government secrecy. Check out the videos, linked from the CPSR website and hosted on Archive.org. AP Photo/Yonhap, Sim Un-chul

Technology in Wartime video [CPSR]

After several failed attempts, scientists now believe that by withdrawing water from deep within the moon's inner core of newly discovered ice caverns, their terraforming operation will at last prove successful. Once the water is brought up to the surface and pumped through the eight mile wide transforming spheres, it will then be dispersed as new oxygen-rich compounds, which eventually will create a livable lunar atmosphere. The surrounding city has grown twofold in the last several months and its inhabitants anxiously await the momentous outcome.

Microscopy nerds and beam geeks, rejoice! It's TEAM, the coolest damn microscope you'll ever see. A beam of energy pulses through it and, with new error-correcting tech, is able to reduce image noise normally associated with electron microscopes that measure atomic structures. Images courtesy of DOE's National Center for Electron Microscopy.

Debut of TEAM 0.5 [Eurekalert]

The conference, called Technology in Wartime (caveat: I'm helping to organize it), will feature a panel of expert roboticists and ethicists dealing with what happens when mobile, autonomous robots become soldiers — and have the potential to malfunction catastrophically. Ronald Arkin from Georgia Tech's mobile robots lab will be speaking, as well as Rutgers techno-ethicist Peter Asaro.

Other panels at the conference will deal with recent government research into cyberterrorism, as well as ways that human rights and civil liberties workers are using sneaky software to aid dissidents in war-torn countries. Featured speakers include computer security hero Bruce Schneier, EFF's legal director Cindy Cohn, e-voting expert and former ACM president Barbara Simons, human rights software crusader Patrick Ball, National Academy of Science's Herb Lin, Danger Room's Noah Shachtman, and sly computer security expert (and Sarah Connor Chronicles hater) Kevin Poulsen.

The conference is open to the public (entrance fee gets you free lunch, a t-shirt, and serves as a donation to nonprofit Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility). Students get in cheap! There's still time to register if you want to come. Technology in Wartime [conference site]

Just hyperventilate, get your heart going fast enough, and the computer will turn on. Apparently they've tested the system on several users and it's working pretty well. Usually I only hyperventilate at my computer when it is turned on and doing something annoying (Firefox on Mac OS ahem), so I'm glad there isn't an EKG power-off command in the works. [New Scientist]

We weren't really sure what to expect going into this movie, because every 3D experience we've been promised has been fairly "meh" in quality. The recent Beowulf CGI meets 3D experience wasn't bad, but the promised third dimension still felt like all the 3D films we'd been seeing for years. Namely, a few things loom out of the screen, but it feels like a gimmick instead of something organic.

Enter the U23D concert film. We've seen concert films before, but never like this one. From the first shot of a packed arena that opens up like a pop-up book, to the long zooms from the audience right up into Larry Mullen's drumface, or the Edge's guitar, it feels like an otherworldly experience. You're literally right there with the band, experiencing something 1,000 times better than the view you'd get from a front row seat. You can see Bono's setlist tossed down on the edge of the drum platform, a couple of cups of coffee next to water bottles, the stitching detail in their clothing and so on. It looks so realistic that at times it feels fake, like you're looking at a VR concert, or action figures in a plexiglass block. Extremely surreal.

In Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, there's a group of ad-hoc theme park workers bringing a new technology to Disneyworld called "flashbaking". They use it in the Hall of Presidents to bring "Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln" to new life by cramming the experience, smells of gunpowder, sounds of his era, photos, etc, into your cerebral cortex. It makes you feel like you're right there with a living, breathing Lincoln and a stretch of time within minutes. This film is as close to approximating that (albeit without the smells, the added into, and without any baking of our grey matter).

Some people will decry that it's not a true concert experience, since you aren't being battered around by sweaty people, crammed towards the stage like sardines, straining to see over the heads of those in front of you, and being charged astronomical ticket prices. But, we won't miss most of that. True, there's a lot to be said for the human experience during a concert, but we're excited about the possibilities this technology brings. Virtual concerts for the masses, priced for you wholesale.

The film was shot during their "Vertigo" tour throughout South America over several dates, but it's been assembled into a seamless experience. Shot with over 18 cameras and using the 3ality 3D technology, this is the first time zoom lenses have been used in 3D, and the first time they've done layered visual effects in 3D. The movie premieres at the Sundance Film Festival next week, but you'll be able to see it starting January 23rd at theaters all over.

The Enitech team is seeking suggestions of where to point their amazing future-cam next. What landmarks would you like to look at the future of? Perhaps you'd like to know if your ex's dog-grooming business will still go under in a couple years, so you can gloat in advance. Just be warned: the "observer effect" dictates that by witnessing the future, we may change it. Luckily, so far the camera has only revealed bright futures of urban renewal, gentrification and runaway construction.

So what would you like to see through the future cam?

Michael Lant designed this pocket-sized mobile phone gem, which looks like a cross between a digital watch and the alethiometer they use in The Golden Compass.

Circle Phone Going Back to Simplicity [via Design Corner]

This freaky Victorian-Era pseudo-medical device is called a Lebenswecker (or "life awakener"): Of this hammer full of tiny needles, Phisick Medical Antiquities says:

The theory was that rubbing the skin with toxic oils and piercing it with the Lebenswecker would produce a counter irritation which would divert the bodies attention away from illness and infection and a host of other complaints and so doing restore health.

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iphone image by idiotboy Crystal meth bong image by kissthis.

The suit would also enable touch sensations impossible in real world environments. For instance, waves of touch going from head to toe... It's likely that VR world designers will come up with fascinating new touch sensations we can't imagine here in 2007.

Also, one commenter speculates that you could use "internal muscular stimulators" to move people into the positions you want them in. You could start having nice harmless cybersex, and suddenly lose control over your own movements. It's like bondage, only potentially much creepier.

Full-Body Haptic Suits [Accelerating Future]