The days of the mechs are upon us! I only hope I can wield one within the framework of some sort of alien invasion! Neuroscientists have created the first brain-controlled exoskeleton. Welcome to the future, baby! Welcome to the fucking future.

io9:

It’s a science fiction dream, and now is close to reality. Scientists at the University of Chicago were experimenting with brain-computer interfaces in monkeys, teaching them to control computer cursors via electrodes implanted in their brains. We’ve known for a while that thinking about moving activates the same areas of the brain as moving itself does – so monkeys (and humans) learn to do this by imagining that they’re moving left, right, up or down. But the researchers discovered that the monkeys learned much faster if their arms were moved at the same time the cursor did – basically, they got feedback via movement in their bodies as well as from looking at the monitor.

Society for Neuroscience:

The authors worked with two adult rhesus macaques to assess a system that incorporates a sense of movement. Each monkey was first trained to control a cursor using brain signals only; electrodes collected and processed data from the monkeys’ motor cortex cells and transmitted those commands to the computer. Basic science research has shown that simply thinking about a motion activates brain cells in the same way that making the movement does, so each monkey needed to only think about moving a cursor to do it.

Oh god! For the longest time I was worried about the robot and/or zombie uprising. But now we’re outfitting primates with exoskeletons! Jesus Christ! When will we fucking learn? The great simian uprising of 2012 may in fact be upon us. But if it ain’t, I want me some fucking exoskeleton goodness. Something nice and synthetic and disinclined to rot like the meat sac I’m currently wearing.

Yesterday, news broke that “doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with leukaemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.”

This story is awesome, and while it may not be true and the science may as usual be unverified and/or prone to later retraction, let’s just be positive for a moment. There’s usual scientist speak throughout the couple of articles I’ve tracked down about it. You know, the “probably” and “strongly” and “may have”, but let’s just be positive.

Word?

The findings came about when “Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the “Berlin Patient,” received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukaemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood affirming that the results of extensive testing “strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved.”

Fantastic, no? Even if it’s temporary, or something, or the such? Hope springs eternal. Call me an optimist, I find this awesome.

Goddammit! Haven’t we learned anything. I was pretty sure that all this fucking around we’re doing with the Kinect is going to bring about the robot apocalypse. And now I’m getting more sure. The mad scientists over at the Hybrid Systems Lab at UC Berkeley have used the Kinect to construct an autonomous flying machine.

Kotaku:

Instead of being hooked up to an Xbox 360 to play games, Kinect is sending visual data to a Linux box onboard the mini-copter, letting the quadrotor fly autonomously, detect its own altitude and avoid obstacles. A back-up motion capture device provides other data–lateral and yaw–and provides a safety back up for altitude detection, should Kinect fail at some point.

It seems cool now, but when they’re used to fly over cities and drop nuclear caches, we’re going to be seriously displeased with these guys.

Hit the jump for the video of it flying. It’s amazing. And terrifying.

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Well, we didn’t find any sort of sweet-ass bacteria on Titan. Son of a bitch. What was found by Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon is life previously thought impossible. It was snagged within Mono Lake in Menlo Park, California.

What exactly do you mean?

Phosphorus, along with hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur, make up the fundamental building blocks of life as we know it.

Okay, if you say so! God, it’s been a long time since my high school science classes. If you can’t psychoanalyze it for imagined tropes, I’m useless. So, go on!

Wolfe-Simon has discovered a bacteria that swaps out phosphorus with arsenic. The discovery that a life form can be comprised of something other than the six fundamental building blocks of life changes everything.

Oh shit! Now that is interesting. What exactly does this mean in the long run? And why is NASA involved?

For Astrobiology, the study of life elsewhere in the universe, the impact of this discovery is tremendous. For years astrobiologists have been basing the potential for alien worlds to support life on the presence of the fundamental building blocks of life. Now that we know they aren’t as fundamental as we first thought, the search will have to change.

Well then! Pretty fucking rockin’, no? It opens up the parameters for our searches for life off-planet! Now go out and find that shit, people! I’m still a little bit disappointed. I was really hoping for the planet that supported life, whose only inhabitants were the other-worldly equivalent of Swedish supermodels. Male and female, of course. Where the lakes were comprised of Diet Mountain Dew.

But this? This is still pretty cool.

Via.

God damn I love me some augmented reality. And god damn do I love me some BERG. Last year (holy fuck it’s been that long already?) I posted a link to BERG’s vision of a tablet. It was glossy technology sex, and it still arouses me in ways that the iPad could never fathom.

So what’s this newest video about?

Let’s let BERG themselves explain it:

Each of the ideas in the film treat the surface as a focus, rather than the channel or the content delivered. Here, media includes messages from friends and social services, like foursquare or Twitter, and also more functional messages from companies or services like banks or airlines alongside large traditional big ‘M’ Media (like broadcast or news publishing).

All surfaces have access to connectivity. All surfaces are displays responsive to people, context, and timing. If any surface could show anything, would the loudest or the most polite win? Surfaces which show the smartest most relevant material in any given context will be the most warmly received.

It’s stunning. I can’t imagine life without caffeine, these people are busy projecting the future. Hit the jump, to embrace the infinity of promise!

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Jesus Christ! What’s wrong with us as a civilization? Haven’t we watched Battlestar Galactica? Terminator? Blade Runner? The Matrix? Don’t they know that creating robotic lifeforms leads only to an ass-drubbing of humanity by the pissed of Children of Mankind? But nooo, we just keep fucking around. Take for example this bullshit from last week’s Digital Content Expo in Japan. What we got here is the HRP-4C robot performing an entire dance routine with a contingent of soon to be outdated meat sacs. No, seriously. Don’t you understand that it’s an infinitesimally small leap from performing dance routines to nuking our cities and drilling our skulls with robo-dongs? We are precipitating our own doom.

Hit the jump for what is a taste at our future obliteration.

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Welcome to the fucking future, ya’ll! Look at these son of a bitch vending machine currently kicking it in Japan. Motherfucker is talented. Using a camera, it can determine your gender and age. Based off that shit, and the weather outside, it recommended a drink. I can’t tell if this is awesome, or horribly discriminatory. Probably both. I mean, I look like a twenty-seven year-old dickhead, but I actually like something pink, fluffy, and with a little fizz for my lips. Tee-hee!

Welcome to the fucking future. Hit the jump to embrace progress.

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I often wonder about the days when augmented reality will really take hold. We’ll all be walking around in our own bubble-world, digital projections glancing our every sight. Three-dimensional advertisements beamed directly into our skull-plates, transmissions of Twitter updates taking hold in our field of vision. Well, Keiichi Matsuda has created a couple of videos that picture this world in such gorgeous detail that I’ve sat here slack-jawed watching them both several times.

Hit the jump for both of the videos, as well as more information on the maestro behind them.

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Oh shit! The future is about to arrive, and none of us are fucking ready! As it is scientifically known, Back to the Future provided a glimpse into the true future. I know we’ve been clamoring for it, and it has taken a while, but the first signs of its arrival is about to rear its head.

Self-tying sneakers. Fuck yes.

Deadspin:

The automatic lacing system provides a set of straps that can be automatically opened and closed to switch between a loosened and tightened position of the upper. The article further includes an automatic ankle cinching system that is configured to automatically adjust an ankle portion of the upper.

Welcome to the fucking future. It’s deliciously swank in here.

This is the sort of machine that Pepsibones or I would dream up at the dinner table while our family was trying to eat. And then they’d all deride us, our girlfriends and our parents, calling us sickos and pre-vurts. Well guess what, naysaying family members! Someone else thought this up, and it’s awesome, and like, sort of real.

Boing Boing:

Seen here is an unusual example of excess G’s being harnessed for the good. The patent holders, George B. and Charlotte Blonsky, contend that the centrifuge could be a boon to “more civilized women,” who, they surmise, often lack the muscle strength needed to easily push out a baby. Centrifugal force would act as a sort of invisible midwife, lessening the muscular force required for birthing. Would it work, though? Could one create enough outward force on the baby to make a difference — without simultaneously making the mother lightheaded? I sent the patent to April Ronca, who used to research the effects of zero G on fetal growth and birth for NASA. “That is an interesting invention,” she replied.

…continued:

Note the elasticized “pocket-shaped newborn net” – lest the baby shoot out and bump its head with double-G force.

Scientists are fucking awesome! And someday I hope to come up with a device this cool.