Monthly Archives: March 2009

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Fabbing your new fingerbones

X-ray of a human handWhile 3D printing may be used predominantly for rapid prototyping of consumer goods (with all the potential risks that entails), it may turn out to have more humanitarian deployments as well. Proving a concept we mentioned a while back, a team of Swiss doctors have used a 3D printer to build replacement bones for a man’s thumb:

Weinand loaded the printer with tricalcium phosphate and a type of polylactic acid – natural structural materials found in the human body. The resulting bone “scaffolds” contained thousands of tiny pores into which bone cells could settle, grow and eventually displace the biodegradable scaffold altogether.

The bones still have to be ‘grown’ around the scaffold (using a surrogate mutant mouse, much like the famous Vacanti ear experiment), so it’s not a completely non-biological process. But it’s a step closer to a world where we can buy spare parts for our meat-machines ‘off the shelf’. [image by ansik]

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Wolfram Alpha: Answering the questions that matter…

whyPolymath Stephen Wolfram (famed for AOT Mathematica and his book entitled A New Kind of Science) has been developing a knowledge engine that uses a natural language interface. It’s a bit like Google except:

Where Google is a system for FINDING things that we as a civilization collectively publish, Wolfram Alpha is for COMPUTING answers to questions about what we as a civilization collectively know.

It’s the next step in the distribution of knowledge and intelligence around the world — a new leap in the intelligence of our collective “Global Brain.” And like any big next-step, Wolfram Alpha works in a new way — it computes answers instead of just looking them up.

So basically you type in a question in normal language and it should provide an answer, rather than links to webpages that might contain the answer.

Anyway Wolfram Alpha will be launching in May.

[via Charles Stross, ComputerWorld, Physorg etc][image from e-magic on flickr]

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Thought-controlled wheelchair developed in Italy

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The Thinker Researchers led by Matteo Matteucci at Milan’s Polytechnical Institute say they’ve developed a wheelchair that obeys mental signals sent to a computer. (Via PhysOrg.)

The user is connected to a computer with electrodes on his or her scalp, and sends a signal by concentrating for a few seconds on the name of the desired destination — kitchen, bedroom, bathroom — displayed on a screen.

The computer then guides the wheelchair to the selected room using a preset programme.

“We don’t read minds, but the brain signal that is sent,” Matteucci said.

The chair is equipped with two laser beams that can detect obstacles.

The researchers think the wheelchair could be available commercially within five to 10 years, and claim it would only cost 10 percent more than a standard motorized wheelchair. They’re also working on getting the chair to operate outside using GPS.

They also note that other researchers around the world are working on similar projects, and suggests that a research consortium should be set up to coordinate the work and find the best approach for these kinds of brain-computer interfaces.

(What I really wanted for the image to illustrate this was Rodin’s sculpture, above, sitting in a wheelchair, but alas, it was beyond my Photoshopping skills.)

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]computers,technology,brain,handicapped[/tags]

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Friday Free Fiction for 6th March

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Is it springtime yet? It keeps trying to act like it here, but then winter comes bounding back in out of nowhere and letting my hopes down. Still, at least I’ve got plenty to read while I’m sat inside with the heating running… and so have you, because it’s Friday free fiction time at Futurismic!

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Just the one from ManyBooks:

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A couple more pieces of fiction round off the winter issue of Subterranean Online:

Tim Pratt fans (and you should all be Tim Pratt fans) should keep a close eye on this here website in the weeks to come! 😉

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New month, new issue of Clarkesworld:

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Likewise with Apex Online:

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Strange Horizons presents “Diana Comet” by Sandra McDonald

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Rudy Rucker curates the seventh issue of his delightfully-named Flurb webzine, which contains all this:

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Guess who’s back? Yup, you guessed it – Shadow Unit is ramping up for Season 2 wirh “Lucky Day”

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Courtesy of Chris Roberson, here’s his story “Two Birds”

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Via pretty much everyone, Random House’s Suvudu genre fiction webhubsitecommunitythingy has a bunch of free full-novel PDFs to download. It’d be rude not to, wouldn’t it?

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Via Nick Mamatas comes news of a new super-short fiction outlet; Brain Harvest has kicked off with a super short piece from Mamatas called “Patmos Like Pink Elephants“.

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A message from the intriguingly named Kirk Ultra:

Hi, our website Electric Children has five short stories on it that I thought would be great for Friday Free Fiction. The first and newest is a sci-fi story called “Connector” by Dean Verheyen.

The second two are by Hillary Ferris: “Valentine” and “The Key“. And finally we have two short stories by Barbara Ann Crumm, “The Acid Journal” and “The General Store“. Hope you enjoy!

Cheers, Kirk!

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Via SF Signal we discover that Pyr is now offering The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams available as a free PDF download.

Speaking of SF Signal, it seem’s they are sticking with the bulk-posting of free fiction links, which if nothing else makes things a little easier for little old me…

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Time constraints once again mean that I’ll be unable to catch all the Friday Flash Fiction offerings, but here’s a few carried over from last week. From Sarah Ellender we have “The Torture Orchestra“, while Sumit Dam has been churning ’em out: there’s “Damocles“, plus five microfictions under the title “Running Without Scissors“.

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And there’s your lot! Don’t forget to drop us a line if you have any tip-offs; in the meantime, have a great weekend!