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Subdermal analgesics – implanted painkillers

neural stimulator implantA pill for every ill? How very Twentieth Century! In the future, my friend, your chronic pains will be alleviated by tiny subdermal devices wired directly into your nerves, activated remotely beyond the body by radio signals from a master control device:

The device works similarly to spinal-cord stimulators for managing chronic pain. The idea is that the electrical jolts delivered by the device override the neural pain signals being transmitted to the spinal cord. However, the precise mechanism is not yet clear.

[…]

Like some cochlear implants and other medical devices, the implant is powered with radio-frequency transmission: radio waves transmitted by the external coil generate a magnetic field in the internal coil, which powers the electrodes. Adopting technologies from the rapidly advancing RFID world has allowed the researchers to further shrink the device.

Before rushing off to hassle your local medical practitioner for a set, however, bear in mind that this is still at the conceptual stage:

Researchers have developed a prototype device, which they are testing in rats. The device can effectively stimulate peripheral nerves in rats, although it’s not yet clear whether the electrical stimulation alleviates chronic pain. (Scientists assess chronic pain in rats by recording how much the animals eat; a rat in pain won’t eat as much.)

Assuming it works as expected, this could be a real life-changer for people suffering with chronic conditions. However, I don’t think it’s a wild leap of logic to assume that if nerve stimulation can be used to alleviate pain, it can probably be used to create it as well – maybe even with exactly the same set-up. It’s easy enough to hijack regular RFID tags, after all.

Thinking a little further, perhaps this technology would become part of the suite of telepresence devices. Rather than wear some sort of all-over suit, sensory stimulation from virtual worlds could be reproduced in the body by carefully timed and coded radio signals… which would make the perceptual line between reality and the metaverse that much thinner and fuzzier. [via grinding.be; image borrowed from Technology Review article under Fair Use terms, please contact for takedown if required]

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Rudy Rucker guesting at BoingBoing

Rudy RuckerRudy Rucker is one of the authors I go out of my way for, so I’m stoked to see he’s guest-posting at BoingBoing for a couple of weeks; he’s kicked off today with a brief introduction to his “gnarly” plotting methods.

Experience  shows that Rucker’s fiction divides opinion sharply between those who love it and those who loathe it; I’m firmly in the former camp, though I think I understand what it is about transrealism that puts others off. [image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

That said, he’s got lots of interesting and weird stuff to say outside of his stories: he’s a professor of mathematics with a psychedelic outlook, he was a core member of the cyberpunk movement (which means he has some great tales to tell about the other characters involved) and he’s got a unique eye for photographing the mundane and making it seem alien. Go pay him some attention; you may not agree with him, but I defy you to be indifferent!

So, any other Rucker fans in the house? Which story or novel would you recommend to a newcomer to Rucker’s body of work?

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Ubiquitous urinary analysis?

toilet bowl with mobile phoneIf you want futurist thinking that looks at the little things rather than the large, you can’t do much better than to follow Jan Chipchase as he bounces around the world researching how people use things… and how things use people.

Here’s a prime example of science fictional thinking processes applied to that most everyday of objects, the toilet.

… the light blue rinse that you see above is an indicator of what is, ahem, yet to pass. The colour of the liquid in the toilet bowl will be the most commonly used mechanism to feedback relatively minor but good-to-know status updates about the state of your body, a simply chemical adaptation of what many of you already do today. (The critical stuff will sent directly to your doctor/insurance company, so that they can break the news to you gently, unless of course you think you can handle staring down at a blood red toilet bowl).

Given human limitations – whether its remembering which colours are associated with what, to our ability to effectively distinguish between colours, what are the other parameters can will be put into play by tomorrows porcelain experience designers?

Where does this lead to in the future perfect? Lower insurance premiums for your employer when they install (and allow the remote monitoring of) your [insurance company] sponsored washroom. Automated devices travelling the sewage systems monitoring dye pigmentation by sewage outlets of the stars? That you are willing to walk an extra three blocks to use a unmonitored public toilet.

Given the UK government’s seemingly unstoppable obsession with monitoring its citizens and telling them how to live, it’s almost depressing how plausible Chipchase’s speculation seems from where I’m sat right now – even though I suspect it’s meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Insert your own joke about “the power behind the throne” here…

Though it should be noted that science fiction pipped Chipchase to the post on this one; “Alone With an Inconvenient Companion” by Jack Skillingstead (as anthologised in Fast Forward 2) features hotel urinals that provide the protagonist with a ‘complementary urinalysis’. Or at least he thinks they do. [image by jurvetson]

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Cosmic ray global warming debunked; deep ocean conveyors rethought

sun, clouds and seaOne of the more popular alternatives to anthropic global warming theories has been the cosmic ray hypothesis – the notion that changes in the sun’s output of cosmic rays are responsible for the planet’s recent changes in temperature. However, it’s always been short on evidence (much shorter than the theories it is intended to topple, funnily enough), and now new research has put another nail in its coffin lid:

In research published in Geophysical Research Letters, and highlighted in the May 1 edition of Science, Adams and Pierce report the first atmospheric simulations of changes in atmospheric ions and particle formation resulting from variations in the sun and cosmic rays. They find that changes in the concentration of particles that affect clouds are 100 times too small to affect the climate.

[…]

Despite remaining questions, Adams and Pierce feel confident that this hypothesis should be laid to rest. “No computer simulation of something as complex as the atmosphere will ever be perfect,” Adams said. “Proponents of the cosmic ray hypothesis will probably try to question these results, but the effect is so weak in our model that it is hard for us to see this basic result changing.”

As the researchers point out, these results are based on a computerised model of phenomena, and it could (and doubtless will) be asserted that it may not have any bearing on reality. In the absence of a model of similar complexity and expertise that supports the solar wind warming theory, however, I think I’m going to accept it as having been laid to rest. YMMV. [via DailyGalaxy]

While we’re talking about complex climate models, though, it looks like some rethinking will be required with respect to the ways in which deep-ocean circulation functions; experiments involving the dispersal of sensor-laden floats have revealed that a ‘conveyor belt’ of cold water flowing southward from the Labrador Sea doesn’t actually form a loop with the Gulf Stream as previously assumed.

I’d lying if I said I totally understood what this means (I’m not an oceanographer, nor do I play one on television), but what’s clear is that scientists aren’t just cherry-picking evidence that suits their models; they’re actively looking to improve the accuracy of their calculations all the time. Who’d have thought, eh? [via SlashDot; image by notsogoodphotography]

[Welcome back, JasperPants. ;)]

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‘Craveable’: Does the food industry play with our heads?

big-boy1Trying to write an optimistic science fiction story for a change has led to some fascinating research avenues. If we want to give our poor put-upon planet a bit of a break, wouldn’t it make sense to change the way we eat? Think of the fuel we could save, the waste we could cut back on…

Not so fast, though. Former U.S. Food & Drug Administration commissioner (under Clinton and W.) and pediatrician David Kessler says one of the reasons Americans overeat is because the food industry, not unlike tobacco before it, is messing with our minds.

At first glance, that sounds obvious, given the myriad of junk-food choices and the constant blare of advertisement. Kessler digs deeper, though, in his new book The End of Overeating:

“The food the industry is selling is much more powerful than we realized,” he said. “I used to think I ate to feel full. Now I know, we have the science that shows, we’re eating to stimulate ourselves. And so the question is what are we going to do about it?”

In good dramatic fashion, Kessler says it’s partly his fault: when he headed the FDA he won battles for better labeling of processed foods, but didn’t push much for labels in restaurants.

His own dumpster-diving research (note to Hollywood: this book needs to be a movie) led him to the conclusion that not only are seemingly healthy menu choices like grilled chicken or spinach dip larded with “fat on fat on salt on sugar on fat on fat,” but that they are more or less deliberately designed to goad you brain into craving more, even when your stomach has had more than enough. He estimates that 15% of the U.S. population is vulnerable to “conditioned overeating.”

(And everytime I visit another country I see more U.S.-based food chains — sorry about that, but I’m guessing this is not just an issue for my own country.)

Willpower, yes; government oversight, maybe, says Kessler. Far better to change the way we look at food – to break the emotional association with good times. Perceptions have changed for the better before this, he points out: consider shifting attitudes towards cigarettes, driving without a seat belt, or drunk driving.

By now some readers are thinking “That’s obvious,” or rolling their eyes at the prospect of more nanny-statism. (I did both.) Skepticism is healthy, too. For starters, I’d like to know more about the neuroscience of those “reward circuits.” Here’s a taste, though:

Yale University neuroscientist Dana Small had hypereaters smell chocolate and taste a chocolate milkshake inside a brain-scanning MRI machine. Rather than getting used to the aroma, as is normal, hypereaters found the smell more tantalizing with time. And drinking the milkshake didn’t satisfy. The reward-anticipating region of their brains stayed switched on, so that another brain area couldn’t say, “Enough!”

You can hear some NPR interviews with Kessler here, there, and everywhere.

[Image: Iconic US diner mascot Big Boy by Patrick Powers]

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