Science & Technology

When I can get a moment on the PC at home I’ll download and have a play with WorldWide Telescope. Looks interesting, but I need the PC to run it - no Mac version.

And I’ll get around to looking at Google Sky too.

When I was at high school I used to make regular trips into Wellington’s Carter Observatory to attend astronomical society meetings, so I was sad to see this article today noting the loss of jobs and national status there. Many good memories of heading up the cable car to the observatory and planetarium at the top of the Wellington Botanical Gardens. Places like that fired my imagination to engage with science by firstly wanting to become a scientist, and then more recently to look at science’s relationship with other things like religion. It appears, like many of these things, that the money could only stretch so far - concentrate on education and the research drops, on the research only and it becomes disconnected from the public (and stimulating young scientists). So much, perhaps, for funding a broad ‘knowledge economy’.

See: Jobs lost in Carter Observatory restructuring - Stuff.co.nz.

Hopefully, once the dust settles, there’s something to continue in some positive form.

Other links:

• Carter Observatory, Carter Observatory Distance Education, Carter Observatory (academic), and Carter Observatory - Wikipedia
• Auckland Stardome
• Mt John - Physics and Astronomy - University of Canterbury - New Zealand, Mt John observatory in Lake Tekapo - Tekapo Tourism, and Mt John observatory with Earth and Sky - Lake Tekapo, New Zealand.

A couple of books on the go at the moment that I borrowed from the library after seeing them on a couple of blogs.

Firstly, A Case Of Conscience by James Blish, which is centred around a Jesuit biologists struggle with finding the perfect, moral alien society that doesn’t have any understanding of God. In a similar vein to later books like Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and Children of God, and to a certain extent Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead.

The book is part of the excellent SF Masterworks for Gollancz, a series of reprinted classic or significant science fiction works.

Other related links:

• SF Masterworks - Wikipedia
• A Case of Conscience - Wikipedia
• The SF Site Featured Review: A Case Of Conscience

I’ve read some other of Blish’s work before but had never come across this one until I say it mentioned on The Sci Fi Catholic: The Sacred & the Profane (with the follow article The Sci Fi Catholic: The Sacred & the Profane Part 2, Christian Tragedy?)

The second book is As Far As We Know: Conversations about Science, Life and the Universe by Paul Callaghan and Kim Hill, with excellent complementary illustrations by Dylan Horrocks. It’s a collection of edited transcripts of the conversations about science between physicist Paul Callaghan and Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand National: Saturday Morning with Kim Hill.

Found via Physics illustrations published - Dylan’s blog

I’m enjoying both books, and the ‘As Far As We Know“ book is good for dipping into for a quick chapter or two.

A couple of links came to my attention this week. Firstly, the Singularity Institute have started a blog to promote ideas about the technological singularity (Greenflame » Pondering the Singularity (Again)), and at the same time I came across the bioethics podcasts from The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. Both have interesting material on them, though they have quite different perspectives.

Here’s a selection of other links that relate to different people and groups looking at the future. It’s an eclectic mix pitched at a variety of levels, so caveat lector.

• NetFuture: Technology and Human Responsibility
• World Transhumanist Association
• Nick Bostrom’s home page - Transhumanist, philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
• Sentient Developments - by transhumanist George Dvorsky. There’s a podcast too.
• Changesurfer Consulting by James Hughes and the related Cyborg Democracy. Hughes is Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
• KurzweilAI.net - Techno-optimistic news and views linked in with Ray Kurzweil’s vision of a better future.
• Betterhumans.com - Community site for techno-progressives/optimists.
• The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
• BioCentre // The Centre for Bioethics & Public Policy (UK)
• Center on Nanotechnology & Society
• Toi te Taiao: New Zealand’s Bioethics Council
• Bioethics Centre, Dunedin School of Medicine, New Zealand
• InterChurch Bioethics Council (NZ)
• Society, Religion and Technology Project (Scotland)

Nowhere near an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.

Interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab on where he thinks robotics will go in the future. See Sizing up the coming robotics revolution | Newsmakers | CNET News.com.

In another of those areas where traditional boundaries become contested, scientists are working on developing a synthetic blood substitute for medical emergencies. (BBC NEWS | UK | England | North Yorkshire | Scientists create ‘plastic’ blood)

I wonder how this ‘blood’ will be considered by those communities that attach a special significance to human blood.

Technology Review: The World’s First Powered Ankle has an article on a new prosthetic ankle that functions in such a way as to add energy to walking, helping to reduce the effort required to use the prosthesis.

See also: MIT’s Robo Sapiens page and Greenflame » Robot avatars and other such things.

This report on the announcement of an extra-solar planet (ie. one orbiting another star) that lies within the zone where water would be a fluid and is relatively small looks interesting. See SPACE.com — Major Discovery: New Planet Could Harbor Water and Life.

This looks promising. Touch is much harder to simulate in VR than sound and vision. This development seems to bring it a bit close. See Haptic glove to touch on virtual fabrics - tech - 13 February 2007 - New Scientist.

Various links related to convergent technologies (nano-, bio-, information technologies and cognitive science):

• Biosingularity - Techno-progressive blog that tracks new developments in bio- and medical technologies. (More on singularitarianism at Greenflame: Pondering the Singularity (Again)).
• The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines - Alternatives to the big four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com.
• The Discover Interview: Marvin Minsky - Interview with one of the perennial figures in artificial intelligence.
• U.S. university to build ’soft-bodied’ robots - Moving beyond ‘hard’, inorganic models for robotics and instead looking to ’soft’ organic/biological models.
• Wired News: A Wheelchair That Reads Your Mind - Research into a physically non-invasive brain-computer interface to aid with control of mobility devices.

Just erased and reinstalled everything on the iBook to get over the wobbles it was developing at the end of the thesis writing. In the process found these links I’d saved earlier.

Ashley X links:

• WIRED Blogs: Bodyhack - Brain-Damaged Girl Will Stay Young Forever
• Parents defend decision to keep girl a child - World - Times Online
• The “Ashley Treatment”: The Ashley Treatment - Parent’s open letter about Ashley.
• IEET - Helping families care for the helpless by George Dvorsky (Sentient Developments). [Techno-progressive/transhumanist] Dvorsky also talks in more depth in his podcast about this. See Sentient Developments podcast (8 Jan 2007).
• IHS :: HNN :: Ashley X: What Should Parents Do? - Some good questions and other links in there.
• Ashley Treatment - Wikipedia
• Ship of Fools: Ashley X

Other links

• New Statesman - Imaginary friends - Ursula Le Guin on the need for tales of talking animals and fantastical adventure for all ages.
• Wired 15.01: It’s Alive! - On building Pleo - a lifelike robot toy.
• The Christian Century - Templeton Foundation fights ID tag
• FreeMacWare.com : Free Software For Macs via Lindsay at Random Murmurings: Frustration

New images and other media from the ongoing Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn. I’m continually amazed at probes like this, and the ability of the technical staff to extract/construct images etc. from the raw data supplied by the probe.
See:

• Cassini Imaging Diary
• NASA - Cassini-Huygens: Close Encounter with Saturn
• JPL - Cassini-Huygens Home

Listened to James Hughes’ recent Changersurfer Radio podcast yesterday where he interviews Lee Silver (author of “Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning will Transform the American Family“, and more lately “Challenging Nature: The clash of science and spirituality at the new frontiers of life“.) It’s an interesting interview because both Hughes and Silver sketch out what each thinks of religious (and quasi-religious) objections to transhumanism. Overall, their articulation of religious positions is limited, and doesn’t take into account the breadth of religious engagement with convergent technologies, but it serves as a useful insight into how some techno-optimists perceive the religious world.

I have a nagging doubt about their optimism about the human spirit too. The argue that many problems in the world could be solved if technological development was allowed to be unhindered - elimination of hunger, suffering and illness etc. However, we currently have technologies that could make a dent in those issues and it is more a matter of human will and of the human “heart” as to whether they will be. Certainly, the human propensities for self-interest, greed and control of resources never seem to feature in these discussions. Anyway, the full interview is available at: ChangeSurfer Radio: Challenging Nature.

Also, seen on the local library bookshelf (and now on loan here) is Simon Young’s recent book “Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto“. Too late to put Young’s book in the bibliography but I’ll have skim through it sometime.

A conscience vote in the Australian House of Representatives passed legislation opening the door to human embryonic research (particularly therapeutic cloning) in Australia. See Embryo cloning gets the go-ahead - National - smh.com.au.

It’ll be interesting to see how that shapes discussion in NZ over the same issue.

Vernor Vinge’s presentation of the technological singularity back in 1993 (PDF here) talked about the scenario where human intellect is augmented through better communications networks and human-computer interfaces. Here’s a recent article in the Boston Globe that picks up on the “intelligence augmentation” (IA) within contemporary settings. See Souls of a new machine - The Boston Globe.

Brief article on CNet about robots that are aware of their own bodies. See Researchers unveil a self-aware robot | CNET News.com.

Related to an article published this month in Science.
Abstract at: Resilient Machines Through Continuous Self-Modeling — Bongard et al. 314 (5802): 1118 — Science
Auxiliary files: Resilient Machines Through Continuous Self-Modeling — Bongard et al. 314 (5802): 1118 Data Supplement - Supporting Online Material — Science.

I’ve found Cynthia Breazeal’s robotics research both interesting and theologically provocative, and I’ve referred to her book “Designing Sociable Robots (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents)” in several places in the thesis.

PBS is running a profile on her on their scienceNOW web site (including video later this week). Links there to various slideshows, articles etc. See NOVA | scienceNOW | Profile: Cynthia Breazeal | PBS.

Related links:

Cynthia Breazeal’s home page at MIT Media Lab.
Greenflame: God In The Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity And God
Robotic Life - sociable robots
Kismet (robot)

Today I’ve been adding in some footnotes to articles about food aid to developing countries being linked with the requirement to accept genetically modified foodstuffs or crops. And also the attempts by some governments who supply aid for other problems (e.g. malaria) to make acceptance of GM crops as a condition for receiving that aid.

If you’re interesting in following the GM food topic then the Guardian special report section of their web site keeps track of news in that area (like the recent US GM rice debacle).

See Special report: GM food debate | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited.

Related links:

Nuffield Council on Bioethics : Genetically Modified Crops (includes material on GM crops in developing countries).

Christian Aid’s controversial paper: Selling suicide - farming, false promises and genetic engineering in developing countries (1999). Followed up in 2004 with Christian Aid and the GM crops debate.

Much food, many problems from the journal, Nature (402, 231-232 (18 November 1999)).

Monsanto.com.

Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification [New Zealand Ministry for the Environment].

Back in July the Bioethics Council started a process of public discussion on and engagement with the theme of human embryo research (see Greenflame: New Zealand discussion of human embryos in research). Now, they have started to make some of the results of that process including video and audio content from public seminars, and later summaries of public discussion.

See Human Embryos in Research [Bioethics Council].

Multimedia links at Talking embryos seminar [Bioethics Council].

Wired News have an interesting article about the rise of “New Atheism” which aims to bring about a society free of religion and superstition through reason. It’s interesting because it raises the issue that this may become the very fundamentalism it seeks to do away with. See Wired News: Battle of the New Atheism

If there’s money to be made then someone will want a slice of it - and possibly tax it. A few points about this at Virtual worlds getting so big they’re virtually taxable - 23 Oct 2006 - World News - NZ Herald.

Brief article on Pope Benedict’s critique of reliance on science and technology over at Pope warns scientists not to risk fate of Icarus - Yahoo! News.

Wired guide for first-time visitors (”noobs”) to Second Life in Let’s Go: Second Life.

And an article over at Rise of the machines - Technology - smh.com.au which picks up on some of the things that I highlight in the opening chapters of my thesis.

A while back I wrote about viewing technology in ecological terms (Greenflame: Information ecologies). The outworking of this might be called appropriate technology. Ian Barbour, in Ethics in an Age of Technology puts it like this when he says “the welfare of humankind requires a creative technology that is economically productive, ecologically sound, socially just, and personally fulfilling.”

Barbour argues for engagement in all of the following four areas briefly summarized below:

Defense of the personal

To represent human values that stand against materialistic and mechanistic views of the world through:

1. Adopting personal and community life-styles more consistent with human and environmental values.
2. Protesting strongly against unbalanced technological optimism and affluent society’s disproportionate resource consumption.
3. Defending of individuality and choice in the face of standardisation and bureaucracy.
4. Upholding of personal relationships and a vision of personal fulfillment that goes beyond material affluence.
5. Affirming importance of a spiritual life.

The key here is not rejection of all technology but rather identifying what is the “right” technology for the task at hand.

The role of politics

Technology is not only a cultural influence, but is also part of culture. (Similar to Stephen Monsma’s claim that technology is the air we breathe). In recognizing this he rejects both the ideas that:

1. Technology is basically good and should be unregulated (free market approach).
2. Technology is always dehumanizing and uncontrollable, and shapes all the world including politics, leaving individuals and communities powerless (technological determinism).

Rather, by recognizing that technology is an instrument of power to those that wield it, its engagement with culture and as part of culture needs robust political engagement at all levels of society.

The redirection of technology

The past trajectory of technological development should not be totally rejected. Instead we need to look beyond narrow economic agendas and evaluate technology more before deploying it. If we do this then we can work to redirect technology, through decision-making processes and social policies, toward the realization of technological values that affirm a rich and life-giving existence for human beings and the environment.

The scale of technology

A critical key to this is the development of appropriate technology for particular local contexts and situations. The aim being to:

1. Achieve some of the material benefits of technology (optimist),
2. Without destructive human costs (pessimist) – which come, he argues, mostly from large-scale implementations of technology.

Instead, a better way is to create intermediate scale systems that allow decentralization and greater local participation, as well as the use of local materials and the reduction of environmental impact.

This latter point of scale is similar to Joel Garreau’s contention that human values can and do shape our future through the choices available to us. We don’t always pick the best choice technologically but we should not capitulate to technological determinism based on either overly optimistic or pessimistic perspectives of technology.

For the individual Christian, and Christian communities, the questions that arise include:

1. What is “appropriate technology” within the context of loving and serving God and neighbour?
2. If technology is our environment, and is part of the value system we live within, how then has that shaped our theology and praxis in areas such as mission, social concern and ecclesiology?
3. How does that shape ethics and practices in the workplace, the church and engagement with politics?
4. How do Christians work with others in the community to find common values that can undergird technological engagement?

Article on recent developments of humanoid robotics in Japan - including the possibility of robot avatars allowing spatial interaction providing things like presence and share objects of attention. See globeandmail.com: Say hello to your robot self.

Related links:

• Greenflame: Robots: From tools to partners
• Greenflame: Have you met my bionic grandmother?
• Greenflame: Enter the robots

Related books:

• “Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species” (Faith D’Aluisio).

Over at The Digital Sanctuary: Internet Evolution Cynthia points to the new Pew/Internet report Imagining the Internet which surveyed the opinions of various stakeholders in the Internet. Related to my previous posting is their assertion that a substantial number of them are concerned about the role of autonomous technology in shaping future societies.

Of course, one of the best known examples of this technological unease is Bill Joy’s article Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn’t need us, which sparked off a range of responses.

Another well-known but optimistic view is that of Ray Kurzweil. See, for example, Reinventing Humanity: The Future of Machine-Human Intelligence. (PDF)

Joel Garreau’s book gives a good introduction to three of the various scenarios posed by the development of nano, biological, information and cognitive technologies (NBIC). He describes these as “Hell”, “Heaven”, and “Prevail”. Your local library should have a copy of the book. See “Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human” (Joel Garreau).

The Wired web site has a new interactive bionics feature that allows you to find out more about technology being used therapeutically within the human body. Everything from artificial knee joints through to neural implants of various sorts. Focus is upon mechanical, digital and nano technologies. See Wired - Interactive Bionics Tour.

Brief article about access and use of information techonology in US education arena at CNN.com - Digital divide separates students - Sep 5, 2006. It points out that while getting educational institutions online helps improve access and skills for students that does not address the “out of school” access that complements it, and which is significant in shaping students opportunities and skills.

Radio New Zealand’s National Radio programme Ideas (part of Sunday Morning with Chris Laidlaw) was a discussion on human embryo research in New Zealand, looking forward to the discussion over the next few months in NZ over policy. Featured a panel discussion including a good friend on mine, Graham O’Brien, and touched on a range of issues.

I hope the broadcast will be repeated at a later time, because many of those within the Christian community who might have been stimulated to think about these issues will have been in Sunday morning worship. (And, on the whole, bioethical discussions rarely, if ever, seem to feature in many congregations’ Sunday morning fare.) Still, the audio is available for the next month from the links at the bottom of the post.

From the “Ideas” web site,

6th August - Embryo ResearchTo do or not to do…that is the question? And when is a human being a human being? That is the other question.

Undertaking research on human embryos might enable us to understand more about human development, discover cures for debilitating diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s or be able to repair spinal cord injuries through the use of embryonic stem cells. But this is at the cost of a human life. Or is it?

The perennial questions about the beginning of human life are once more at the forefront as we debate the issue of whether to use embryos for research or not. And if New Zealand decides we will, then the next question is where will the embryos come from? They could be leftover embryos from IVF treatments, they could be created in the laboratory like they are for IVF treatments or scientists could use nuclear transfer techniques commonly known as cloning.

How does a society get consensus on this? How much pressure are scientists under to come up with answers to how and why debilitating diseases affect some people and not others?

Guests on the programme include:
- Professor Sylvia Rumball, Chair Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology and Chair, Massey University Human Ethics Committee
- Dr Richard Fisher, Co-Founder Fertility Associates
- Dr Ruth Fitzgerald, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Otago University
- Dr Graeme O’Brian, Spokesperson for the Interchurch Bioethics Council.

• Sunday Morning Podcast - http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts/sunday.rss
• Windows Media Audio
• MP3 Audio.

Related links:

• Health & Science: Thanks, but I’d rather be disabled by Marilyn Head | New Zealand Listener (January 21-27 2006 Vol 202 No 3428)
• Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . COVER STORY . Down Syndrome . March 31, 2006 | PBS
• Greenflame: New Zealand discussion of human embryos in research
• Greenflame: Choosing the Genes for Future Children
• Greenflame: The frozen ones
• Greenflame: NZ Catholic Church on PGD

Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (2006 Media Release, University of Otago, New Zealand):

Choosing Genes for Future Children: Regulating Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, is the first major report from the three-year multidisciplinary project which draws together a team of New Zealand and international researchers in Law, Bioethics, Science, Māori and Paediatrics to examine whether, how and to what extent, human genome-based technologies should be regulated.

News article here: Stuff.co.nz: Researchers dismiss ‘designer babies’ concerns.

See also,

Greenflame: New Zealand discussion of human embryos in research

TIME.com: Stem Cells: The Hope And The Hype — Aug. 7, 2006.

After managing to find this week’s NZ Listener (it gets delivered 7 days before the week it’s for, and often gets misplaced) I see the lead article is on the accelerating pace of technological change. A quick skim though highlights that it picks up on genetics, robotics and nanotechnology in the typical popular fashion. I’ll go back and read it in depth later today. Still, maybe an accessible article on those technologies. See New Zealand Listener | Issue 3454 | July 22-28 2006.

I was struck by the cover this week too. Very like Herzfeld’s book cover below, and you can find similar images at most online stock photo sites by searching for things like “robot” and “cyborg”.

Report on the American Association for Artificial Intelligence celebrating 50 years of AI research. See Wired News: The Wisdom of Robots.

Article here on the BrainGate, a device the integrates the human brain with computer systems.

Using an array of hair-thin electrodes implanted in his brain, a 25-year-old quadriplegic man was able to operate a computer, open and close a prosthetic hand, and manipulate a robotic arm just by thinking about it, according to a new study. Such a brain-computer interface may one day help restore movement and communication to people paralyzed from spinal cord injuries, strokes, and disorders such as muscular dystrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

See Mind Over Matter — Wickelgren 2006 (712): 1 — ScienceNOW.

I hope something like this can work in the real world. Producing plastic from biomass, that in turn can be recycled does seem much better than just producing it from oil. See Wired News: Just One Word: Fructose.

Links and comments on the use of performance enhancing drugs used by children and teenagers in education. See Better Humans : Simon : The kids are alright with smart drugs

The article here at Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact: Cheap Drinking Water from the Ocean talks about developments using carbon nanotube-based membranes for desalination. If implemented the technology could significantly reduce the cost of desalination and help alleviate water shortages. The membranes might also be able to be used to filter out various gaseous emissions such as CO2.

Just in case you were looking for a copy of this, there’s an online version of Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, a report of The President’s Council on Bioethics (Washington, D.C., October 2003). PDF and HTML versions available.

Bits of it have been useful for me as I’ve noted how different groups respond to biotechnology.

Wow. Maybe the commercial spinoff will be a TV you can change channels on without having to move any muscles. See Wired News: Brain Waves Make Robot Move

In a video demonstration in Tokyo, patterns of the changes in the brain taken by an MRI machine, like those used in hospitals, were relayed to a robotic hand.A person in the MRI machine made a fist, spread his fingers and then made a V sign. Several seconds later, the robotic hand made the same movements. Further research would be needed to decode more complex movements.

Picked up a copy of Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids by Sidney Perkowitz this week from the university bookshop. It looks quite interesting and I admit that once I saw the blurb on the back about science fiction movies - just after I’d edited some similar ideas in my introduction - I was keen to get it. From the back,

Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life.
…
Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity. As scientists draw on nanotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence, and materials science, they are learning how to create beings that move, think, and look like people. Others are routinely using sophisticated surgical techniques to implant computer chips and drug-dispensing devices into our bodies, designing fully functional man-made body parts, and linking human brains with computers to make people healthier, smarter, and stronger.

Anyway, what is interesting in another way about this book is how it’s published. If you go to the publisher’s web site you can order a paper copy, buy a PDF (they have paper + PDF combos), buy a PDF of a chapter, sample a PDF, and search or browse the full text of the book.

Your book, delivered how you want it. Cool.

For the interesting things that happened this week in science file.

Genetic study reveals surprises in human evolution | Reuters.com
Last chromosome in human genome sequenced | Reuters.com
Chile telescope discovers three planets | Reuters.com

The Royal Society of NZ is holding an essay competition for high school students to write about genetics and ethics. See RSNZ: genETHICS.

The Genethics Essay competition is a unique and innovative competition that provides secondary school students with an opportunity to discuss ethical issues associated with human genetics research. The competition is open to students in years 11, 12 and 13 studying Biology, Science, English or Social Sciences.

From Rudi Volti’s book on technological society that I was skimming through today,

Distrust flourishes when people have no ability to participate in decisions that shape their lives, and the inability to affect the course of technological change can produce a mixture of naïve hope and paranoid reaction. A realistic sense of control, including a sense of having some control over technology, is essential for an individual’s mental health. No less important, widespread participation in the shaping of technology is essential for democracy. Technology’s benefits cannot be separated from its costs, and thus it becomes necessary to determine if the former justify the latter. If a society is truly democratic, such decisions will be made with as much citizen participation as possible. Moreover, the benefits and costs of technology are not shared equally, and once again the apportioning of costs and benefits should be done in as participatory a manner as possible.

Rudi Volti, Society and Technological Change. 4th ed. New York: Worth Publishers, 2001. (pp.14-15)

Article on the Nature website about replacement bladder sacs grown externally from patients’ tissue and then reimplanted. See news @ nature.com - Scientists grow bladder replacement in lab - Trial points way to engineered organs using patients’ own cells.

Wired carried this story about a collaborative environment for programming that is modeled on old-fashioned text adventure games - see Wired News: Coding Tool Is a Text Adventure.

If you want to relive those days of text adventures try Lobotomo Software’s port of Adventure to Mac OS X. Infocom have their Zork games available for free download for both PC and Mac (Classic) here too.

To get a feel for the significance of Adventure in the psyche of old-timer computer types have a read of The Soul of a New Machine from your local library and this on Adventure. Reading the Wikipedia entry Adventure game brought it all flooding back. Now when I close my eyes I see,

You’re in a maze of twisty thesis footnotes, all alike.
>north

You’re in a maze of twisty thesis footnotes, all alike.
>west

You’re in a maze of twisty thesis footnotes, all alike.
>south

You’re in a maze of twisty thesis footnotes, all alike.
>quit

Command not found
>

Betterhumans.com posting Nanotech restores sight to blind hamsters points to articles that describe the use of nanotechnology to help regenenrate severed optic nerves in hamsters.

Article in the (UK) Independent’s legal section on the status of frozen embryos from IVF in Britain. See Independent Online Edition > Legal : Fertility: The frozen ones by Cole Moreton. It’s mainly concerned with the stories of people involved, but also has some basic technical information.

A couple of links. The first to a robot that is controlled by the behaviour of a slime mould that has been integrated with control circuitry, and the second link a robot (EcoBot II) that is powered by a Microbial Fuel Cell that produces energy from dead flies and rotten fruit. See New Scientist Breaking News - Robot moved by a slime mould’s fears and Energy Autonomy: Towards a truly Autonomous Robot.

The latest Australian Sky and Telescope magazine (Jan/Feb 2006) comes with a DVD on the cover with a 2 hour long documentary produced by ESA on the history, work and future of the Hubble space telescope. I started to watch it and the kids drifted in and stayed to watch it too. A mixture of video and still footage, talking heads and CGI that seems to work quite well.

The magazine, which I don’t normally get as I tend to buy Astronomy every now and then, was not bad with (as one might expect) more Australian and New Zealand related material and sky charts.

These look interesting. Glasses that contain controllable pixels that can compensate for aberations in the eye giving enhanced vision. See Wired News: Super Vision Sans Bionics.

Just skimming through these while list current applications of virtual reality in practice. These look amazing though I’m not sure I’d volunteer to test “Spider-World” (which means of course I’m a good candidate for it.)

Hoffman, Hunter G. “Virtual-Reality Therapy.” Scientific American 291, no. 2 (2004): 58-65. [HTML version]North, Max M., Sarah M. North, and Joseph R. Coble. “Virtual Reality Therapy: An Effective Treatment for Psychological Disorders.” In Handbook of Virtual Environments : Design, Implementation, and Applications, ed. Kay M. Stanney, 1065-1078. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

Rizzo, Albert A., J. Galen Buckwalter, and Cheryl van der Zaag. “Virtual Environment Applications in Clinical Neuropsychology.” In Handbook of Virtual Environments : Design, Implementation, and Applications, ed. Kay M. Stanney, 1027-1064. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

Article on the Economist web site observing the love for robots in Japan. Has a few religious points of contact too. See Japan’s humanoid robots | Better than people | Economist.com.

Related to this is the Robotic Life group at MIT. Head over and have a look at their site. On their publications page they have some papers you can download that would fit with the article above, especially the ones about robots as collaborative partners.

Another interesting article is Wired News: Monsters of Photorealism which comments on the ideas of Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. Mori asserts that the more real you try to make a simulacrum of the human being - a robot or in VR/video games/films - the less convincing they become, to the point of becoming disconcerting or even repulsive. (See also Uncanny Valley - Wikipedia.)

Anyway, that’s enough random thesis connections falling out of my head for today.

Area51 (A NZ site/blog focused on “up to date medical technology news with a New Zealand focus where possible