Jase Learns

Professional musician Roger Frisch played his violin during brain surgery to correct hand tremors so that surgeons could gauge its efficacy.

When Roger Frisch noticed hand tremors back in 2009, it was no small deal -- as a professional violinist, steady hands are absolutely imperative to his work. With shaking hands, Frisch -- who had been a professional musician for 40 years -- could no longer draw the bow smoothly across the strings of his instrument. He was diagnosed with nervous disorder essential tremor.

The solution? Deep brain stimulation, to be administered by brain surgeons at the Mayo Clinic Neural Engineering Lab. This procedure involves the implantation of what is known as a brain pacemaker, which sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain -- it is used to treat such conditions as Parkinson's disease, major depression, Tourette syndrome, tremors, and chronic pain.

Although Frisch's tremors might be considered relatively minor, for a concert violinist they would have spelled the end of his career.

In order to find the brain region that was causing the tremors, the surgeons had to insert electrodes into his brain, stimulating various points. But, because the tremor was so mild, the surgeons would not have been able to tell if they were hitting the optimum spot -- unless, that is, Frisch was awake and helping.

It's actually par for the course for patients to be conscious during brain surgery so that doctors can monitor their condition, but Frisch's case required something new: for him to be playing the violin. The surgical team fitted bow with a three-axis accelerometer, which allowed the team to monitor Frisch's movements in real-time. When they inserted the electrodes into his brain, they were able to gauge whether or not the stimulation was affecting the tremors.

New smartphone prototype can be charged by sound

A team of scientists from the Queen Mary University of London has teamed up with Nokia to create a sound-powered smartphone. About the size of a Nokia Lumia 925 phone, the device is filled with energy-harveting ‘nanogenerators’ that can react to sound vibrations and create electricity.

The technology is based on a concept proposed by Korean scientists four years ago called the piezoelectric effect, which describes how nanowires made from zinc oxide produce an electrical current when they’re subjected to some kind of mechanical stress, such as being squashed, stretched or bent. The Korean researchers discovered that these tiny nanowires were so sensitive, they’d bend in response to the pressure of sound waves. 

With this in mind, the UK team started off by spraying a coating of liquid zinc oxide onto a plastic sheet, says Ben Coxworth at Gizmag, which they placed into a mixture of chemicals and heated to 90ºC (194ºF). This made the liquid zinc oxide grow into tiny nanorods that spread all over the sheet.

"In order to harvest the voltage generated, the nanorod sheet was sandwiched between two electrical contact sheets,” Coxworth adds. "Whereas these contacts would typically be made from gold, the researchers developed a cost-cutting technique that allowed them to use ordinary aluminium foil instead."

The team found that when they installed this device in their smartphone prototype, and exposed it to sounds like traffic, human voices, and music, it was able to generate five volts, which is enough to charge a mobile phone.

Robots explore Tate Britain's artwork after dark

Nocturnal robots are set to tour the halls of London's Tate Britain Museum, as part of a unique project aimed at allowing art lovers to explore the building after hours.

On Wednesday when the gallery's door close - four remote controlled bots will be set free to roam through 500 years of art.

Each machine will live-stream its footage to the Tate's "After Dark" website, where viewers will be able to take turns to control the robots' movements.

If they manage to manoeuvre to a work of art, a team of live art experts will be on hand to provide live commentary.

The developers claim the robots can broadcast what they see in near real time. But if you want to see the works of art in full definition, you'll have to visit the old fashioned way.

True aquatic kingfishers are a generally secretive family (Alcedinidae) with dramatic feeding habits.  Most are brightly colored, often solitary fishers. They usually nest in banks along the riverine habitats in which they live.  A smaller number of kingfishers are terrestrial birds that are somewhat more social but still strictly carnivorous and usually found near water.  Both groups have exceptional vision, especially for their watery niche.

Most aquatic kingfishers hunt by hovering above the water where their prey lives. They wait until the target fish appears in the proper position, and then they drop like a stone to pick the fish out of the water. The hunt is relatively brief, but thoroughly exciting to witness.

Visually, they accomplish tasks that are nothing short of astonishing. Each of their two eyes has two foveae. The fovea is the area of an eye with the best vision because of the concentration of visual cells called photoreceptors. You use your fovea for best vision—for example, you are reading this sentence with your foveae. 

Kingfishers have two foveae in each eye, with one fovea near the beak, and having the best vision by virtue of the highest concentration of photoreceptors. This is the fovea a kingfisher will use to sight its prey during the period of hover. During the drop to the water’s surface, the kingfisher sights the fish with this nasal fovea with the sharpest vision. But, once the kingfisher’s beak hits the water, the fish senses the vibration and shock wave coming from that beak entrance. The fish, being alarmed, may respond by trying to escape in an unpredictable manner, and if the kingfisher can’t react to that movement and direction, the hunt will be unsuccessful.

By the time the kingfisher can determine the direction of the target fish, his eyes will be close to or in the water. This changes the angle of the incoming image because of the index of refraction of water.

The kingfisher solves this problem with a second fovea in each eye. Once the eyes are immersed in water, the image of the fish is focused on the second fovea in each eye. That means that there is stereoscopic visualization of the prey as it tries to dart away, an action that is usually not successful.

But, in order to keep the image focused on both foveae, the lens has to be oval and the second fovea has to be in the periphery of the eye at the edge of the retina.

The world of international street fighting is rife with strange characters, but none are as fascinating — or delightfully  monstrous — as Blanka. The creature’s origins are largely a mystery, but what happens when we apply the light of science?

When threatened, Blanka generates a potent electric field capable of sending even the fiercest yoga practitioner flying through the air. While exotic, this ability is not unheard of in the realm of natural-world organisms.

You are of course familiar with the electric eel (which is actually a relative of the catfish, not an eel), but this Amazonian is just one among hundreds of electric fish species in the world. Some six different lineages evolved independently of each other, making them prime, shocking examples of convergent evolution. According to a 2014 study of the electric eel genome from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the ability only appears in water-dwellers because the creature depends on water as a conductor.

Some electric fish use their spark for navigation or communication, but clearly that’s not what our Blanka is up to.

The electric eel is the best natural-world example to study, as this rather unimpressive-looking fish can deliver an offensive or defensive jolt several times more powerful than a household electrical outlet.

Amazingly enough, it’s all a matter of muscle.

All muscles are fundamentally bioelectric. Contract any muscle and you’ll release a small trickle of voltage. Electric fish, however, have spent 100 million years evolving muscle cells into larger cells called electrocytes. A whopping 90-percent of the electric eels’s body amounts to a massive electric organ composed of this non-contracting muscle-like tissue.

So what are we to make of Blanka? While the aquatic ape hypothesis is largely dismissed, it does seem as if this bizarre primate evolved to thrive in the Amazon basin. Over the course of many millions of years, the species adapted to a life spent wading through muddy waters, eventually employing a powerful bioelectric shock to paralyze fish and other aquatic prey.

Augmented reality is no longer the stuff of science fiction, and the minds of mad men. Instead, augmented reality, defined as  the overlaying of digital information onto the real world has become just that, a reality, and a very disruptive one. It represents the truly personal computer, where real sensory inputs are enhanced with relevant digital information from the internet.  This heightened experience  requires an interface, that can instantaneously overlay virtual images and video on top of the real world, interfaces such as the user, the physical object, or the environment surrounding the object, all three which we will discuss

1. Augmenting the user - The first option is to augment each of us with wearable technology such as digitally-enhanced eyewear.  Here, the user wears or carries a device, usually on the head or hands, to obtain information about the surrounding physical objects.  Companies such as Meta’s space glasses shown below are leaders in this space. Similar to their competitors  they aim to generate holograms to improve the everyday consumer experience. These holograms can consist of anything from your laptop to your phone which in turn means you don’t have to haul these items around with you.

2. Augmenting physical objects – By embedding inputs, outputs or computational devices on or within physical objects we can create augmented reality experiences.

Say you have two objects: a billiard ball and a feather. You drop both from the same height at the same time. You lay odds on the ball hitting the ground first -- and you're probably right, even if it's just by a split-second. However, as demonstrated by Galileo in 1589, mass does not affect gravitational pull; theoretically, all things should fall at the same rate, regardless of how heavy they are.

Back in 1971, on his last day on the moon, Apollo 15 Commander David Scott tested this theory. In one hand, he took a 1.32kg aluminium geological hammer. In his other, a 30g falcon feather, 44 times lighter than the hammer. Sure enough, when he dropped them both from the same height at the same time, they hit the ground simultaneously -- thus demonstrating Galileo's theory.

Victims of the well-known Cryptolocker ransomware finally have some good news. Security researchers have got hold of a copy of the Crytolocker victim database as well as the key needed to unscramble files – providing victims with all they need to get their files back without paying one bitcoin.

“This time we basically got lucky,” said Michael Sandee, principal analyst at Fox-IT,  one of the security firms that helped tackle the cyber criminals behind Cryptolocker.

An online portal is now available for Cryptolocker’s 500,000 victims to use. All that’s required is an email address and one of your encrypted files. You’ll then be emailed everything you need to decrypt your files.

John Venn (August 4, 1834 - April 4, 1923) was an English mathematician/logician who invented the Venn diagram.

His diagram clearly shows the similarities and differences for two different sets; it is a visual way to represent sets, and their unions and intersections.

Venn's diagrams were first published in 1880, in "Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science" - Venn's article was called, "On the Diagrammatic and Mechanical Representation of Propositions and Reasonings."

Today marks the 180th birthday of John Venn and Google have an interactive doodle for the occasion - 

Similar to how Photoshop allows you to edit images using adjustment layers without altering the original image, you can use the same concept when customizing WordPress themes. Non-destructive customization has the advantage of being able to revert changes and keep the original files completely intact and untouched. The quickest and easiest way to begin non-destructive editing is by creating a child theme.

WHAT IS A CHILD THEME?

A child theme is a theme that inherits properties and functions from another theme called the parent theme. You can then edit, modify and add new features or functions because the files in the child theme overwrite the parent theme.