Moving Mountains With the Brain, Not a Joystick

STILL using a mouse, keyboard, joystick or motion sensor to control the action in a video game? It may be time to try brain power instead. A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought. Put on the headset, made by Emotiv Systems in San Francisco, and when a giant boulder blocks the path in a game you are playing, you can levitate it — not by something as crude as a keystroke, but just by concentrating on raising it, said Tan Le, Emotiv’s president. The headset captures electrical signals when you concentrate; then the computer processes these signals and pairs a screen action with them, like lifting a stone or repairing a falling bridge.

Who is in Charge?

I'm not hungry, really. In a group of gobies living in a coral reef, there is one alpha couple, a male and a female. The rest are nonmating females, which have a definite social hierarchy; each is 5 percent to 10 percent smaller than its next higher rival. And when researchers tried to give the smaller fish more food to eat, the gobies would not bite. When a subordinate fish grows closer in size to the next larger fish, a fight ensues, usually ending with the smaller fish's expulsion from the group. And without the protection of the coral, the expelled fish usually are eaten by a predator. Thus, the preferred option is to not eat too much and not make any waves.

A different viewpoint

The mantis shrimp has some pretty impressive eyes, able to see light in wavelengths spanning the spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared. Research published this week in the journal PLoS One suggests that these shrimp have other remarkable qualities as well. Researchers report that the animal's eyes are able to measure six components of light polarization -- the direction of its electric field. This optimal polarization vision is something that humans gained the ability to replicate only in the last decade or so, and we need at least three fast-imaging cameras and computer software to make it work.
Photo: Roy Caldwell

Who's looking at you

Chameleons are known for their ability to change their appearance and blend into their surroundings. Research published this week in Biology Letters suggests that their color choices depend in part on what is looking at them. Scientists captured 16 dwarf chameleons and exposed them to realistic stand-ins of two common predators: the fiscal shrike bird and a tree snake called the boomslang. When a bird was in the vicinity, chameleons switched their color to match the surroundings much more closely than when a snake was nearby, the scientists report. But when the team modeled how a snake would see the camouflaged creatures, they discovered that the chameleons were hidden in plain sight better for the snakes than they were for birds.

Unique bacteria

Scientists from Penn State University have discovered a new species of bacteria living almost two miles beneath the surface of a Greenland glacier. Named Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, the species has survived the extreme conditions for more than 120,000 years. Its cells are so small, the researchers report, that they can pass through standard microbiological filters designed to purify solutions.

How you get onto Trains in Japan

Its been this way at Prudential T stop a few times.....

We rest; a dream has the power to poison sleep
We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day
We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow
The path of its departure still is free.
Man;s yesterday man ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but mutability!

Frankenstein-