Week 25 – 17 June 2022
#01 🧠🚥🦾 | a neural network in your arm.
Researchers at the Neuroelectronics Lab of the University of Minnesota in the United States, have developed a novel approach to cutting edge prosthetics: an implant to the peripheral nerve in a person’s arm with sensors that can train a machine learning algorithm and fine-tune movements as triggered by a person’s brain. The accuracy rates ranged from 95% to 99%.
The method was made possible in part by recent advancements in edge computing technologies — in particular the low-cost NVIDIA Jetson Nano. This computer comes equipped with a graphics processing unit that can massively parallelize machine learning algorithms and enable running real-time inferences directly on the compact device. Using this platform, a recurrent neural network was designed and trained to interpret nerve signals captured by the implanted sensor.
(📷: Neuroelectronics Lab, University of Minnesota)
We are at the threshold of assistive devices becoming augmenting devices. The societal mindset shift from accessibility to augmentation is within grasp. By focusing on Universal Design principles, UMN researchers might have inadvertently created a new blue ocean of ‘mind reading’ implants and devices that can reimagine the relationship of brain interfaces and thus break the paradigm of machine interaction not just for the accessibility spectrum, but for everyone. Diversity matters.
Here is how your country can get inspired, build something, compete and build change within your communities:
#02 🌈 📺 👀 | parallel reality displays.
If you are one of up to 100 people standing in front of a screen at Concourse A of the McNamara Terminal in Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport, you will be one of the first people to witness a single screen that can display 100 different messages at the same time.
The California-based behind this bending of the reality distortion field is called Misapplied Sciences.
Customers who opt in to using it, either by scanning their boarding pass or by enrolling in Delta's app-based facial recognition program will look at the screen and see only the flight and baggage claim information relevant to their trip.
A person standing five feet away will see nothing but their own information.
#03 ⌚️🚶🧑⚕️ | early tracking of Parkinson’s.
(📷: Mareen Fischinger/Getty Images)
The Food & Drug Administration in the United States has approved Rune Labs, a neuroscience data science company, software to track symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The StrivePD app uses Apple's Movement Disorder API to automatically track tremors, uncontrolled body movement, medication usage and reporting of symptoms.
#04 🧑🌾 🚜🐄 | atv evs for farms.
Do you remember cake’s electric powered anti-poacher bikes? The EV maker is back with a new range of all-electric all-terrain vehicles for small to medium sized farms that have been designed by cake’s Fanny Jonsson.
Vehicles within farms have traditionally been powered by muscle or petrol. In the case of petrol, it can damage the crops and becomes a health hazard for farmers and workers in the fields as the emissions of such vehicles are not as regulated as the ones for private cars.
cake’s ATV is also autonomous and it can be hailed to a location within the farm with a remote or with a previous digital anchor point. The ATV can also follow a person, this is practical for people manually harvesting fruits.
A holistic approach of ATV is centered on the material choices for the components. For instance, the tires are crafted from dandelions which are in plenty in the Scandinavian landscape, or the plastic used in the body is made from locally available linseed plants grown in Sweden. The frame and other vital components are made from aluminum which is a sustainable material as compared to other industrial materials – it is highly recyclable without any major material degradation.
The electrification of Agriculture is a fundamental part of the economy. We cannot heal the land if we don’t start with renewable and sustainable infrastructure and energy sources. Electric vehicles in farms should not be a frontier, they represent the baseline of our relationship to planet, to the food we eat (and our health!).
#05 🧱👷🏾♀️🚧 | cabbage makes stronger concrete.
(📷: Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo)
Scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed concrete that is up to three times as strong using Chinese cabbage. Other types of food waste was researched such as coffee grounds, tea leaves, onions, pumpkin, seaweed, orange and banana peel. However, Chinese cabbage was a clear winner.
They used a heat-pressing technique to compress the food into a powder, mixed it with water and seasoning and then pressed the mixture into a mold at high temperatures. The resulting sustainable concrete is tough; rot-, fungi- and insect-resistant.
Means of reducing waste that otherwise creates harmful greenhouse gases, such as methane, is an important part of lifestyle measures we can all take for adaptation to man-made climate change.
Concrete —and building materials in general— that can be made from food waste or organic matter can create compostable emergency housing (say emergency response shelters after storms or Earthquakes). Over 60% of the materials in a traditional construction site are wasted. What if they could now be edible and compostable?
#06 👵👁👴 | smartphone Alzheimer screenings.
(📷: Google Pixel 4 / CNET)
Cognitive health checks at home are gaining more interest from research groups as the proliferation of smartphones, specially as they are generally not used when they are replaced by new ones. The capabilities of old smartphones can be suitable for novel remote screening. Researchers at the DigiHealth Lab at UC San Diego are enabling a second life for such sensors in these devices.
A great short video about the research team and the premise of the application of technology before it becomes e-waste is here:
It doesn’t replace a $10,000 USD eye screening device for Alzheimer’s, but if it can give you guidance to check your health further, there is value in it.
#07 🐟🏴☠️⚓️ | design for the wrong impact.
SafetyNet Technologies has developed the Pisces, ‘a selective fishing underwater light‘, to reduce bycatch by the fishing industry. The sturdy light can be attached to a fishing net in a non-obstructive way.
As our oceans have been depleted of marine life in under two centuries, figuring out ways to catch the right fish is culturally relevant and commercially relevant to those who hold permits with quotas. However, this is a design that optimizes for the wrong solution. We don’t need to completely drive species to extinction with surgical precision. We need to invest R&D in new methods of fish farming, new bioreactors for alt-proteins, adopt new ways of living and heal the planet in earnest.
We know more about outer space than the oceans of our planet. We continue to fish and destroy habitats systematically (with trawling methods) and we don’t even know what we are disrupting. We need to value more our planet by understanding it.
#08 📍📲⚕️ | location & health data sales ban proposed.
(📷: Elizabeth Frantz-Pool/Getty Images)
In the United States, Senator Elizabeth Warren (Democrat-Massachusets), has introduced the Location Protection Act with enhanced privacy measures and a ban of location and health data sales. This is a direct response to the leaked US Supreme Court opinion on overturning Roe vs Wade legislation and of a data visualization website, Placer.ai, which allowed anyone infer the location of homes of visitors to abortion providers (Planned Parenthood). A nightmare.
#09 💩💨🚽 | take it with you.
(📷: MIKHAIL METZEL/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
The 1997 film, GATTACA, introduced us to a glimpse of how DNA could be used across law enforcement, employment, designer babies and reshaping culture, what you could achieve and where you could work.
The 2022 version of GATTACA has heads of state carefully collecting their DNA sources (from COVID tests, excrement, skin, hair, etc). It is not only a sensationalist headline to focus on Russia. Dozens of other countries have been doing it for decades. But perhaps not in a specialized suitcase.
A video, taken during a Putin trip to France in 2019, showed six suited men in Putin's entourage accompanying him into a bathroom. One of them was seen exiting the bathroom holding a small briefcase, though it is unclear what it contained.
The tactic appears to be an effort to reduce the risk of foreign powers discovering information about Putin's health or predilection for future conditions that could be contained in the 69-year-old's DNA.
Here are the first 10 minutes of the highly recommended film, GATTACA:
#10 🔋🚴🏞 | double-decker cargo e-bike.
Designed for the Japanese market, the Stroke Active Cargo Trike is the length of a regular bicycle (1.9m or 6'3") and its width is 0.6m (< 2'). Perfect for narrow streets and compact dwellings. The ergonomics of the bike enable any cargo to remain tidy and clear of the road. Any load would retain a low center of mass with heavier items on the bottom rack.
You can get a sense of real life proportions in this video of the prototype:
The Stroke trike has dual and independent suspension for stability and comfort. Production has been impacted by the global pandemic but it is in the works.
Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, Arcimoto is also developing a similar concept for a trike with dual suspension sans cargo space — accessories will enable it, including dual seats.