The Cyborgs are coming

Rat brain controls robots

There are just too many issues brought up by this experiment. Basically, researchers have taken neural cells from a rat foetus and connected them to a robot that navigates via sonar so they can be used to control its movements with the ultimate aim of simulating loss of memory in the neurones in an attempt to study the mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease.

Got all that?

Several questions are raised in this report, for me at least. Since when is it so straightforward to connect brain cells to machines? How do rat neurones know how to interpret sonar signals? Isn't it impressive enough to have made a bio-mechanical hybrid without justifying it by using it for Alzheimer's research?

All that. Actually, several aspects are explained in the article/video. But they do say they intend to disrupt the neuronal links that form (yes, the neurones are actually learning stuff via this experiment, that's the point). They "plan to disrupt the memories in a bid to recreate the gradual loss of mental faculties seen in diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's". Maybe I'm being dense, but I'm not sure how useful this recreation will be, as the actual cause of memory and functioning breakdown in these diseases is caused by neurones dying off, and the cause of this is yet to be 100% confirmed for either disease. Also, the neurones underlying these diseases rarely, if ever, go through a phase where they're removed from the body, kept alive via artificial means and used to control a sonar equipped robot. Any results obtained from these experiments will be tricky to generalise.

But it's impressive Science nonetheless, albeit the sort that gets the general public all twitchy. Taking the brains out of foetal rats, building what it effectively a cyborg, this sort of thing tends to unnerve people.

I was quite unnerved myself when they demonstrated monkeys using robotic arms. The science was very impressive, that didn't bother me, it was the fact that monkeys tend to be aggressive, vicious little sods, so giving them control over super-strong robot arms is just asking for trouble. Seeing as they're lab animals, I imagine the first thing they'd do is escape. And who's going to be the first person who suffers a fractured skull after being hit by a monkey turd flung at supersonic speeds?

I guess it's only a matter of time before we can get working mechanical implants in humans. Then who knows what'll happen? The 2012 Olympics might be a lot more interesting than we expect.

In order to balance complaints...

I've been getting some feedback form this Blog lately, which was nice. The general opinion is as follows:

"It's really funny, but way too long".

The only criticism I've received is that it's too long. Also, one person said it gave them vertigo. Seriously. I was oddly proud, but promised to address that.

I apologise for the length of my posts, it's a habit of mine. I admit that 28.3783244 % of people tell me I over-analyse things, and I tend to waffle. I don't really mind, the point of me doing this was so that I could discuss the ramifications of recent science stories. The media often reduces important stories down to the bare bones in order to meet the artificial requirements of brevity, and I think a lot of Science based news suffers for this. And the media we're exposed to today has given people such short attention spans, and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing.

There, that's my relatively brief rant over with. In the interest of fairness, here are some incredibly short commentaries, all with a science theme at least, in order to bring down the average length.

• I have a phobia of dirty toilets, a very bad one. I can't stand to use them, and I pour copious amounts of bleach down my toilet in order to keep it hygienic. I keep hearing about the erosion of British coastal marine life and habitats and the altering pH levels of the sea. This is normally blamed on over-fishing and industrial chemical run off. However, judging by the amount of high strength alkaline I've released into the sewage system, it might be because of me. I'm sorry.

• Scientists often mock artistic people for not understanding our field. But it works both ways. I work in a high profile Psychology building, my wife (an optometrist) works in a brand new state-of-the-art optometry teaching installation. Both of our buildings have extremely expensive art exhibits in the entrance areas. My wife's building's art (multi-million pound, by the way) is a number of sculptures made from glass beads and shapes suspended at eye level by high tension wires. The walls are white. My building has gone more post-modern, with a psychologically calculated interpretation of Dante's inferno, and the assorted monsters within. So we have transparent sculptures that normal sighted people find hard to see in a building for the visually impaired, and a recreation of hell itself in a building which hosts many people who suffer form psychological disorders. Either this is mind-bogglingly short-sighted (two puns there, neither intended) or utter genius, as it'll help us filter out those who are faking it.

• There's a new Alzheimer's drug in development. Very good. It doesn't cure it, but it slows the progression. People still have Alzheimer's related dementia, but it takes longer to get to the point where you lose all cognitive function. Not to sound harsh, but this is possibly the only case where the characteristics of Alzheimer's make it preferable to other diseases. If there was a drug, let's say for cancer, that meant you still suffered the same hideous symptoms, but for longer, I doubt it would be as marketable.

• In order to balance possible insensitivity from my last post, for my final year university assignment, I had to find a cure for Parkinson's. I kid you not. After conducting much research, I did find a mechanism that combined gene therapy, stem cell research and hormonal regulation that may have reduced Parkinson's to a diabetes-like illness. I got 65% for this, which I felt was a bit harsh. Obviously, I didn't have the experience, resources or wherewithal to investigate this cure further. 5 months later I went back to my project supervisor for a reference. He was gone, apparently he'd up and left one day unannounced. Almost as if he'd got his hands on something that potentially could make him rich but didn't want to tell anyone as he'd come by it by illicit means.
  

• The above story is 100% true

• Apparently, the Martian Phoenix lander has had trouble analysing the soil for ice because it's too sticky. The soil stay in the scoop and won't fall out into the analysing oven. Maybe I'm being dense about this, but didn't NASA invent Teflon? And what do we use Teflon for these days?

• Now Bees might be used to hunt down serial killers. Are Alsatians really that hard to come by? I quite like this idea actually, the use of animals with special senses to help solve human problems is not an old one, with rats being able to sniff out tumours or wasps sensing bombs (I'll post links when I find them). But given the fact that, apparently, something mysterious is killing off the British Bee population, and now some of them are potentially being used to hunt down serial killers, I can't shake the feeling that this is going to be made into some prime time drama special one day, where a bumblebee constable goes it alone to track down the man who killed his mate/queen/hive/swarm/larvae. Maybe even a movie is possible. But I'll avoid any jokes about Bee movies. Apart from that one, obviously...

I think that'll do for now.