By Brandon Keim from CNN.COM

(WIRED) -- Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you've seen by reading your mind.

Researchers used fMRI technology to try to pull images out of peoples' brains.

 Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen.

Though practical applications are decades away, the research could someday lead to dream-readers and thought-controlled computers.

"It's what you would actually use if you were going to build a functional brain-reading device," said Jack Gallant, a University of California, Berkeley neuroscientist.

The research, led by Gallant and Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Thomas Naselaris, builds on earlier work in which they used neural patterns to identify pictures from within a limited set of options.

The current approach, described this week in Neuron, uses a more complete view of the brain's visual centers. Its results are closer to reconstruction than identification, which Gallant likened to "the magician's card trick where you pick a card from a deck, and he guesses which card you picked. The magician knows all the cards you could have seen."

In the latest study, "the card could be a photograph of anything in the universe. The magician has to figure it out without ever seeing it," said Gallant.

To construct their model, the researchers used an fMRI machine, which measures blood flow through the brain, to track neural activity in three people as they looked at pictures of everyday settings and objects.

As in the earlier study, they looked at parts of the brain linked to the shape of objects. Unlike before, they looked at regions whose activity correlates with general classifications, such as "buildings" or "small groups of people."

Once the model was calibrated, the test subjects looked at another set of pictures. After interpreting the resulting neural patterns, the researchers' program plucked corresponding pictures from a database of 6 million images.

Frank Tong, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who studies how thoughts are manifested in the brain, said the Neuron study wasn't quite a pure, draw-from-scratch reconstruction. But it was impressive nonetheless, especially for the detail it gathered from measurements that are still extremely coarse.

The researchers' fMRI readings bundled the output of millions of neurons into single output blocks. "At the finer level, there is a ton of information. We just don't have a way to tap into that without opening the skull and accessing it directly," said Tong.

Gallant hopes to develop methods of interpreting other types of brain activity measurement, such as optical laser scans or EEG readings.

He mentioned medical communication devices as a possible application, and computer programs for which visual thinking makes sense -- CAD-CAM or Photoshop, straight from the brain.

Such applications are decades away, but "you could use algorithms like this to decode other things than vision," said Gallant. "In theory, you could analyze internal speech. You could have someone talk to themselves, and have it come out in a machine."

From The UK telegraph
By Kate Devlin Medical Correspondent

The system is designed to reduce the number of people who fail to take their pills or take them at the right time.

Some patients now have to take handfuls of different medications for multiple diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, every day.

The wireless technology could allow miniature, entirely digestible microchips to send a signal from inside a pill to a tiny sensor attached like a plaster onto the patient’s shoulder.

The system is being developed by Novartis, the pharmaceutical company, in partnership with a technology company called Proteus Biomedical.

It could also help doctors monitor how closely patients are sticking to medication regimes.

In a small study of 20 patients using Diovan, a blood pressure drug, the reminders have boosted compliance over six months from 30 per cent to 80 per cent.

Patients often do not experience the full benefits of their medication, experts warn, because they struggle to take the tablets, usually on a daily basis.

The problem can be especially acute among patients on long-term medication or those who have been told that they will have to take certain drugs for the rest of their lives.

Compliance can also fall over time or because patients start to experience side effects.

Joe Jimenez, head of pharmaceuticals at Novartis, said that the industry in devices designed to ensure that patients adhered more closely to their prescriptions was “starting to explode”.

From the Newspaper

An advertising campaign in the UK began using automated number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras to identify passing vehicles and create personalized advertisements. The motor oil giant Castrol UK Limited yesterday activated a set of five electronic billboards in London that flash an image of the exact type of Castrol-brand motor oil appropriate for the nearest vehicle. ”The right oil for your car is: Castrol Magnatec 5W-30 A1,” the advertisement reads for eight seconds as a Jaguar with the license plate 1DFL drives past. The roadside digital billboards, seventeen feet wide and eight feet high, are owned by Clear Channel Outdoor. Castrol’s campaign added the license scanning technology which ties into the official UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) database. The agency provides private registration information to just about any company willing to pay the desired fee. According to Castrol, this particular campaign does not store any information about what vehicles or drivers pass the sign.

“The majority of car owners have little understanding of the purpose of oil in an engine, and as a result are using oil which is not beneficial to their type and age of car, resulting in higher maintenance costs and fuel consumption,” Ali Gee, head of consultancy at Three Monkeys, Castrol’s advertising firm, explained in a statement. “Our campaign will help to convey the benefits of ensuring the use of the right oil for your car.”

ANPR cameras are used by law enforcement and private companies throughout the US and the UK with no established legal framework limiting their use. Castrols website offers more detailed information about a vehicle’s specifications based upon its license plate.

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From the Gaurdian UK

1.2bn population of India to be given biometric ID cards  
Randeep Ramesh in Delhi 
Wednesday 16 September 2009 20.33 BST

In India, Big Brother just wants to help. The country's 1.2 billion citizens are to be issued with a biometric identity card in an attempt to improve the delivery of India's inefficient public services – a move civil liberties' activists are condemning as the act of a "surveillance society".

This month, the country began the ambitious scheme of issuing everyone with a unique identity number. Within the first five years of the scheme, giant computer servers will hold the personal details of at least 600 million people. The introduction of what will be one of the world's most ambitious IT projects will cost an estimated £1.5bn.

The scheme is the brainchild of Nandan Nilekani, one of India's best-known software tycoons and now head of the government's Unique Identification Authority. "We are going to have to build something on the scale of Google but it will change the country … every person for first time [will] be able to prove who he or she was."

The country's red tape is legendary: Indians have dozens of types of identity verification, ranging from electoral rolls to ration cards, yet almost none can be used universally. The new system will be a national proof of identity, effective for everything, from welfare benefits to updating land records.

Nilekani said the scheme would help the poor especially. Moving from one state to another – a regular occurrence for poor villagers in search of work – often meant benefits were withdrawn because proof of residence was lacking. "This will mean maids and labourers … a hundred or two hundred million people – will be able to access welfare benefits for the first time without any questioning who they are."

Eventually, cards will hold the person's name, age, and birth date, as well as fingerprint or iris scans, though no caste or religious identification. "We are not profiling a billion people. This will provide an ID database which government can access online. There will be checks and balances to protect identities," said Nilekani, who has also been in talks to create a personalised carbon account so that all Indians might buy "green technologies" using a government subsidy.

Doubts have been raised over privacy and the complex security needed to police such the system, as well as concerns that the project is just too ambitious. "We could have a hacking Olympics," said Guru Malladi, a partner at Ernst & Young.

Civil liberty campaigners fear the card could be a tool of repression.

Nandita Haskar, a human rights lawyer, said: "There's already no accountability in regard to violations of human and civil rights. In this atmosphere what are the oversight mechanisms for this kind of surveillance?"

Read More

See more from somegreybloke here

Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

By Adrian Covert of Popular science SHILL Magazine

The Department of Energy just gave $100,000 to upstart company Solar Roadways, to develop 12-by-12-foot solar panels, dubbed "Solar Roads," that can be embedded into roads, pumping power into the grid. The panels may also feature LED road warnings and built-in heating elements that could prevent roads from freezing.

Each Solar Road panel can develop around 7.6 kwh of power each day, and each costs around $7,000. If widely adopted, they could realistically wean the US off fossil fuels: a mile-long stretch of four-lane highway could take 500 homes off the grid. If the entire US Interstate system made use of the panels, energy would no longer be a concern for the country.

Read more

By The Newspaper, September 14, 2009

Uncle Sam Eyes New Vehicle Tracking Tax
A Member of Congress proposes to use taxpayer money to fund the development of technology to track motorists as part of a new form of taxation. US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced H.R. 3311 earlier this year to appropriate $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system. The “Road User Fee Pilot Project” would be administered by the US Treasury Department. This agency in turn would issue millions in taxpayer-backed grants to well-connected commercial manufacturers of tolling equipment to help develop the required technology. Within eighteen months of the measure’s passage, the department would file an initial report outlining the best methods for adopting the new federal transportation tax.

“Oregon has successfully tested a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) fee, and it is time to expand and test the VMT program across the country,” Blumenauer said in a statement on the bill’s introduction. “A VMT system can better assess fees based on use of our roads and bridges, as well as during times of peak congestion, than a fee based on fuel consumption. It is time to get creative and find smart ways to rebuild and renew America’s deteriorating infrastructure.”

In 2006, the Oregon Department of Transportation completed its own study of how to collect revenue from motorists with a new form of tax that, like the existing fuel excise tax, imposes a greater charge on drivers the more that they drive. The pilot project’s final report summed up the need for a VMT tax.

“Unfortunately, there is a growing perception among members of the public and legislators that fuel taxes have little to do with road programs and therefore should be considered ‘just another form of taxation,’” the March 2006 report stated. “By itself, this situation appears to be preventing any increases in fuel tax rates from being put into effect.”

The money diverted from the fuel excise tax on non-road related projects must be made up for with a brand new VMT tax, the report argued. Merely indexing the gas tax to inflation or improvements in fleet gas mileage was rejected as “imprecise.” Instead, the report urged a mandate for all drivers to install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) scanning devices.

Blumenauer is a long-time advocate of bicycling and mass transit in Congress. Many of his largest campaign donors stand to benefit from his newly introduced legislation. Honeywell International, for example, is a major manufacturer RFID equipment. The company also happens to be the second biggest contributor in the current cycle to Blumenauer’s Political Action Committee (PAC), the Committee for a Livable Future. Another top-ten donor, Accenture, is a specialist in the video tolling field.

H.R. 3311 awaits a hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee. A copy of the bill is available in a 170k PDF file at the source link below.