This is the saddest thing that I have read in a long time. Please click on the link for the whole story and see the pictures.
"Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt
By JONATHAN M. KATZ – 21 hours ago
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hcJ474CjaJGOUznskl4ZgTHdpxUAD8UFQVR00
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Iyoda and the Thought Experiments
I read this article in the New York Times this morning and think that this is just Incredible! The monkey named Iyoda, who was in NC, was able to make the robot in Japan, walk on a treadmill by looking at a TV screen with the Robots legs on the treadmill. Someday we will all be able to type into the computer with just our thoughts. At least we won't get carpal tunnel.
"January 15, 2008
Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
If Idoya could talk, she would have plenty to boast about.
On Thursday, the 12-pound, 32-inch monkey made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity.
She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan.
It was the first time that brain signals had been used to make a robot walk, said Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University whose laboratory designed and carried out the experiment.
In 2003, Dr. Nicolelis’s team proved that monkeys could use their thoughts alone to control a robotic arm for reaching and grasping.
These experiments, Dr. Nicolelis said, are the first steps toward a brain machine interface that might permit paralyzed people to walk by directing devices with their thoughts. Electrodes in the person’s brain would send signals to a device worn on the hip, like a cell phone or pager, that would relay those signals to a pair of braces, a kind of external skeleton, worn on the legs. ...." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15robo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin For whole article.
"January 15, 2008
Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
If Idoya could talk, she would have plenty to boast about.
On Thursday, the 12-pound, 32-inch monkey made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity.
She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan.
It was the first time that brain signals had been used to make a robot walk, said Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University whose laboratory designed and carried out the experiment.
In 2003, Dr. Nicolelis’s team proved that monkeys could use their thoughts alone to control a robotic arm for reaching and grasping.
These experiments, Dr. Nicolelis said, are the first steps toward a brain machine interface that might permit paralyzed people to walk by directing devices with their thoughts. Electrodes in the person’s brain would send signals to a device worn on the hip, like a cell phone or pager, that would relay those signals to a pair of braces, a kind of external skeleton, worn on the legs. ...." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15robo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin For whole article.
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