springfield.news-leader.com/business/today/20050412-Clocksoundsalar.html
Clock sounds alarm, then hides
By Michael Kunzelman
Associated Press
<hr noshade size=4 align=left width="44%">"Clocky," a robotic alarm clock on wheels, rolls away and hides when it's time to wake up. The clock is the invention of Gauri Nanda, a graduate student who works in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Mit Media Lab<hr noshade size=4 align=left width="44%">
Cambridge, Mass. — Before you hit the snooze button a second time on this alarm clock, you'll have to hunt it down.
The shag carpet-covered robotic alarm clock on wheels, called Clocky, rolls away and hides.
The clock is the invention of Gauri Nanda, a graduate student — and occasional oversleeper — who works in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I've been known to hit the snooze bar for a couple hours, wake up two hours later and be completely shocked," said Nanda, 25, who created Clocky for an industrial design course last year.
She made a prototype out of foam, a pair of wheels and a circuit board connected to small motors. "It is programmed to tell the motors to move randomly, to generate random speeds and directions so that the clock ends up in a new place every day," she said.
Nanda's adviser, V. Michael Bove Jr., said hundreds of people interested in buying or selling the clocks have called and e-mailed. But the gadget is not yet available for sale.
Nanda is thinking of starting her own business to manufacture and market the clock.
MIT owns the intellectual property rights to Clocky and other student inventions, but Bove said Nanda would receive a share of any revenue generated.
Nanda said she wanted Clocky to remind its owners of a troublesome pet.
"The idea really was to use technology in a more playful way," she said. "It's sort of like a hide-and-seek game."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4396387.stm
Brain chip reads man's thoughts
<hr noshade size=4 align=left width="44%">A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind.<hr noshade size=4 align=left width="44%">
Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001.
The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone.
The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher.
-Mind over matter-
He can think his TV on and off, change channels and alter the volume thanks to the technology and software linked to devices in his home.
Scientists have been working for some time to devise a way to enable paralysed people to control devices with the brain.
Studies have shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain.
Recently four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, were able to move a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes that pick up brain waves.
Mr Nagle's device, called BrainGate, consists of nearly 100 hair-thin electrodes implanted a millimetre deep into part of the motor cortex of his brain that controls movement.
Wires feed the information from the electrodes into a computer which analyses the brain signals.
The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternative way to control devices such as a computer with thought.
-Motor control-
Professor John Donoghue, an expert on neuroscience at Brown University, Rhode Island, is the scientist behind the device produced by Cyberkinetics.
He said: "The computer screen is basically a TV remote control panel, and in order to indicate a selection he merely has to pass the cursor over an icon, and that's equivalent to a click when he goes over that icon."
Mr Nagle has also been able to use thought to move a prosthetic hand and robotic arm to grab sweets from one person's hand and place them into another.
Professor Donoghue hopes that ultimately implants such as this will allow people with paralysis to regain the use of their limbs.
The long term aim is to design a package the size of a mobile phone that will run on batteries, and to electrically stimulate the patient's own muscles. This will be difficult.
The simple movements we took for granted involved complex electrical signals which would be hard to replicate, Dr Richard Apps, a neurophysiologist from Bristol University, UK, told the BBC News website.
He said there were millions of neurones in the brain involved with movement. The brain chip taps into only a very small number of these. But he said the work was extremely exciting.
"It's quite remarkable. They have taken research to the next stage to have a clear benefit for a patient that otherwise would not be able to move.
"It seems that they have cracked the crucial step and arguably the most challenging step to get hand movements.
"Just to be able to grasp an object is a major step forward."
He said it might be possible to hone this further to achieve finer movements of the hand.
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hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OFFICIAL_ENGLISH
W.Va. Makes English Its Official Language
Apr 12, 9:55 AM EDT
By ERIK SCHELZIG
Associated Press Writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Two days after the end of the legislative session, state lawmakers are discovering something few were aware of: They voted to make English the official language of West Virginia.
The language amendment was quietly inserted into a bill addressing the number of members that cities can appoint to boards of parks and recreation. Among mundane details about record-keeping, the amendment adds the provision that "English shall be the official language of the State of West Virginia."
Senate Majority Whip Billy Wayne Bailey successfully offered that change to House Bill 2782 amid a flurry of bills moving back and forth between the House and Senate on Saturday, the last night of the 60-day legislative session.
"I just told the members that the amendment clarifies the way in which documents are produced," Bailey, a Democrat, said Monday.
House Majority Leader Rick Staton recommended that his chamber agree with the Senate's changes. But Staton, also a Democrat, said he was unaware of the substance of the amendment until asked about it by The Associated Press Monday evening.
Efforts to make English the state's official language have been introduced annually since the late 1990s. A group called U.S. English has championed the cause.
"I think it's wrong that's something like that was snuck into that bill in the last minute," said House Judiciary Chairman Jon Amores, who helped kill an earlier proposal to forbid any state or local agency from having to print documents in any language but English.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Manchin could not immediately be reached for comment.
Andrew Schneider, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, said English-only laws are based on the false premise that immigrants will not learn English without government coercion.
"And English-only laws do nothing constructive to increase English proficiency. They simply discriminate and punish those who have not yet learned English," Schneider said.
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news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4379457.stm
Sponsors 'manipulate' scientists
By Melissa Jackson
BBC News education reporter
<hr noshade size=4 align=left width="44%">One in 10 research scientists is under pressure to tailor findings to suit the work's sponsor, a UK survey suggests.<hr noshade size=4 align=left width="44%">
Women are more likely to be targeted than men, according to the poll of 358 scientists carried out by two unions.
Unions say the findings were "extremely worrying" and called for research to be properly financed, and for an end to fixed-term contracts for scientists.
The Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, is drawing up guidelines to combat the problem.
More than 10% of scientists have been asked by their commercial backer to tailor their research conclusions to meet the sponsor's requirements, according to the survey of university and government laboratories.
Research, carried out jointly by the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and the public service union Prospect, found that women were under even greater pressure.
However, most (84.5%) of the 358 respondents (58% male and 38% female) said they had never been asked by a sponsor to skew their research.
A total of 7.9% of those who took part in the online poll said they had been asked in general terms to tailor their conclusions to the funder's preferred outcome.
A further 1.2% of the total said they were asked to tailor their results so that they might obtain further contracts, and another 1.7% said they had been discouraged from publishing their findings by their backer.
When the figures were broken down, 11.5% of women (compared with 6% of men) said they had been asked to tailor conclusions to suit their sponsor's preferred outcome; 1.5% of women (compared with 1% of men) were asked to do so to obtain further contracts and 2.3% of women (compared with 1.5% of men) had been discouraged from publishing their findings.
-Contract culture-
Prospect's head of research and specialist services, Sue Ferns, says the findings reinforced union concerns.
"Given that all the survey's respondents considered that their key role was to provide impartial and objective advice, any evidence to suggest some members feel under pressure to modify their results is extremely worrying.
"Prospect has been arguing for some years that the contract culture is a real barrier to developing a long-term strategic approach to science, and it is disappointing that our warnings over the dangers of commercialisation and loss of independence are still going unheeded in some quarters.
"Any request to falsify results brings science into disrepute, threatens the integrity of scientific advice to government and damages public trust in government itself.
"Science, above all else, is about a pursuit for the truth."
An AUT spokesman said: "These findings are worrying and indicate a possible problem when research projects involve some commercial money.
"The fact that many researchers are also on fixed-term contracts and whose continued employment also relies on the funding of the research is not good for those staff, or for the long-term future of British research.
"One message we think government and employers should take from this is to end the practice of fixed-term contracts and properly finance research."
The Royal Society is equally concerned about the survey results.
Sir Patrick Bateson, chair of the Royal Society working group on best practice in communicating research results, said: "It is clear that some researchers are influenced by their affiliations, be they to funders, sponsors or employers, when carrying out or reporting their work.
"In many cases these biases are introduced unknowingly, but can be avoided if researchers become more aware of the potential problems.
"There are also occasions when biases, for instance on the selection of evidence, are deliberate, and such practices are clearly undesirable.
"The Royal Society will shortly be publishing recommendations to overcome some of the problems of affiliation bias when research results are communicated to the public."
The survey looked at other issues relating to scientists' work, including job satisfaction and volume of work.
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staging.hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JAPAN_PRISON_BEDDING
Japan Brightens Prison Clothes, Bedding
TOKYO (AP) -- Martha Stewart, eat your heart out. Japan is giving its prisoners more brightly colored clothing and bed sheets in the hopes of cheering up the mood behind bars.
The decision, to be implemented next year, was made after consultation with professional color coordinators and will be the first change in prisoners' uniforms since 1966.
"We hope to stabilize the mental states of inmates by giving them warmer and brighter colors," Shigemi Tanimoto, a Justice Ministry official, said in making the announcement Wednesday. "Color experts told us the colors currently in use were too cold and aggressive."
In a survey conducted two years ago, many inmates asked for a change in the color and material of their government-issued clothing, he said.
Japan now provides the country's 71,889 inmates with dark brown and gray clothes and bedcovers in sharply contrasting orange and green. Tanimoto refused to say what specific colors will be used for the new uniforms. <p>
<div style="text-align:center">"Pants are bad!!! We should wear pants only on our head you conformist bastard!!! Pants are the devils work!! Run freee!! And pantless!!!" -- Vulture</div>
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