His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and continues to gain recognition. Recent exhibitions include Homo Virtualis [Porto Santo Biennial] in Porto Santo, Portugal; Tek'tanik at Art Guild New Jersey and Gallery Affero in Newark, New Jersey; Digital Landscapes at the TMG Gallery in Guarda, Portugal; Digital Fringe at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in Melbourne, Australia; Fauna Show at The Workshop Gallery in Bialystok, Poland; NanoArt21, Passion for Knowledge in San Sebastian, Spain; Origins at the Fox Art Gallery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Snap To Grid at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art in Los Angeles, California; The Human Canvas at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado; Virtual Worlds at the UAVM; Virtual Humanities at the Icone Gallery in Coimbra, Portugal; SMart Festival at Open Concepts Gallery in Grand Rapids, MI; and Retro Futurism at SpaceCamp Gallery in Indianapolis, IN.
In 2008, Patrick began to show his work inside the virtual simulation world Second Life; exhibitions that advance beyond two-dimension work and expand his ideas of simulation, virtual reality, and the synthetic future where the physical object gives way to its virtual counterpart and its presence is valued entirely for its idea rather than its place in space.
This transition toward a more prominent virtual presence as an artist eventually led to the inevitable. In 2009, shortly after becoming a regular exhibitor in the virtual environment, Patrick embarked upon his first photographic series that used the environment and society of Second Life as its subject matter and conceptual theme. Virtual Lens is an artistic and anthropological investigation into the life of the avatar, landscape of the sim environment, and experience of the virtual world. Patrick continues to photograph and exhibit his portfolios as well as spend time with fellow avatars in Second Life.
2010 brought a new role for Patrick as the curator of several exhibitions. He has curated exhibitions for The VASA Project's Online Gallery and Turing Gallery in Second Life that reflect upon digital culture in the world today. Topics such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, robotics, renewable energies, gene therapy, cyber culture, and other posthuman and transhuman philosophies are the focus of these exhibitions.
During the month of June, 2010 Patrick was artist in residence at the Biosphere 2. During his time in residence he began work on photographic, sound, and digital media portfolios. These efforts have yielded a fully developed photographic portfolio of the Biosphere 2 structure and an album to be released on Innova Recordings in 2011. The unique condition of Biosphere 2 attracted Patrick to the residency. As a natural environment that was hermetically sealed and self-sustaining while simultaneously being powered by more than two acres of machinery, the B2 environment played on Patrick's continuing theme of organic and synthetic mergers.
Patrick received a Bachelor of Arts degree in photography from Grand Valley State University and a Master in Fine Arts degree for photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
He currently works as Assistant Professor of Photography at Point Park University in Pittsburgh and as an instructor for The Vasa Project’s online workshops.
Configuring Hegemony Into the Post-Human Culture of Tomorrow
Certainly, the "sublimation" of "basic instincts" does occur. Cheering on our team or nation in sport is a safe and exciting method of releasing an evolved instinct for tribal aggression. Sport is war without tears. But to regard all cultural behavior as nothing but a diversion of basic instinct is to imply that a crowd cheering on a boxer as he beats his opponent into a pulp is no different than Shakespeare writing a sonnet, Back composing a fugue, or Einstein devising the theory of relativity. In other words, utter nonsense. Human beings clearly have far greater motivational drives that those dictated to them by their genetic programming. We are more than naked apes acting on primitive instincts! To restrict one's view of human motivation to those of a goat is not only absurd, but serves to debase the value of humanity, with dangerous implications for society.
This is Young's Transhumanist Philosophical response to Freudian and Nietzschean notions of Sublimation. Freud's model proposes 'the entire products of human culture are effectively dismissed as an unconscious channeling of the energy required for survival and reproduction into socially acceptable pursuits. Nietzsche proposed that sublimation was used 'to deflate the idea that the products of human culture were anything more than a mask of self-deception, disguising a universal drive for primacy he called "the Will to Power."
This is all expanded upon much further in the chapter Neuroemotive Psychology in Young's book. It has been an excellent read thus far and I would recommend it to those interested in a thoughtful analysis of modern methods/misinterpretations of understanding human nature.
-Patrick Millard
The Politics and Philosophy of Technological Advances
I do not recognize any difference between artifacts and natural bodies…
—Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy
The political and philosophical alterations that occur with the introduction of technology to the human body surmount any metaphysical and socio-political issues on the table today. Since Platonic times we have tried to discover and answer what consciousness and democracy are, and just as it seemed a sense of these issues was being settled in debate, the rise of technological enhancement and artificial intelligence and life has created a need to re-examine many of our perceptual realities. Answering questions about consciousness in machines, in cyborgs (part human, part machine), or androids and setting up distinctions between such entities and humanity increases a great gap of gray that was already quite wide.
It was Rene Descartes who proposed the entire material universe to be a large clockwork-like machine. According to this way of thinking everything moves in accordance with mechanical laws, as if by gears. In his Treatise on Man, Descartes pronounces:
I suppose the body to be nothing but a machine…We see clocks, artificial fountains, mills, and other such machines which, although man made, have the power to move on their own accord in many different ways…one may compare the nerves of the machines I am describing with the works of these fountains, its muscles and tendons with the various devices and springs which set them in motion…the digestion of food, the beating of the heart and arteries…respiration, walking…follow from the mere arrangement of the machine’s organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangements of its counterweights and wheels.
These same issues arise in our socio-political debates.
On issues surrounding biotechnologies, the political response is already extensive. In 2000, George W. Bush developed his President’s Council on Bioethics. The council takes on the role of creating reports about the pros and cons of genetic and biotech therapy and studies. In the 2004 report, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness , it is argued that improving the genetic makeup of children will distance parents from their offspring, that genetic engineering for improved athleticism is unnatural and similar to the use of steroids, and that extending life will result in a generation of elders who refuse to let younger generations grow into their positions in life. The team is led by Leon Kass, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Chicago, and a political conservative who has opposed biotechnology for more than twenty-five years. In that time, issues such as in vitro fertilization, cosmetic surgery, organ transplants, therapeutic cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and any other technologically-based medical treatment that ‘disrupts the natural order of life’ (which includes birth, procreation, and death, the latter of which should be viewed as a ‘necessary and desirable end’ ) have been strictly opposed by Kass.
Our government does not always stand in opposition to embracing technology. When advances can be used to benefit such areas such as military strategy and power, the U.S. government has proved willing to spend the large sums of money necessary to make extensive research possible.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the central research and development organization of the Department of Defense. Their research into robotics, neural activity, nanotechnologies, and the technology of electronics in general has paved the way for revolutionary items such as Arpanet (now known to us as the Internet). Today DARPA can be credited with much of the advancement made in fields such as AI (artificial intelligence), virtual reality, and GPS (global positioning system) devices. All of these advancements are remarkable for an organization originally founded to ensure that Sputnik-like events would not surprise the United States again. In 2008 DARPA celebrated its 50th Anniversary.
It is easy to imagine how, in the next century, these political confrontations will explode onto the scene of artificial intelligence, robotic rights, and the separation between natural human beings and electronically enhanced human beings. As these ways of living begin to emerge more and more visibly in mass culture, opposition to and support for them will inevitably collide. The issues that will be debated on the political frontlines will be basic human rights and discussion about what is human. If an individual has a memory implant which improves his or her short or long-term memory, will they no longer be human? If having a new memory chip is not too far from being human, what if a person gets a boost in neural signals to their reflexes? Will this push the being to be classified as post-human or non-human? When decisions about what is or is not human are being made, it will be impossible to see in absolutes. Vision itself (likely to be artificially enhanced) will see a culture that will be too gray to make differentiations, as synthetic and organic materials continue to grow closer in appearance and operation. While we can easily draw lines in the sand at this point in history, that line will not be so recognizable in the future.
*excerpt from Formatting Gaia: A Comprehensive Outline of the Photographic Work
http://www.patrickmillard.com/
Configuring Hegemony Into the Post-Human Culture of Tomorrow
I think it will be confirmed that with the advancement of designing our bodies and traits there will be a place to take hold of the things in our brain that control, or at least shepherd, emotions. If we want to be well-mannered, courteous, caring, peaceful, etc. we can flip those traits on. Alternatively, we will be able to flip off those undesirable characteristics many are born with [i.e. fear, jealousy, hate, envy, insecurity, anxiety].
-Patrick Millard
Embracing a New Biology
New technology is not only made up of the mechanical gadgetry that we find ourselves so connected to, but also through biological alteration possibilities such as genetic therapy, gene diagnosis, or neural modification.
Recent genetic discoveries have begun to suggest the possibility of another form of prosthetic for humankind. By adding, subtracting, or flipping on and off certain genes that are connected to certain traits (i.e. disease, depression, anger, intelligence, athleticism, creativity, etc.) it will be possible to create an individual who is made up of the characteristics we would want them to possess. This is related to the designer baby controversy being debated in media today. The opposition returns once again to the religious, economic, and unnatural arguments and the benefits often argued are obviously a better species, with no disease, disability, bad temperament, bad looks, etc. Parents could decide for themselves what sort of child they would want to bear. Through genetic preparation these sorts of controls could be exerted, to a certain extent, over the make-up of a child.
More accepted than designer babies, though not yet widely so, are the possible benefits derived from gene therapy. In recent studies, it has been shown that through implementing specific alteration in genetic makeup benefits can be seen in areas such as anti-aging, curing diseases such as Alzheimers, increased mental stamina, ending baldness and alcoholism, memory retension, etc. Through advances in gene therapy we can introduce the same benefits provided by genetic changes made in reaction to PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) before IVF (in vitro fertilization).
With such possibilities on the verge of being readily available, it is important to keep an open mind toward genetic alterations. By doing so we may see a dramatic increase in bodily well-being and mindfulness within our species as a whole.
*excerpt from Formatting Gaia: A Comprehensive Outline of the Photographic Work
http://www.patrickmillard.com/
Nature and nurture work together to shape the brain
At the Neuroscience 2011 conference, scientists at The Rockefeller University, The Scripps Research Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania presented new research demonstrating the impact that life experiences can have on genes and behavior. The studies examine how such environmental information can be transmitted from one generation to the next — a phenomenon known as epigenetics. This new knowledge could ultimately improve understanding of brain plasticity, the cognitive benefits of motherhood, and how a parent‘s exposure to drugs, alcohol, and stress can alter brain development and behavior in their offspring.
The new findings show that:
- Brain cell activation changes a protein involved in turning genes on and off, suggesting the protein may play a role in brain plasticity.
- Prenatal exposure to amphetamines and alcohol produces abnormal numbers of chromosomes in fetal mouse brains. The findings suggest these abnormal counts may contribute to the developmental defects seen in children exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero.
- Cocaine-induced changes in the brain may be inheritable. Sons of male rats exposed to cocaine are resistant to the rewarding effects of the drug.
- Motherhood protects female mice against some of the negative effects of stress.
- Mice conceived through breeding — but not those conceived through reproductive technologies — show anxiety-like and depressive-like behaviors similar to their fathers. The findings call into question how these behaviors are transmitted across generations.
Source | Kurzweil AI
Robot controls a person’s arm using electrodes
A robot that can control both its own arm and a person’s arm to manipulate objects in a collaborative manner has been developed by Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Microelectronics (LIRMM) researchers, IEEE Spectrum Automation reports.
The robot controls the human limb by sending small electrical currents to electrodes taped to the person’s forearm and biceps, which allows the robot to command the elbow and hand to move. In the experiment, the person holds a ball, and the robot holds a hoop; the robot, a small humanoid, has to coordinate the movement of both human and robot arms to successfully drop the ball through the hoop.
The researchers say their goal is to develop robotic technologies that can help people suffering from paralysis and other disabilities to regain some of their motor skills.
Source | Kurzweil AI
Liquid Robotics’ Wave Gliders begin historic swim across Pacific
Four Wave Gliders — self propelled robots, each about the size of a dolphin — left San Francisco on Nov. 17 for a 60,000 kilometer journey, IEEE Spectrum Automation reports.
Built by Liquid Robotics, the robots will use waves to power their propulsion systems and the Sun to power the sensors, as a capability demonstration. They will be measuring things like water salinity, temperature, clarity, and oxygen content; collecting weather data, and gathering information on wave features and currents.
The data from the fleet of robots is being streamed via the Iridium satellite network and made freely available on Google Earth’s Ocean Showcase.
Source | Kurzweil AI
Bidirectional brain signals sense and move virtual objects
In the study, monkeys moved and felt virtual objects using only their brain (credit: Duke University)
Two monkeys trained at the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering have learned to employ brain activity alone to move an avatar hand and identify the texture of virtual objects.
“Someday in the near future, quadriplegic patients will take advantage of this technology not only to move their arms and hands and to walk again, but also to sense the texture of objects placed in their hands, or experience the nuances of the terrain on which they stroll with the help of a wearable robotic exoskeleton,” said study leader Miguel Nicolelis, MD, PhD, professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center and co-director of the Duke Center for Neuroengineering.
Sensing textures of virtual objects
Without moving any part of their real bodies, the monkeys used their electrical brain activity to direct the virtual hands of an avatar to the surface of virtual objects and differentiate their textures. Although the virtual objects employed in this study were visually identical, they were designed to have different artificial textures that could only be detected if the animals explored them with virtual hands controlled directly by their brain’s electrical activity.
The texture of the virtual objects was expressed as a pattern of electrical signals transmitted to the monkeys’ brains. Three different electrical patterns corresponded to each of three different object textures.
Because no part of the animal’s real body was involved in the operation of this brain-machine-brain interface, these experiments suggest that in the future, patients who were severely paralyzed due to a spinal cord lesion may take advantage of this technology to regain mobility and also to have their sense of touch restored, said Nicolelis.
First bidirectional link between brain and virtual body
“This is the first demonstration of a brain-machine-brain interface (BMBI) that establishes a direct, bidirectional link between a brain and a virtual body,” Nicolelis said.
“In this BMBI, the virtual body is controlled directly by the animal’s brain activity, while its virtual hand generates tactile feedback information that is signaled via direct electrical microstimulation of another region of the animal’s cortex. We hope that in the next few years this technology could help to restore a more autonomous life to many patients who are currently locked in without being able to move or experience any tactile sensation of the surrounding world,” Nicolelis said.
“This is also the first time we’ve observed a brain controlling a virtual arm that explores objects while the brain simultaneously receives electrical feedback signals that describe the fine texture of objects ‘touched’ by the monkey’s newly acquired virtual hand.
“Such an interaction between the brain and a virtual avatar was totally independent of the animal’s real body, because the animals did not move their real arms and hands, nor did they use their real skin to touch the objects and identify their texture. It’s almost like creating a new sensory channel through which the brain can resume processing information that cannot reach it anymore through the real body and peripheral nerves.”
The combined electrical activity of populations of 50 to 200 neurons in the monkey’s motor cortex controlled the steering of the avatar arm, while thousands of neurons in the primary tactile cortex were simultaneously receiving continuous electrical feedback from the virtual hand’s palm that let the monkey discriminate between objects, based on their texture alone.
Robotic exoskeleton for paralyzed patients
“The remarkable success with non-human primates is what makes us believe that humans could accomplish the same task much more easily in the near future,” Nicolelis said.
The findings provide further evidence that it may be possible to create a robotic exoskeleton that severely paralyzed patients could wear in order to explore and receive feedback from the outside world, Nicolelis said. The exoskeleton would be directly controlled by the patient’s voluntary brain activity to allow the patient to move autonomously. Simultaneously, sensors distributed across the exoskeleton would generate the type of tactile feedback needed for the patient’s brain to identify the texture, shape and temperature of objects, as well as many features of the surface upon which they walk.
This overall therapeutic approach is the one chosen by the Walk Again Project, an international, non-profit consortium, established by a team of Brazilian, American, Swiss, and German scientists, which aims at restoring full-body mobility to quadriplegic patients through a brain-machine-brain interface implemented in conjunction with a full-body robotic exoskeleton.
The international scientific team recently proposed to carry out its first public demonstration of such an autonomous exoskeleton during the opening game of the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup that will be held in Brazil.
Ref.: Joseph E. O’Doherty, Mikhail A. Lebedev, Peter J. Ifft, Katie Z. Zhuang, Solaiman Shokur, Hannes Bleuler, and Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, Active tactile exploration using a brain–machine–brain interface, Nature, October 2011 [doi:10.1038/nature10489]
Source | KurzweilAI
Brain linked to robotic hand; success hailed
Assistant professor Jennifer Collinger, left, watches as quadriplegic research subject Tim Hemmes operates the mechanical prosthetic arm in a testing session at UPMC. Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11283/1181062-53.stm#ixzz1au8uO2qm
When it happened, emotions flashed like lightning.
The nearby robotic hand that Tim Hemmes was controlling with his mind touched his girlfriend Katie Schaffer’s outstretched hand.
One small touch for Mr. Hemmes; one giant reach for people with disabilities.
Tears of joy flowing in an Oakland laboratory that day continued later when Mr. Hemmes toasted his and University of Pittsburgh researchers’ success at a local restaurant with two daiquiris.
A simple act for most people proved to be a major advance in two decades of research that has proven to be the stuff of science fiction.
Mr. Hemmes’ success in putting the robotic hand in the waiting hand of Ms. Schaffer, 27, of Philadelphia, represented the first time a person with quadriplegia has used his mind to control a robotic arm so masterfully.
The 30-year-old man from Connoquenessing Township, Butler County, hadn’t moved his arms, hands or legs since a motorcycle accident seven years earlier. But Mr. Hemmes had practiced six hours a day, six days a week for nearly a month to move the arm with his mind.
That successful act increases hope for people with paralysis or loss of limbs that they can feed and dress themselves and open doors, among other tasks, with a mind-controlled robotic arm. It’s also improved the prospects of wiring around spinal cord injuries to allow motionless arms and legs to function once again.
“I think the potential here is incredible,” said Dr. Michael Boninger, director of UPMC’s Rehabilitation Institute and a principal investigator in the project. “This is a breakthrough for us.”
Mr. Hemmes? They say he’s a rock star.
In a project led by Andrew Schwartz, Ph.D., a University of Pittsburgh professor of neurobiology, researchers taught a monkey how to use a robotic arm mentally to feed itself marshmallows. Electrodes had been shallowly implanted in its brain to read signals from neurons known to control arm motion.
Electrocorticography or ECoG — in which an electronic grid is surgically placed against the brain without penetration — less intrusively captures brain signals.
ECoG has been used to locate sites of seizures and do other experiments in patients with epilepsy. Those experiments were prelude to seeking a candidate with quadriplegia to test ECoG’s capability to control a robotic arm developed by Johns Hopkins University.
The still unanswered question was whether the brains of people with long-term paralysis still produced signals to move their limbs.
ECoG picks up an array of brain signals, almost like a secret code or new language, that a computer algorithm can interpret and then move a robotic arm based on the person’s intentions. It’s a simple explanation for complex science.
Mr. Hemmes’ name cropped up so many times as a potential candidate that the team called him to gauge his interest.
He said no.
He already was involved in a research in Cleveland and feared this project would interfere. But knowing they had the ideal candidate, they called back. This time he agreed, as long as it would not limit his participation in future phases of research.
Mr. Hemmes became quadriplegic July 11, 2004, apparently after a deer darted onto the roadway, causing him to swerve his motorcycle onto gravel where his shoulder hit a mailbox, sending him flying headfirst into a guardrail. The top of his helmet became impaled on a guardrail I-beam, rendering his head motionless while his body continued flying, snapping his neck at the fourth cervical vertebra.
A passer-by found him with blue lips and no signs of breathing. Mr. Hemmes was flown by rescue helicopter to UPMC Mercy and diagnosed with quadriplegia — a condition in which he had lost use of his limbs and his body below the neck or shoulders. He had to learn how to breathe on his own. His doctor told him it was worst accident he’d ever seen in which the person survived.
But after the process of adapting psychologically to quadriplegia, Mr. Hemmes chose to pursue a full life, especially after he got a device to operate a computer and another to operate a wheelchair with head motions.
Since January, he has operated the website — www.Pittsburghpitbullrescue.com — to rescue homeless pit bulls and find them new owners.
The former hockey player’s competitive spirit and willingness to face risk were key attributes. Elizabeth Tyler-Kabara, the UPMC neurosurgeon who would install the ECoG in Mr. Hemmes’ brain, said he had strong motivation and a vision that paralysis could be cured.
Ever since his accident, Mr. Hemmes said, he’s had the goal of hugging his daughter Jaylei, now 8. This could be the first step.
“It’s an honor that they picked me, and I feel humbled,” Mr. Hemmes said.
Mr. Hemmes underwent several hours of surgery to install the ECoG at a precise location against the brain. Wires running under the skin down to a port near his collarbone — where wires can connect to the robotic arm — caused him a stiff neck for a few days.
Two days after surgery, he began exhaustive training on mentally maneuvering a computer cursor in various directions to reach and make targets disappear. Next he learned to move the cursor diagonally before working for hours to capture targets on a three-dimensional computer.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed the trial to last only 28 days, when the ECoG is removed. The project, initially funded by UPMC, has received more than $6 million in funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA.
Initially Mr. Hemmes tried thinking about flexing his arm to move the cursor. But he had better success visually grabbing the ball-shaped cursor to throw it toward a target on the screen. The “mental eye-grabbing” worked best when he was relaxed.
Soon he was capturing 15 of 16 targets and sometimes all 16 during timed sessions. The next challenge was moving the robotic arm with his mind.
The same mental processes worked, but the arm moved more slowly and in real space. But time was ticking away as the experiment approached its final days last month. With Mr. Hemmes finally moving the arm in all directions, Wei Wang — assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Pitt’s School of Medicine who also has worked on the signalling system — stood in front of him and raised his hand.
The robotic arm that Mr. Hemmes was controlling moved with fits and starts but in time reached Dr. Wang’s upheld hand. Mr. Hemmes gave him a high five.
The big moment arrived.
Katie Schaffer stood before her boyfriend with her hand extended. “Baby,” she said encouraging him, “touch my hand.”
It took several minutes, but he raised the robotic hand and pushed it toward Ms. Schaffer until its palm finally touched hers. Tears flowed.
“It’s the first time I’ve reached out to anybody in over seven years,” Mr. Hemmes said. “I wanted to touch Katie. I never got to do that before.”
“I have tattoos, and I’m a big, strong guy,” he said in retrospect. “So if I’m going to cry, I’m going to bawl my eyes out. It was pure emotion.”
Mr. Hemmes said his accomplishments represent a first step toward “a cure for paralysis.” The research team is cautious about such statements without denying the possibility. They prefer identifying the goal of restoring function in people with disabilities.
“This was way beyond what we expected,” Dr. Tyler-Kabara said. “We really hit a home run, and I’m thrilled.”
The next phase will include up to six people tested in another 30-day trial with ECoG. A year-long trial will test the electrode array that shallowly penetrates the brain. Goals during these phases include expanding the degrees of arm motions to allow people to “pick up a grape or grasp and turn a door knob,” Dr. Tyler-Kabara said.
Anyone interested in participating should call 1-800-533-8762.
Mr. Hemmes says he will participate in future research.
“This is something big, but I’m not done yet,” he said. “I want to hug my daughter.”
Moon Packed with Precious Titanium, NASA Probe Finds
This lunar mosaic shows the boundary between Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquillitatis. The relative blue color of the Tranquillitatis mare is due to higher abundances of the titanium-bearing mineral ilmenite.
A new map of the moon has uncovered a trove of areas rich in precious titanium ore, with some lunar rocks harboring 10 times as much of the stuff as rocks here on Earth do.
The map, which combined observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, revealed the valuable titanium deposits. These findings could shed light on some of the mysteries of the lunar interior, and could also lay the groundwork for future mining on the moon, researchers said.
“Looking up at the moon, its surface appears painted with shades of grey — at least to the human eye,” Mark Robinson, of Arizona State University, said in a statement. “The maria appear reddish in some places and blue in others. Although subtle, these color variations tell us important things about the chemistry and evolution of the lunar surface. They indicate the titanium and iron abundance, as well as the maturity of a lunar soil.
The results of the study were presented Friday (Oct. 7) at the joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences in Nantes, France.
Mapping the lunar surface
The map of the moon’s surface was constructed using data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been circling the moon since June 2009. The probe’s wide angle camera snapped pictures of the surface in seven different wavelengths at different resolutions.
Since specific minerals strongly reflect or absorb different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, LRO’s instruments were able to give scientists a clearer picture of the chemical composition of the moon’s surface.
Robinson and his colleagues stitched together a mosaic using roughly 4,000 images that had been collected by the spacecraft over one month.
The researchers scanned the lunar surface and compared the brightness in the range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to visible light, picking out areas that are abundant in titanium. The scientists then cross-referenced their findings with lunar samples that were brought back to Earth from NASA’s Apollo flights and the Russian Luna missions.
These titanium-rich areas on the moon puzzled the researchers. The highest abundance of titanium in similar rocks on Earth hovers around 1 percent or less, the scientists explained. The new map shows that these troves of titanium on the moon range from about 1 percent to a little more than 10 percent.
“We still don’t really understand why we find much higher abundances of titanium on the moon compared to similar types of rocks on Earth,” Robinson said. “What the lunar titanium-richness does tell us is something about the conditions inside the moon shortly after it formed, knowledge that geochemists value for understanding the evolution of the moon.”
Valuable titanium ore
Titanium on the moon is primarily found in the mineral ilmenite, a compound that contains iron, titanium and oxygen. If humans one day mine on the moon, they could break down ilmenite to separate these elements.
Furthermore, Apollo data indicated that titanium-rich minerals are more efficient at retaining solar wind particles, such as helium and hydrogen. These gases would likely be vital resources in the construction of lunar colonies and for exploration of the moon, the researchers said. [Lunar Legacy: 45 Apollo Moon Mission Photos]
“Astronauts will want to visit places with both high scientific value and a high potential for resources that can be used to support exploration activities,” Robinson said. “Areas with high titanium provide both — a pathway to understanding the interior of the moon and potential mining resources.”
This composite image of the lunar surface highlights regions with varying mare compositions and enigmatic small volcanic structures known as “domes.”
The lunar map also shows how space weather changes the surface of the moon. Charged particles from solar wind and micrometeorite impacts can change the moon’s surface materials, pulverizing rock into a fine powder and altering the chemical composition of the lunar surface.
“One of the exciting discoveries we’ve made is that the effects of weathering show up much more quickly in ultraviolet than in visible or infrared wavelengths,” study co-author Brett Denevi, of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., said in a statement. “In the [Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera] ultraviolet mosaics, even craters that we thought were very young appear relatively mature. Only small, very recently formed craters show up as fresh regolith exposed on the surface.”
Source | SPACE
How to communicate better in virtual worlds
The experimental setup. Left: The participants wore a total of six tracked objects; right: the corresponding virtual environment, showing the avatars in the self-animated third-person perspective. (Credit: Trevor J. Dodds et al./PLoS One)
Mapping real-world motions to “self-animated” virtual avatars, using body tracking to communicate a wide range of gestures, helps people communicate better in virtual worlds like Second Life, says researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and Korea University.
They conducted two experiments to investigate whether head-mounted display virtual reality is useful for researching the influence of body gestures in communication; and whether body gestures are used to help in communicating the meaning of a word. Participants worked in pairs and played a communication game, where one person had to describe the meanings of words to the other.
Ref.: Trevor J. Dodds et al., Talk to the Virtual Hands: Self-Animated Avatars Improve Communication in Head-Mounted Display Virtual Environments, PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025759 (free access)
Source | KurzweilAI
Robot octopus shakes your hand
Researchers at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy are creating a robot that mimics the abilities of a real octopus, with a robotic tentacle can hold your hand or even grab a bottle, reports New Scientist TV blog.
Source | Kurzweil AI
Carnegie Mellon competitions aimed at building useful robots
Carnegie Mellon University will host a series of “RoboBowl“ competitions aimed at bringing new robotic technologies for manufacturing, healthcare, and national security applications, reports Network World.
Source | Kurzweil AI
