New image technique could allow scanners to read minds
James Randerson, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday March 5 2008

Scientists have developed a mind-reading technique that allows them to accurately predict images being viewed by people, by using scanners to study brain activity.

The breakthrough by American scientists took MRI scanning equipment normally used in surgical procedures to observe patterns of brain activity when a subject examined a range of black and white photographs.

Then a computer was able to correctly predict in nine out of 10 cases which image people were focused on - random guesswork would have been accurate only eight times in every 1,000 attempts.

The study raises the possibility in future of the technology being harnessed to visualise scenes from a person's dreams or memory.

Writing in the journal, Nature, the scientists led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley said: "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time."

It will inevitably also raise fears that a suspect's brain could be interrogated against their will, raising the nightmarish possibility of interrogation for "thought crimes".

The researchers say this is currently firmly in the realm of science fiction because the technique can only currently be applied to visual images and to date, the experiments rely on cumbersome MRI scanning equipment and extremely powerful magnets. The software decoder itself has to be adapted to each individual during hours of training while in the scanner.

However, the team have warned about potential privacy issues in the future when scanning techniques improve. "It is possible that decoding brain actvitiy could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in say, the 30 - 50 year time frame," said Prof Gallant:"[We] believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent."

The technique relies on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a standard technique that creates images of brain activity based on changes in blood flow to different brain regions[...]

Scientists a step nearer to creating artificial life

· New progress towards synthetic organism
· Hope of fuels, drugs and ways to fight pollution

plus chance to create bacteria to infiltrate into synapse gaps

* James Randerson, science correspondent
* The Guardian
* Thursday September 6 2007

To the untrained eye, the tiny, misshapen, fatty blobs on Giovanni Murtas's microscope slide would not look very impressive. But when the Italian scientist saw their telltale green fluorescent glint he knew he had achieved something remarkable - and taken a vital step towards building a living organism from scratch.

The green glow was proof that his fragile creations were capable of making their own proteins, a crucial ability of all living things and vital for carrying out all other aspects of life.

Though only a first step, the discovery will hasten efforts by scientists to build the world's first synthetic organism. It could also prove a significant development in the multibillion-dollar battle to exploit the technology for manufacturing commercially valuable chemicals such as drugs and biofuels or cleaning up pollution.

The achievement is a major advance for the new field of "synthetic biology". Its proponents hope to construct simple bespoke organisms with carefully chosen components. But some campaigners worry about the new technology's unsettling potential and argue there should be a moratorium on the research until the ethical and technological implications have been discussed more widely.

One of the field's leading lights is the controversial scientist Craig Venter, a beach bum turned scientific entrepreneur who is better known for sequencing the human genome and scouring the oceans for unknown genes on his luxury research yacht. The research institute he founded hopes to create an artificial "minimal organism". And he believes there is big money at stake.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine earlier this year, Dr Venter claimed that a fuel-producing microbe could become the first billion- or trillion-dollar organism. The institute has already patented a set of genes for creating such a stripped-down creature.

Ultimately, synthetic biologists hope to create the most efficient form of life possible, with the fewest genes needed to allow the organism to grow, replicate and proliferate. But researchers have approached the problem from two radically different directions. Dr Venter's team is starting with one of the simplest forms of cellular life known to science - the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, which causes urinary tract infections. By stripping out each of its 482 genes and observing the effect on the organism they have calculated that a core of 381 are vital for life.

In contrast to this top-down approach, Dr Murtas, at the Enrico Fermi research centre at Roma Tre University in Italy, and Pier Luigi Luisi aim to build a living thing from the bottom up. "The bottom-up approach has the possibility of creating living systems from entirely non-living materials," said Tom Knight, an expert in synthetic biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"That's the real power of synthetic biology ... If you can take it apart into little bits and pieces and shuffle things around and put it back together and it still works, you can have much more confidence that you really understand what is going on."

The Italian team's advance is to make simple cells which are essentially bags made up of a fatty membrane containing just 36 enzymes and purified ribosomes - microscopic components common to all cells which translate the genetic code into protein. The primitive cells are capable of manufacturing protein from one gene.

The team chose a fluorescent green protein found in jellyfish because it was easy to see, using a microscope, when the protein is being made. "We are trying to minimise any system we put in place for the cell," said Dr Murtas. "We can prove at this point that we can have protein synthesis with a minimum set of enzymes - 36 at the moment." He hopes the project will teach him about the earliest stirrings of life in Earth's primeval slime some 3.5bn years ago.

"It's impressive work," said Prof Knight. "Protein synthesis is a wonderful place to start, partly because it is so well understood and ... you can figure out what is going wrong relatively easily. But there is a lot more involved in making cells that are alive ... I think the bottom-up people have a long way to go."

Dr Murtas acknowledges that his bags of enzymes are a long way from a fully functioning cell, but it is an important proof of principle - being able to make proteins is key for the cell to acquire new functions. Giving it the ability to grow, divide, partition components into daughter cells correctly and replicate DNA will be a major challenge, though. The team will report the work in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

Dr Murtas is now working on making cells which are capable of division - crucial if they are to be truly alive. As the membrane grows, the team hope it will reach a point where the cell becomes too big and so gives rise to a pair of daughter cells.

In June, Dr Venter's research team announced that they had discovered how to carry out a "genome transplant". They showed they could move the genetic recipe of one species of Mycoplasma bacterium into another closely related species.

Entertainment Star surgeon 'mocked patients'

BBC News

A Hollywood plastic surgeon is alleged to have crudely mocked celebrity patients - including Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor - while they were under anesthetic.

Dr Steven Hoefflin is accused of fondling and photographing his patients while they were on the operating table and of cocaine use and tax fraud.

The allegations about the doctor are contained in papers deposited with a Los Angeles court. They relate to the testimony of four of his former assistants, which was taken as part of an investigation by the California Medical Board into the doctor.

The four assistants had originally sued the doctor for sexual harrassment, but settled out of court.

String of big-name clients

Dr Hoefflin, 52, is a celebrity in his own right in Hollywood, with a string of big-name clients. He was a consultant on the film Doc Hollywood, starring Michael J Fox.

It is alleged Sylvester Stallone walked into the surgery when Dr Hoefflin was operating on his then girlfriend, Angie Everhart, and demanded she be given bigger breasts. He is said to have told the doctor he wanted them to be "big but perky, kinda like a 17-year-old", and the doctor complied against Everhart's wishes.

In papers lodged with Los Angeles Superior Court, former operating room co-ordinator Barbara Maywood alleges Michael Jackson - one of the doctor's best customers - was tricked into paying for surgery which didn't take place.

She testified: "On multiple occasions Mr Jackson would be anaesthetised and the clocks in the operating room would be turned ahead by hours. Mr Jackson would then be revived, look around the room, and settle back to sleep, at which time the clocks would be reset to reflect the correct time.

"This scheme gave Mr Jackson the perception that he had just undergone a nasal surgery of several hours, when in fact he was only unconscious for several minutes."

Ms Maywood also said Dr Hoefflin examined the singer's genitals on another occasion - when he was supposed to be operating on his face.

'Insulted Taylor and Johnson'

She also alleged Dr Hoefflin sneered at 66-year-old screen legend Elizabeth Taylor - then married to Larry Fortensky, 20 years her junior - while he was operating on her. He is said to have commented: "What's a young guy doing with this old stuff?" She said he had stripped her naked - even though she was in for facial surgery.

Actor Don Johnson - then married to Bonfire of the Vanities star Melanie Griffith - came in for the same treatment, it is alleged. After having surgery on his eyelid and liposuction on his abdomen, Dr Hoefflin is said to have looked at his genitals and said: "Why would a beauty like Melanie Griffith settle for that?"

Ms Maywood said of Sylvester Stallone that he entered the operating theatre while Angie Everhart was under anaesthetic, and was ushered out for "not wearing proper surgical attire".

She said Ms Everhart - who starred in Another 9 ½ Weeks with Mickey Rourke - has insisted she wanted a small breast size as she "needed to maintain the lithe appearance that accounted for her success".

'Involved in tax dodge'

But Stallone allegedly returned to the theatre to tell Dr Hoefflin to make her breasts bigger. Ms Everhart had a difficult recovery from the surgery, and four months later it was reversed. The couple later split.

Assistant Kim Moore-Mestas backed Ms Maywood's allegations - adding Dr Hoefflin would mislead patients into believing he would be carrying out all surgeries when junior assistants performed the operations.

Another assistant, Lydia Benjamin, said Dr Hoefflin would offer cash discounts to patients to avoid paying tax.

He is also alleged to have encouraged receptionist Donna Burton to have surgery so she could show off the results to customers.

She said: "I was used by Dr Hoefflin as a flesh and blood example of the female form. He required me to disrobe before potential breast implant patients and on multiple occasions their male companions. It was dehumanising and humiliating."

Dr Hoefflin has called the accusations "slanderous and inaccurate, to the point of being disgusting," and claims the allegations were invented by two former partners who were bitter about being sacked.

Soviet-Style ‘Torture’ Becomes ‘Interrogation’
HOW did the United States, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, come to adopt interrogation techniques copied from the Soviet Union and other cold war adversaries?

Investigators for the Senate Armed Services Committee are examining how the methods, long used to train Americans for what they may face as prisoners of war, became the basis for American interrogations.

In 2002, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon became concerned that standard questioning was inadequate for suspected terrorists and turned to a military training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE. For decades, SERE trainers had exposed aviators and others at high risk for capture to Soviet-style tactics, including disrupted sleep, exposure to extreme heat and cold, and hours in uncomfortable stress positions. Sometimes the ordeal included waterboarding, in which a prisoner’s face is covered with cloth and water is poured from above to create a feeling of suffocation.

Some of those techniques have been used on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at the C.I.A.’s secret overseas jails for high-level operatives of Al Qaeda.

Many SERE veterans were appalled at the “reverse engineering” of their methods, said Charles A. Morgan III, a Yale psychiatrist who has worked closely with SERE trainers for a decade.

“How did something used as an example of what an unethical government would do become something we do?” he asked.

His question is only underscored by a 1956 article, “Communist Interrogation,” in The Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, recently turned up by the Intelligence Science Board, which advises the spy agencies. Written by doctors working as Defense Department consultants, Lawrence E. Hinkle Jr. and Harold G. Wolff, the article shows that methods embraced after 2001 were once considered torture that would produce false information[...]

The Beam of Light That Flips a Switch That Turns on the Brain

Which clusters of nerve cells trigger memory recall, or are associated with learning a new skill, or emotional states?

By INGFEI CHEN
Published: August 14, 2007

It sounds like a science-fiction version of stupid pet tricks: by toggling a light switch, neuroscientists can set fruit flies a-leaping and mice a-twirling and stop worms in their squiggling tracks.

Light stimulation every 200 milliseconds generates electrical activity, right, in an area of the brain associated with depression.

But such feats, unveiled in the past two years, are proof that a new generation of genetic and optical technology can give researchers unprecedented power to turn on and off targeted sets of cells in the brain, and to do so by remote control.

These novel techniques will bring an “exponential change” in the way scientists learn about neural systems, said Dr. Helen Mayberg, a clinical neuroscientist at Emory University, who is not involved in the research but has seen videos of the worm experiments.

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” Dr. Mayberg said.

Some day, the remote-control technology might even serve as a treatment for neurological and psychiatric disorders...

Japanese teach robot to dance
Scientists in Japan have taught a human-sized robot to imitate the steps of a dancer.

They say the prancing dancebot could be used to record the movements of traditional dances that are being lost as their performers die off.

To demonstrate the robot's prowess, the team programmed the 1.5 metre tall machine to imitate the graceful sways and whirls of the Aizu Bandaisan, a Japanese folk routine.

To prove its accuracy, the robot can perform alongside a human dancer. And despite its "Terminator" appearance, the robot is remarkably lifelike.

Shin'ichiro Nakaoka and his colleagues at Tokyo University taught the dancebot - named HRP-2 or Promet - by using video-capture techniques to record human dance movements. According to New Scientist magazine, these were converted into a sequence of robotic limb movements and fed into Promet's processors.

"They have got it to directly copy human movements. That is very difficult because the joints of the robot are very different from the joints of a human," said Noel Sharkey, a robotics expert at Sheffield University. The advance would allow robots to perform human-like movements on factory production lines, for example[...]

N.H. couple evade death and taxes

The Browns have been holed up, refusing to pay the IRS or go to prison. It's a battle that might end in bloodshed.

By Erika Hayasaki, Times Staff Writer
July 20, 2007

Plainfield, N.H. — SHE sits on the lookout in a lawn chair on their front porch, her forehead glossy with sweat, Bible next to her left foot, wind chimes clinking at her back. Her husband of 24 years is by her side, German shepherd at his knee, handgun tucked beneath the belt on his jeans.

High in these humid hills, Ed and Elaine Brown have been holed up in their home for six months, refusing to serve a five-year prison sentence for tax evasion. They all but dared law officials to come and get them. This, they say, is a fight they're ready to die for.

"Show me the law!" says Ed, a trim 64-year-old with a silver mustache, whose forehead crinkles when he gets heated. The Browns stopped paying income taxes in 1996. They say the Constitution and Supreme Court decisions support their claims that ordinary labor cannot be taxed. But a judge ruled against them in January, convicting the Browns of conspiring to evade paying taxes on $1.9 million in income from Elaine's dentistry practice.

Now, the Browns say they're in a battle for freedom, and it just might end in bloodshed right here, in a towering turreted house with 8-inch-thick concrete walls and an American flag fluttering over the double-car garage. They have garnered national support, with blogs devoted to news about the standoff and supporters regularly showing up on the couple's doorstep with groceries.

Government and law officials have cut off power, Internet, house phone, cellphone, television and mail service to the couple's 110-acre compound. But their house is equipped with solar panels, a watchtower, a satellite dish and a stockpile of food.

"We are self-sustained like a ship," Ed says. "We don't need power from the shore to run the ship."

FBI agents are trying to avoid a deadly shootout reminiscent of Waco, Texas, or Ruby Ridge, Idaho. They have tried negotiating, waiting, begging.

"We are proceeding carefully to make sure no one gets hurt," says U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier, the lead officer handling the siege. "We are aware that there are guns in there."

Monier says the couple broke the law and should turn themselves in peacefully. "They have been tried and convicted and sentenced."

But the Browns aren't budging.

"You remember that little gentleman in China, Tiananmen Square?" Ed says, peering through his sunglasses. "He was the same as we are. You can scare me, you can kill me, but you can't intimidate me."

"We're fighting for you, your country," adds Elaine, 66, a calm woman with short, wavy dark hair. "This isn't just taxes."

"There's no more America," Ed says. "It's already gone."

"I'll die fighting, rather than live in slavery," Elaine says. "I'll tell you that."

...