Blatant Reality

Want to know what your friend is thinking? Well, unless he is already getting an MRI, you’ll pretty much out of luck. However, scientist has discovered a way to use MRI technology to extrapolate about what a person is thinking.

The study was led by Jack Gallant, neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and published on March in the journal Nature. The technique involves brain scanning using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which monitors blood flow patterns within the brain and associates them with images shown to the subjects.

 

It’s not the best of this method so far, but it’s a step forward towards understanding and predicting brain activity. The experiment submitted two of Gallant’s team members, Kendrick Kay and Thomas Naselaris, to a series of 1,750 different pictures. Afterwards, the team of scientists selected 120 pictures the two hadn’t seen before and tried to predict which one they will be looking at by using brain scanning.

 

The predictions proved accurate in 72 percent of the time with one of the subjects, and 92 percent for the other subject. It’s a new accomplishment in accurately decoding brain activity, but scientists are just at the beginning of the road. The challenge ahead now is to decode brain responses from a whole new range of images, without knowing them first however.

Pretty soon people are going to think MRI stands for “Mind Reading Interface” and not “Magnetic Resonance Imaging.”

It seems that starting today, passengers will no longer be able to stow spare lithium ion batteries in their checked luggage.

Starting Jan. 1, airline passengers will no longer be allowed to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage, the U.S. Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration warned late last week.

 

Instead, passengers will be required to take loose batteries with them in carry-on baggage, packed in plastic bags. The new regulation, which will go into effect in order to lessen the risk of lithium battery fires, won’t apply to lithium batteries that are already installed in electronic devices, such as laptops, cell phones, and cameras. Those can be checked in.

 

Additionally, only two spare rechargeable lithium batteries will be allowed on airplanes per passenger in carry-on bags.

 

The international rule will become U.S. law on Tuesday.

This is just to cool to ignore. Britain has just developed a tank that can project the image of the view of the surrounding area onto the tank, rendering it invisible.

A soldier, who was at the trials, said: “This technology is incredible. If I hadn’t been present I wouldn’t have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees – but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun.”

Now, I just want to point out that the picture they include in the article of a tank IS NOT the actual tank referred to in the story.