Hitachi Introduces Mind Control Device

By Hiroko Tabuchi

Hitachi has developed a technology to allow users to control devices
by thinking. The system is currently being used to move a toy train
back and forth, but the company and other manufacturers see a future for itin TV remote controls, cars and artificial limbs. A key advantage to Hitachi's technology is that sensors don't have to physically enter the brain.

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Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control
electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity.

The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi (NYSE: HIT)
analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates
brain motion into electric signals.

A cap connects by optical fibers to a mapping device, which links,
in turn, to a toy train set via a control computer and motor during one recent demonstration at Hitachi's Advanced Research
Laboratory in Hatoyama, just outside Tokyo.

Optical Topography

"Take a deep breath and relax," said Kei Utsugi, a researcher,
while demonstrating the device on Wednesday.

At his prompting, a reporter did simple calculations in her head,
and the train sprang forward --
apparently indicating activity in the brain's frontal cortex,
which handles problem solving.

Activating that region of the brain -- by doing sums or singing a song --is what makes the train run, according to Utsugi. When one stopsthe calculations, the train stops, too.

Underlying Hitachi's brain-machine interface is a technology called
"optical topography," which sends a small amount of infrared light
through the brain's surface to map out changes in blood flow.

Changing Channels and Driving a Car

Although brain-machine interface technology has traditionally focused on medical uses, makers like Hitachi and Japanese automaker Honda Motor have been racing to refine the technology for commercial application.

Hitachi's scientists are set to develop a brain TV remote controller
letting users turn a TV on and off or switch channels by only thinking.

Honda, whose interface monitors the brain with an MRI machine
like those used in hospitals, is keen to apply the interface to intelligent, next-generation automobiles.

The technology could one day replace remote controls and keyboards
and perhaps help disabled people operate electric wheelchairs, beds or artificial limbs.

Initial uses would be helping people with paralyzing diseases
communicate even after they have lost all control of their muscles.

Non-Invasive

Since 2005, Hitachi has sold a device based on optical topography
that monitors brain activity in paralyzed patients so they can answer
simple questions -- for example, by doing mental calculations to
indicate "yes" or thinking of nothing in particular to indicate "no."

"We are thinking of various kinds of applications," project leader
Hideaki Koizumi said. "Locked-in patients can speak to other
people by using this kind of brain machine interface."

A key advantage to Hitachi's technology is that sensors don't have to
physically enter the brain. Earlier technologies developed by U.S.
companies like Neural Signals required implanting a chip under the skull.

A Plaything, For Now

Still, major stumbling blocks remain.Size is one issue,
though Hitachi has developed a prototype compact
headband and mapping machine that together weigh only about
two pounds.Another would be to tweak the interface to more accuratelypick up on the correct signals while ignoring background brain activity.Any brain-machine interface device for widespread use would be "a little further down the road," Koizumi said.He added, however, that the technology is entertaining in itself and could easily be applied to toys.

"It's really fun to move a model train just by thinking," he said.

Researchers Develop Bendable Battery

Aug 13 05:07 PM US/Eastern
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed.While the battery is only a prototype a few inches square right now, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources. "We would like to scale this up to the point where you can imagine printing
batteries like a newspaper. That would be the ultimate," Robert Linhardt a professor at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at RPI said in a telephone interview.
The development is reported in this week's online edition of

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Unlike other batteries, Linhardt explained, it is an integrated device, not a combinationof pieces.The battery uses paper infused with an electrolyte and carbon nanotubes that are embedded in the paper. The carbon nanotubes form the electrodes,the paper is the separator and the electrolyte allows the current to flow.

Students at the school in Troy, N.Y., were the inspiration for the work, said Linhardt, whose students were working on methods to dissolve paper and cast it into membranes for use in dialysis machines.

Canadian Team Discovers Gene That Turns Cancers Off
VANCOUVER
August 13, 2007 at 6:49 PM EDT
A unique gene that can stop cancerous cells from multiplying into tumours has been discovered by a team of scientists at the B.C. Cancer Agency in Vancouver.

The team, led by Dr. Poul Sorensen, says the gene has the power to suppress the growth of human tumours in multiple cancers, including breast, lung and liver.

The gene, HACE 1, helps cells fight off stress that, left unchecked,
opens the door to formation of multiple tumours.

Dr. Sorensen's team found cancerous cells form tumours when HACE 1 is inactive, but when additional stress such as radiation is added, tumour growth is rampant.

Kick-starting HACE 1 prevented those cells from forming tumours.

The study appears in the advance online publication of Nature Medicine.