Technology Strengthens US Families

It’s a wonderful headline for a wonderful life: “Technology found to strengthen US families.“

Technology doesn’t allow people to ignore their parents, siblings and pet rats and disappear into their own hugely self-referential, self-reverential world, otherwise known as Facebook. No, technology promotes family love.

So, at least, say the headlines from a survey published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an organization that ‘creates and funds academic-quality research.’

Because life and love interest me greatly I decided to look at the report, which was prepared by two Pew researchers and two from the University of Toronto.

Here is the good news: “American spouses often go their separate ways during the day, but remain connected by cellphones and, to some extent, internet communications. When they return home they often have shared moments of exploration and entertainment on the internet.”

Thankfully, despite the immeasurably positive headlines this report has already enjoyed, it doesn’t actually avoid honesty. The next paragraph is headlined: “Busy and tech-using families are less likely to share meals and less likely to report satisfaction with their leisure time.”

But let’s not think about that for now. Let’s stick with the positives. 33% of those internet users surveyed said that the web had improved their connection with friends “a lot.” While only 23% said it had increased the quality of communication with family members with a similar intensity.

Ah, well, hmm. So where do headlines such as “Technology found to strengthen US families” come from?

They don’t seem to come from the 11% who said that the internet has increased the amount of time they spend working at the office. Or the 19% who said it made them spend more time working at home.

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Tongues And Technology

The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.

Georgia Tech researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person’s mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard — and tongue into the key that manipulates it all.

“You could have full control over your environment by just being able to move your tongue,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team’s research.

The group’s Tongue Drive System turns the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers. The work still has a ways to go — one potential user called the design “grotesque” — but early tests are encouraging.

The system is far from the first that seeks a new way to control electronics through facial movements. But disabled advocates have particularly high hopes that the tongue could prove the most effective.

“This could give you an almost infinite number of switches and options for communication,” said Mike Jones, a vice president of research and technology at the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta rehabilitation hospital. “It’s easy, and somebody could learn an entirely different language.”

That’s quite a contrast to the handful of methods already available to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are disabled from the neck down.

The “sip and puff” technique, which lets people issue commands by inhaling and exhaling into a tube, is among the most popular. But it offers users only four different commands, limiting their options.

Control systems that use sophisticated pads to measure neck and head movements are also widespread, but using the hardware can be tiring, and frustrating on smaller electronics like computers.

And while newer innovations that track eye movement are promising, they can be costly, slow and susceptible to mixed signals.

The tongue, though, is a more flexible, sensitive and tireless option. And like other facial muscles, its functions tend to be spared in accidents that can paralyze most of the rest of the body, because the tongue is attached to the brain, not the spinal cord.

The tongue’s promise has long enticed scientists. In the 1960s, research work focused on turning the tongue into a primitive lens by attaching electrodes to the tissue. More recent studies have connected a camera that activates tongue electrodes in the shape of an object, helping blind people sense images.

A Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, newAbilities Systems Inc., has already designed a nine-button keypad placed on the roof of the mouth to control electronics.

Ghovanloo’s work, however, centers on creating a virtual keyboard instead of a physical one. He does that through a magnet about 3 millimeters wide that’s placed under the tip of the tongue.

The magnet’s movement is tracked by sensors on the side of each cheek, which sends data to a receiver atop a rather bulky set of headgear. It is then processed by software that converts the movement into commands for a wheelchair or other electronics.

After turning the system on, users are asked to establish six commands: Left, right, forward, backward, single-click and double-click. A graduate student who tested the technology was cruising the lab at will in a wheelchair, tongue firmly in cheek.

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A Sewage-Proof Suit

Diesel oil and raw sewage slowly trickled into Taber MacCallum’s eyes as he swam toward the sunken research ship he’d been called to help salvage. It was 1989, and Hurricane Hugo had devastated Puerto Rico three days before, dumping fuel and municipal waste into San Juan Harbor. As the young diver and analytical chemist worked to raise the ship, the seals on his diving equipment disintegrated in the muck that crept into his helmet. Every time MacCallum exhaled into the putrid water, his helmet let a few drops back in.

Most contaminated-water diving is done by military and professional divers either as part of routine inspections or just after tanker explosions, natural disasters and pipeline breaks. “It can be hard to determine if a body of water is contaminated just by looking at it,” explains Phil Newsum, a former commercial diver who now heads the Association of Diving Contractors International. “But those pollutants will come right into your helmet.”

In 2001, shortly after sending its divers into diesel-fouled waters to repair the USS Cole, the U.S. Navy put out a request for a company to help it develop diving equipment designed specifically for contaminated water. MacCallum jumped at the opportunity. After two years living in the sealed environment of Biosphere 2, he had founded a company to design life-support systems for extreme environments. His latest project was researching a new space suit for NASA. And he’d never forgotten his San Juan dive.

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Phoenix Mars Lander Phones Home, Prepares to Unfold Arm

After a communications hiccup, mission control orders Phoenix to limber up its robotic arm

NASA researchers instructed the Phoenix Mars Lander perched near the Red Planet’s north pole to unstow its 7.7-foot (2.3-meter) robotic arm in preparation for collecting samples of subsurface ice surrounding the probe, the space agency announced today. Phoenix operators were forced to delay deployment of the arm by one day when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which had been relaying transmissions between Phoenix and Earth since the craft landed Sunday, switched off communications unexpectedly.

Phoenix executed preprogrammed backup commands to keep taking photos and monitor the local weather, which MRO relayed to mission controllers yesterday evening after transmissions were reestablished, the agency said.

Unstowing the arm consists of “a series of seven moves, beginning with rotating its wrist to release the forearm from its launch restraint,” robotic arm manager Bob Bonitz of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. “Another series of moves releases the elbow from its launch restraints and moves the elbow from underneath the biobarrier.”

Images sent back Monday showed that the elbow joint was still partially wrapped in a protective sheath that was supposed to peel off after landing.

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