Stefan Ulrich, German designer, and inventor of the newest bizarre robot has alleged that his robot can simulate a strange creature "falling in love" with its owner. The robots are specially designed to hug and cling to their owners, though they don't actually have arms. And these amorphous automatons are creating quite a bit of stir amongst some AI advocates who suggest once a robot has been invented that can fall in love, it has taken a significant step toward becoming more human. 
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on who you ask, an understanding of the systems behind these robots suggests that perhaps the words "falling in love" may be a bit too ambitious to describe Ulrich's invention. Still, the cuddle bots are designed to provide a PG rated level of affection with their owners by sensing their presence, their movements, and even the sensation of touch as they are petted. Though they may not be the latest strain of super robots designed to take over the world, many of those interested in the subject of artificial intelligence are vociferously declaring it dangerous to start using words such as "love" with so simple a robot as the advanced machine Ulrich has put forward.
Can a robot feel love? AI futurists say the answer is most certainly yes, but with a few asterisks. First, we would have to establish what love is within certain parameters and take into account various differences in the concept of love. By the end of the exercise, however, many have come to the conclusion that AI robots can feel love assuming love is something that can be defined. The simple fact of the matter is, within a reasonable equation such as the one proposed, many of us, although knowing when something is or is not love, still have yet to agree upon a strict set of parameters that can define love to the satisfaction of the scientific community.
Sensors buried just beneath the creature's "skin" react to touch, color, and warmth indicating when someone around them is pleasant to be around. This alone creates a simulation of love that Ulrich is confident will go a long way toward synthesizing affection. In a recent interview with "The Sun," Ulrich outlined his motivation for undertaking the project, "People already bury themselves in possessions and shield themselves from real life with technology. So if robots and objects can fulfill all their emotional needs as well, why do they need other humans?" The words, while seemingly innocent actually paint a strange picture on the state of human nature in the 21st century. In our effort to control all aspects of our lives while affording others infinite freedom, are we really willing to lose the affection of human contact in favor of a synthetic alternative? While this device alone is likely no danger to worldwide interpersonal relationships, it will be interesting to see how this device - and others like it - will catch on. Will the strange amorphous robots become a new type of "meta-pet?" Or will they simply be considered creepy in their attempt to subvert human contact? It seems likely technology from this object could be used in teddy bears and children's dolls, but will likely not actually replace true human interaction. Still, given sufficient time, will we reach a point where we cannot tell the difference?
Scientists at Harvard Medical Institution have discovered a way to not only stop aging in mice, but actually turn their old and worn out organs into new and rejuvenated ones with a simple drug administered by a syringe. Will the new miracle drug also be able to add years or even centuries to human existence? Or will this youth in a needle drug turn out to be nothing but a pain?
The incredible experiment centered around the basic fundamentals of aging. As cells divide, the ends of each strand of DNA has a barrier on it known as a telomere. As cells divide throughout the natural course of life, eventually these telomeres become shorter. As the telomeres eventually deteriorate - so does the human body's ability to divide healthy cells with no reduced structural quality. When the telomeres get too short, the body starts to break down. We know this process as aging.
So Ronald DePinho dared to ask the question, "What if this process could be stopped entirely?" After genetically engineering a new type of mouse to be born without the ability to produce Telomares, they aged rapidly and the deterioration of their cells killed them. But then afterward, the doctor began injections of the enzyme through a syringe and this brought back the cellular deterioration that had previously happened just as though the aging was a wound that needed to be healed. If this technology were somehow applied to human cells in a way that worked effectively, it could mean future generations could be genetically modified to never age or die from age related diseases.
Of course such drastic genetic modification would not only be extremely difficult, but would raise several ethical questions as well. Is it right to genetically modify your own children if you know they will never age or die? What if the decision meant they would depend forever on injections in order to sustain their youth or risk dying? And what effect would such a process have on the rest of the population down the genetic line?
Imagine attempting to explain age and dying to someone who will likely live for centuries and quite possibly never have to deal with concepts such as aging themselves. How different would our society look?
Of course in addition to the negative aspects of such a possibility, there are numerous potential benefits as well. Unfortunately, long before these potential drawbacks are fully understood there is a real possibility that the urgency of such genetic development could require it to be implemented long before the potential long term dangers could be understood.
Take into consideration the use of an irreversible medical system in the case of a great thinker whose expertise is needed to progress humanity, for example.
Of course the dependency on regular injections could eventually be removed from the equation entirely. And by extending life, scientists could ensure those seeking the answers would be around for when the technology reached this level of development.
Longtime critics of eastern medicine may have to eat their words as a new study from the Department of Complementary and Integrative Medicine at University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany has found. If the study is reproduced and found to have the same results, it means that all the years people have been performing acupuncture, they have definitely been making chemical and biological changes to the body on top of any inherent psychological ones.
The study took several participants and divided them into two groups. Those in the acupuncture group received a normal acupuncture therapy session administered by a trained practitioner. The control group took no acupuncture, and was simply laying on a table. As each participant was put under an MRI scan, mild electric shocks were applied to both groups. The findings astounded scientists.
Those who had undergone the acupuncture treatment were showing signs of vastly reduced pain while those who had received no acupuncture treatment showed no change. The control group was still feeling the mild electric shocks, and the brain's chemistry was reflecting the temporary discomfort. Those with the acupuncture, however, were barely registering any pain at all. Since acupuncture is a multimillion dollar industry with thousands of practitioners in the United States and vastly more working throughout the world, the results came as much sought vindication for advocates of the ancient practice.
And so yet another aspect of homeopathic medicine has been vindicated. The project, which was funded in Germany where homeopathic medicine is widely practiced to an extent even more so than in the United States gives us a clear picture into just what exactly the ancient art does to the brain. Now, the only question remaining is why it does anything at all. Of course acupuncture has been practiced in Asia for centuries and is still considered a mainstream treatment of pain there, suggesting that by channeling energy between different points of the body it can not only reduce pain, but also promote healing. If the method is discovered to work on both levels, could we soon see it practiced more widely in hospitals in the United States?
Interestingly, one of the appeals of Acupuncture is that it allows patients to reduce the amount of pain they feel without the use of addictive drugs. Additionally it allows patients the ability to seek treatment as needed, even with women who may be pregnant. As the process does not seem to be chemical in nature, it doesn't actually adversely affect pregnant women in any way or harm their children. It has, in fact, been used in this capacity for over two and a half thousand years. Additionally, some advocated of acupuncture have suggested that the technique not only works in conjunction with traditional medications well, it actually compounds the positive effects of pain reducing medication significantly.
And so if acupuncture is given vindication, it may be possible to discover other homeopathic methods for healing that work perfectly without the need for often dangerous and detrimental chemical consumption.
It's long been a fantasy and a theory of people worldwide for decades. What if humans or some other race of beings somehow were using the moon as a base of operations? And now a recent photo has raised several questions among those who believe the US or some other world (or off-world) power may be using the moon as a base of operations. The pictures were taken from Google and suggest a series of rowed structures that look almost like a garden in a grid pattern. But the sizes of the structures we're looking at are most likely far larger than any ordinary garden. Could a moon-base really exist on the Lunar surface?
The images depict nine structures that stretch out into the distance being approximately 30 feet in length and having a number of what appear to be ridges on them or formations. But while it appears to be a fairly blurry representation of some sort of operation on the moon, if you look over to the side of the image it becomes apparent that the structures are more likely a simple pixelation error on the images. Google images such as these can be seen in several areas even on its wildly popular Google Earth. But others, such as Steven Dean have suggested it may be something more.
The moon has always been an incredibly compelling point of interest for those tending to believe that the world around us is not as it seems to the average person in the world. Of all the bodies surrounding our Sun, few have been written about in both science fiction and poetry more than the moon aside from possibly Mars. So when the idea of a moon base suddenly arises, and evidence of that base comes in the form of unintentionally taken photographs, it seems like the perfect excuse to expound on the possibilities for the future or even the present.
And though this moon base photo may have a mundane explanation are there places such structures could exist where they couldn't be seen from Earth or by orbiting satellites? In fact, there are.
In the Northern pole of the moon there are several rocky formations where the light of day never reaches. There are several craters, some of adequate size to fit permanent installations in which the sun's rays have never penetrated. And though the far side of the moon is typically referred incorrectly to the "dark side" (since the sun's rays do regularly shine on this far side as well) there is a side of the moon that is always facing away from the Earth as it rotates in a synchronized fashion to how it orbits the Earth. This far side of the moon, which never sees the Earth is likely a primary candidate for an interesting moon base.
But who would build such a base? With our current known level of technology, such an endeavor would be impossible to keep secret. But it has been suggested that with secret superior technology, or with the assistance of some outside force, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.
Scientists from Germany have reported that they may have made a breakthrough after curing one man's infection of HIV. The man was infected with HIV and suffering from leukemia of the immune system. As the virus feeds on the immune system, the scientists decided to eliminate it and thus cure the man. But the potential cure has many drawbacks as well and many are suggesting this is not the cure the scientific community has been searching for all these years.
Through high doses of chemotherapy, scientists were able to eliminate the man's immune system and then transplant it back to him with stem cells. As a result, the man's destroyed immune system was recreated by additional stem cell transplants and the cancer was eliminated through the same process. As a result, in one fell swoop the German scientists were able to cure not only the man's HIV but his cancer as well. But there is a down side to this therapy as well.
The patient's DNA contained a rare specific gene designed to be extremely resistant to the HIV virus. This means the stem cells introduced into his body had help. And now after three years since the initial treatments began the patient is free of any trace of HIV. While it is far from a cure, the use of stem cells to reconstitute the immune system certainly opens doors for potential future innovations in medicine. But the idea of completely removing a person's immune system is certainly enough to leave many people hesitant about using the treatment as it could be in some cases even worse than the disease itself.
And it's not simply the removal of the immune system that could be a problem. The very system designed to eliminate a person's immune system is extremely harsh on a patient's body. In the end this "cure" will likely take research a step further, but not necessarily cure most patients of the illness. Additionally, the patients would have to meet a specific genetic criteria that is present in less than 1% of the total population.
The immune system is one of the most important parts of the human body. When it's in proper working condition, patients are able to fully reap its benefits. When it does not, work, however, even something as simple as the common cold can wreak havoc on the body. While this experiment does not mean a cure for HIV has been discovered, the disease could in theory result in future experiments that could result in such a cure at some future date.
Of course one of the major controversies about the treatment is that it uses stem cells. Stem cells have been controversial because they were once thought only to come from fetuses. However, in time, scientists were able to discover ways to extract stem cells without the need for controversy by extracting them from adults, umbilical cords, and even amniotic fluid.
Will we soon be living in a world where HIV is nothing more than a thing of the past? And what other diseases will scientists be able to cure with similar treatments?
For the longest time, physicists had to contend with strictly guided Newtonian physics that suggested all time was linear and gave the troubling idea of predestination. But then as Einstein tested his theories of the universe in the brilliant display of atomic power, we discovered that time was not linear as had been once proposed, but was in fact very relative given the movement of an object. Hence, time travel was not only suggested, it was promised.
Unfortunately, it is also not easy. As we pick up speed, we are actually slowing time down. A year for us as we travel at close to the speed of light could be ten or twenty years on Earth. But by the same respect, if we were to travel faster than the speed of light, we would eventually be able to travel back in time. Of course this promise also came with a very important disclaimer. We simply cannot travel faster than the speed of light with our current understanding of physics. It's this exact same disclaimer that results in us being unable to suddenly jump to another dimension.
But there are other places in the universe where physics gets very strange. Black Holes, for one, seem to have an effect on light and could in theory even have an effect on time. But traveling to a black hole without protection beyond what we currently understand could result in being completely atomized and ripped into strands a hundred trillion miles long. And of course this isn't very promising at all if you want to see dinosaurs or watch Shakespeare's debut.
So will we ever be able to hop in a ship and travel faster than the speed of light without subjecting ourselves to the dangers of black holes? Or will we develop a ship capable of traveling into the heart of a black hole without being crushed and ripped to shreds? There have been dozens of other solutions, including the now famous Tipler Cylinder, but each has its own problems. Problems on the scale of the Tipler Cylinder require that a time machine would have to be infinitely long in either direction and spin incredibly fast in order to travel back in time. Such an endeavor would take an infinitely long period of time and require an infinite amount of energy to spin. It would be easier to just reverse the process of everything in the universe to achieve backwards time travel, in other words.
Of course in the meantime, we may develop devices that find a workaround system. If not traveling backwards through the whole universe, perhaps it would be possible to travel backwards in time on Earth. You may be surprised, but there actually have been several time travelers that have come from our past into the future. Russian cosmonaut Sergei Adveyev holds the current world record for time travel, having traveled almost a quarter of a second into the future. Of course this time wasn't exactly noticed by Adveyev, and he was able to do it merely by orbiting Earth for long enough.
So if you want to travel into the future, it might be possible if you move fast enough in space. But if you want to come back to this moment? Use it well, as you will never get it back. That is, unless science discovers a new way of looking at the universe.
New Years Eve saw the appearance of a very strange sight in the streets and fields around a small town in Arkansas. Amid the litter of revelry from the night before, city officials found that thousands of dead blackbirds had been found to have fallen from the sky around town, but no one knows why. What do you do when thousands of blackbirds mysteriously fall dead from the sky? Investigators are scrambling to discover if this is a new dangerous disease or if it will remain an unsolved mystery like another one in 2010.
In 2010 we first brought you coverage of a story of hundreds of starlings that fell out of the sky and into one woman's garden over the course of only a few seconds. The woman came home that night to investigate and was horrified to find hundreds of the birds simply laying on the ground outside her house. The birds were so numerous she found it difficult to move into her house without nudging any of them. Fearing a potential disease outbreak, she phoned the authorities and an animal control official was dispatched to her house where several samples were collected and more than a few tests were made. The tests were the same in every case. The birds had not been poisoned, showed o signs of distress, and had simply died unexpectedly of blunt trauma while flying in midair. Of course no one saw anything that ran into the birds and apparently neither did the birds themselves. Some speculated that an invisible wall had sprung up and soon talk of a UFO was brought up. I remember contacting several people trying to get firsthand information about whether it could be a sudden hailstorm, thoroughly convinced I had solved the puzzle over the official explanation of just where these birds were coming from and why they were dying so suddenly out of nowhere.
Karen Rowe, a commission ornithologist for the city said that this sort of thing has happened elsewhere, but the statement is perhaps accidentally misleading as while it does happen occasionally elsewhere it is actually extremely rare. The whole reason this is news is because an ultra rare and very troubling thing has happened again. Of course there's also the fact that Rowe has the all important job of ensuring panic doesn't set in on the town it took place in.
Fortunately for us all this sort of thing did happen before without any noticeable consequence for the town it took place in. But what could be the explanation? And could this mass dying of birds have anything to do with the incident that happened in Julie Knight's garden? With any luck this latest incident will prove to be just as harmless and isolated as the other.
The official explanation is still being explored, but several of those proposed to make the event seem more normal are also fairly unlikely. Included in these theories is one suggesting that the birds died as a result of sudden fireworks explosions resulting in trauma. If this were the case, then fireworks all over the world would be regularly causing mass heart attacks in birds resulting in thousands of deaths every year. Shortly thereafter the event would be occurring regularly at the fourth of July and New Years. Another suggestion was a sudden hailstorm. While I had proposed this in the Knight case, as this happened all over the city in the middle of winter it seems less likely that it could happen without evidence of the storm being left behind.
The evidence seems to suggest that all of these birds interacted with something that resulted in their deaths, but it didn't affect anything else. As other birds didn't seem affected by it, this suggests possibly a disease that deals exclusively with blackbirds or even more likely a fast acting toxin that the birds flew into while in a flock. As some started dying off they dispersed and eventually were also claimed by the toxin. If no toxins are discovered in the bodies, however, the mystery will only deepen. Perhaps they flew into a pocket where there was increased carbon dioxide. The trauma could have been caused by the fall as they returned to Earth.
Hopefully in due time this mystery will be solved.
