When we 1st published “THE ©L.A.Z.E.R.U.S. project” (AMAZON; https://www.amazon.com/L-Z-R-U-S-project/dp/B005D2ZQEU/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=the+L.A.Z.E.R.U.S.+PROJECT&qid=1580998005&s=digital-text&sr=1-5-catcorr)=THE NOVEL, IT WAS/IS CHUCKED FULL OF; TRUE/TRUTHS, THEORIES, RESEARCH, PROBABILITIES AND HOPES FOR PROBABILITIES. THEN WE CONVERTED THE “NOVEL” INTO A “COMICS-NOVEL” AND FRANCHISED SERIES THAT “SPUN-OFF” SEVERAL OTHER SERIES AND “COMICS-NOVELS”, INCLUDING AN AUDIO BOOK OF ©L.A.Z.E.R.U.S. Audible Audiobook – Unabridged https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003VPV7NU .
BUT, BEING A “TREKIE” AND WATCHING ALL OF THE SCI-FI GREATS EVEN TECHNOLOGICAL STUFF LIKE “THE SIX MILLION-DOLLAR MAN”=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Million_Dollar_Man
The Bionic Woman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bionic_Woman
KITT, AKA Knight Rider; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KITT
THE TECHNOLOGIES, THEORIES AND CAPABILITIES HAVE EXISTED FOR QUITE SOME MANY YEARS…. LOL=I BOUNCE A LOT OF MY “STUFF/AKA BRAIN-FARTS” OFF OF MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE, AND SHE WILL HAVE TO GO LOOK STUFF UP, IN ORDER TO BELIEVE ME, OR TRY TO PROVE ME WRONG…LOL/SMILE… I AM NOT TOO SURE, WHAT IT IS ABOUT THE “FEMALE CHROMOSOMES” THAT HATES TO ADMIT WHEN THEIR HUSBANDS ARE RIGHTTTT…OK,M WHATEVER, IT KEEP HER LEARNING STUFF, AFTER I HAVE DONE SOME RESEARCH, AND THEN SOMETIMES SHE SENDS ME STUFF, THAT SHE KNOWS “KEEPS MY BRAINS LEARNING AND “WHAT-IF-ING”.
SO THIS “NEW” ARTICLE GOT SENT INTO MY EMAILS/MESSAGES, AND I HAD TO SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD OF “HIGHER THINKERS AND INDIVIDUAL, OUT OF THE BOX/BOOK TYPE PEOPLE”!
Biotechnology
A new implant for blind people jacks directly into the brain
Researchers have successfully bypassed the eyes with a brain implant that allows rudimentary vision.
by Russ JuskalianFeb 6, 2020 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615148/a-new-implant-for-blind-people-jacks-directly-into-the-brain/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement
“Allí,” says Bernardeta Gómez in her native Spanish, pointing to a large black line running across a white sheet of cardboard propped at arm’s length in front of her. “There.”
It isn’t exactly an impressive feat for a 57-year-old woman—except that Gómez is blind. And she’s been that way for over a decade. When she was 42, toxic optic neuropathy destroyed the bundles of nerves that connect Gómez’s eyes to her brain, rendering her totally without sight. She’s unable even to detect light.
But after 16 years of darkness, Gómez was given a six-month window during which she could see a very low-resolution semblance of the world represented by glowing white-yellow dots and shapes. This was possible thanks to a modified pair of glasses, blacked out and fitted with a tiny camera. The contraption is hooked up to a computer that processes a live video feed, turning it into electronic signals. A cable suspended from the ceiling links the system to a port embedded in the back of Gómez’s skull that is wired to a 100-electrode implant in the visual cortex in the rear of her brain.
Using this, Gómez identified ceiling lights, letters, basic shapes printed on paper, and people. She even played a simple Pac-Man–like computer game piped directly into her brain. Four days a week for the duration of the experiment, Gómez was led to a lab by her sighted husband and hooked into the system.
Gómez’s first moment of sight, at the end of 2018, was the culmination of decades of research by Eduardo Fernandez, director of neuroengineering at the University of Miguel Hernandez, in Elche, Spain. His goal: to return sight to as many as possible of the 36 million blind people worldwide who wish to see again. Fernandez’s approach is particularly exciting because it bypasses the eye and optical nerves.
Much earlier research attempted to restore vision by creating an artificial eye or retina. It worked, but the vast majority of blind people, like Gómez, have damage to the nerve system connecting the retina to the back of the brain. An artificial eye won’t solve their blindness. That’s why in 2015, the company Second Sight, which received approval to sell an artificial retina in Europe in 2011—and in the US in 2013—for a rare disease called retinitis pigmentosa, switched two decades of work away from the retina to the cortex. (Second Sight says slightly more than 350 people are using its Argus II retinal implant.)
During a recent visit I made to palm-studded Elche, Fernandez told me that advances in implant technology, and a more refined understanding of the human visual system, have given him the confidence to go straight to the brain. “The information in the nervous system is the same information that’s in an electrical device,” he says
Restoring sight by feeding signals directly to the brain is ambitious. But the underlying principles have been used in human-electronic implants in mainstream medicine for decades. “Right now,” Fernandez explains, “we have many electric devices interacting with the human body. One of them is the pacemaker. And in the sensory system we have the cochlear implant.”
This latter device is the hearing version of the prosthesis Fernandez built for Gómez: an external microphone and processing system that transmits a digital signal to an implant in the inner ear. The implant’s electrodes send pulses of current into nearby nerves that the brain interprets as sound. The cochlear implant, which was first installed in a patient in 1961, lets over half a million people around the globe have conversations as a normal part of everyday life.
“Berna was our first patient, but over the next couple of years we will install implants in five more blind people,” says Fernandez, who calls Gómez by her first name. “We had done similar experiments in animals, but a cat or a monkey can’t explain what it’s seeing.”
Berna could.
Her experiment took courage. It required brain surgery on an otherwise healthy body—always a risky procedure—to install the implant. And then again to remove it six months later, since the prosthesis isn’t approved for longer-term use.
Seizures and phosphenes
I hear Gómez before I see her. Hers is the voice of a woman about a decade younger than her age. Her words are measured, her cadence is perfectly smooth, and her tone is warm, confident, and steady.
When I finally see her in the lab, I notice Gómez knows the layout of the space so well she barely needs help navigating the small hallway and its attached rooms. When I walk over to greet her, Gómez’s face is initially pointing in the wrong direction until I say hi. When I reach out to shake her hand, her husband guides her hand into mine.
Gómez is here for a brain MRI to see how things look half a year after having her implant removed (they look good). She’s also here to meet a potential second patient who is in town, and in the room during my visit. At one point during this meeting, as Fernandez explains how the hardware connects to the skull, Gómez interrupts the discussion, tilts forward, and places the prospect’s hand on the back of her head, where a metal outlet used to be. Today there’s virtually no evidence of the port. The implant surgery was so uneventful, she says, that she came to the lab the very next day to get plugged in and start the experiments. She’s had no problems or pain since. CONT….
Y’ALL CAN READ THE REST ON YOUR OWN/RESEARCH STUFF… KEEP LEARNING AND THINKING ABOVE THE AVERAGE!!
LASTLY, I ASKED MY WIFE, AS I “BOUNCE STUFF OFF HER BRAINS”; WHEN DID WE GET THE 1ST TV SERIES AND INDICATION OF “SELF-DRIVING CARS AND VEHICLES”, AKA AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES??” …SHE HAD TO GO RESEARCH IT!! AND “HINT-HINT” IT WAS not “KITT”!!
Y’ALL NEED TO GO READ THIS: https://www.titlemax.com/resources/history-of-the-autonomous-car/
History of the Autonomous Car
Written By: Bonnie Gringer
The idea of self-driving vehicles dates back much further than Google’s research in the present day. In fact, the concept of an autonomous car dates back to Futurama, an exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. General Motors created the exhibit to display its vision of what the world would look like in 20 years, and this vision included an automated highway system that would guide self-driving cars. While a world filled with robotic vehicles isn’t yet a reality, cars today do contain many autonomous features, such as assisted parking and braking systems. Meanwhile, work on full-fledged autonomous vehicles continues, with the goal of making driving a car safer and simpler in the coming decades. CONT….SOME OTHER THINGS TO STUDY AND THERE ARE A LOT MORE LIKE Who Killed the Electric Car? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F); cars that run on water (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=cars+that+run+on+water) COOKING OIL POWERED CARS (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=COOKING+OIL+POWERED+CARS) (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/26/fa.money.vegetable.oil.cars/index.html)
- How Do Driverless Cars Work?
- Timeline of Self-Driving Cars
- AI and the Future of Self-Driving Vehicles
- How Google’s Self-Driving Car Works
- Google Self-Driving Cars and How They Work
- The Future Is Driverless, Shared, and Electric
- Driverless Car Trends and Innovations
- Autonomous Vehicle Technology
- The Science of Self-Driving Cars
- Self-Driving Vehicles and Policy Implications
What Americans and the U.S.-United States of “US” and the World needs to understand is that, “WE” get lied to, ssssooooooo much, and “GREED” and “WEALTHY” LIARS and :”con-artists” in Political and Religious organizations and “leadership” positions “Censure” what they want us to see and hear..MOM called it “PROGRAMMING”. I CALL IT “PEOPLE WOULD RATHER, BELIEVE A LIE, RATHER THAN THE TRUE/TRUTH!” OF THAT A “CHICKEN IS A DOG, AND A DOG IS A CHICKEN, EVEN “IF/WHEN” WE KNOW BETTER THAT THAT!!!
