It '2021. It is two decades after the 9 / 11 attacks. A group of terrorists in a cafe down the road sits on their plans. A cat watching from about 5 meters. Images are transmitted from the brain, providing real-time information. At the same time, a small beetle unnoticed, as she brings to the table position. E 'equipped with a nano-listening device that transmits the contents of the speech of the terrorists' real-time. A few minutes later, asome pigeons land nearby and start pecking at the crumbs. How they do it, inch closer to the table. A few minutes later, everyone raises a wing dove release for a poisoned arrow. React before the terrorists can, they're all dead. Elsewhere in the world, a soldier who lost his arms and legs in battle, with the perseverance and the use of bionic limbs to win a triathlon. In the process, he meets death with natural limbs. Sound exaggerated? Not anymore! Cyborg - part machine,Body part biological, scientific, medical, military / intelligence / law enforcement purposes can be used, has become reality thanks to scientific and technological progress and the promise (to extend the possibility of significant medical breakthroughs for the restoration and improvement of quality of life and add life itself) and fear (for example, as a machine and organism, the distinction blurs the boundaries affect the rights of life, while the possibility ofControl of human thought and action is incredibly real).
The term "cyborg" was coined by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline scientist at NASA in 1960, as in the hypothetical debate about the benefits of man-machine room. Although these cybernetic organisms was the realm of science fiction, has begun efforts to create real cyborg, even before the term was conceived and continues today.
Electronic Insect Control
• In 1950, Jose Delgado of Yale University on an electrode insertedBrain bull to gain control of their raw movements. He has successfully demonstrated that the control in Cordoba, Spain in 1963, when he was in the path of a bull and chased him away Cyborg at the last minute.
• The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has tried to create his own cyborg in 1961 with Operation Acoustic Kitty, in which a cat was cut open with a series of wires (one to ignore the feelings such as hunger) and a listening device thatused the tail as an antenna. The project was disbanded as a failure in 1967, when the cat (to intercept the Soviet compound in Washington, DC) their first mission of a taxi in motion for more than five years of intensive training and $ 15 million deaths in the exhaust state.
Then the search Cyborg has been dormant at the end of 1980, a decade later to drive. At that time science and technology was clear, especially with the miniaturization of advancedDevices and components.
As cybernetic technology developed and refined, is the perfect combination of artificial and organic parts that may require widespread changes to the basic definitions of life and related rights, the creation of international agreements in force an adjustment of thought and perceptions. Cybernetic technology likely to be available in three main applications:
Military / Intelligence / Law Enforcement:
First experiments with animalsThe experiments were aimed primarily at military / intelligence / law enforcement applications. Some of the most interesting experiments are listed below:
° an article by Bill Christensen Technovelgy.com (Jack in a cat brain) scientists successfully produced a video of a scene in motion recognizable, as seen through the eyes of a cat in 1999. This was achieved through the use of electrodes to obtain responses simultaneously recorded and cataloged in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)and 177 selected brain cells of a sharp-eyed cat. Even if the pictures were not as strong as that of human eyes have seen and recorded by video cameras, the technology continues to improve. Adjustments near future will probably be the quality and clarity of vision in dogs and cats selected for surveillance operations with the natural eyes can also cybernetic devices with mini-cameras (a moral concern) has replaced.
• In 2002, a team of John Chapin at the State University conductedNew York (SUNY) rats cyborg created by implanting electrodes in the brain. They were then trained to move in accordance with the pulses through the electrodes and certain smells (eg people, explosives, dyes, explode, etc.) for research. In considering any type of mouse cyborg with a small camera evidence of the success of the mission was mounted. The rats were then successfully at a specific location by radio-control impulses. Subsequently, the facilities were provided at the bottom and once theThey put the mice were free of their control, they went to a sniffing mode, and successfully identified the source of an odor of destination. The process only took a few minutes and has been duplicated successfully in additional tests.
• In 2005, a team of scientists led by Su Xuecheng at the Shandong University of Science and Technology in Qingdao, China, has successfully fought pigeons flying (direction and inclination / decline) led by wireless signals transmitted to the electrodes implantedtheir brains from a laptop. Also in 2006, Jelle Atema of Boston University controlled directional movement of a spring dogfish (a small species of shark) of a neural implant that stimulates the olfactory area to the left or right side of his brain.
Given this success, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), the latter which has been dissolved, and have made considerable progress. The last phase of the efforts of the Department of Defense - the developmentMechanical Systems Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro (HI-MEMS) - is the "small" (to create cyborg discrete) and the dependence of the flight of insects, unsurpassed in terms of agility are aligned. The experiments of beetles, flies and moths performed.
Since 2008 several milestones were achieved:
Tobacco is burned with miniature electronic systems survived and grew into adult moths Manduca without complications. X-rays performedThe 2008 Micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) Conference was held in Tucson, has shown good growth of the tissue Arizona for the probes that had been implanted, where abdominal segments would be in the larval stage, after a part of her breast had grown away to make room for plants. Hookworms with cybernetic devices showed no signs of complications, side effects or rejection during metamorphosis.
• A video, Boyce Thompson Institute in Ithaca, New createdYork documented successful control of moth flight was also shown in the MEMS 2008 Conference. Moth Movement was controlled by a series of 5 volt shock that stimulates their muscles supplied by the wings tethered cord. Uniform wing stimulus speed was determined up / down, while stimuli determines wing muscles on one side or the other direction is applied.
• A similar process by a team of scientists led by Michel Maharbiz performed using the University of CaliforniaSucceeded (UNC) Berkeley Green June beetle. Negative pulses from neural implants (transmitted through wires connected) on the wings of beetles are on the rise, which brings down their momentum stopped wing motion. Lifting and lowering were driven by the rapid transition between the two types of pulses. At the same time, control the direction of flight beetle was achieved in two ways - through the front of their eyes and to the left or pulsed LEDs mountedBasic right of the muscle.
• The same UNC team of Berkeley introduced a wireless system that successfully rhinoceros beetle flight during the MEMS 2009 Conference in Sorrento, Italy, rather than controlled.
The current goal of the DoD-funded research is insect cyborgs, the remote is at least 100 meters can be controlled in charge of creating within 5 meters of a target country, and remain there until directed to leave. If this has happenedovercome (overcome obstacles such as strong winds), can miniature cameras for monitoring, sensors are implanted to detect biological, chemical or radiological agents, and small arms (with strong poisons and hallucinogens) to attack potential targets.
Medicine:
The second important application of cybernetic research is to develop medical technologies for the recovery or improvement of human abilities (eg vision - limited in terms of the removal, ads and small objects,etc., communication - limited to) oral and written.
In 2002, Kevin Warwick, one of the leading experts on technology, cybernetics, cyborgs first man in the world (documented in I, Cyborg, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, IL, 2004) in an effort to facilitate research on these objectives. A 3-mm wide area of silicon from 100 electrodes were implanted in his wrist, to allow scientists to interpret the neural signals from the movement and sensation, in the hopeInnovations for the paralyzed.
Cybernetic technology is at a minimum, from the medical point of view, as shown in various sectors. A summary of the progress and future objectives for these areas is listed below:
View:
• In February 2007, four years gingersnap Abyssinian cat is suffering from a condition similar to retinitis pigmentosa (an incurable genetic disease, the photoreceptors of the eye that leads to attacks of blindness) were implanted with 2 mm wideArtificial Silicon Retina (ASR) chips (each about 5,000 micro photodiodes that react to indoor light. If these micro-photodiodes respond to electrical signals with the eye, the optic nerve to the brain to detect light pulses sent) established by Optobionics , their vision. How to maintain the improved technology, more data will probably allow you to transfer the ability to decode the whole brain images.
Retinal Implants • are currently in use against the fight against macularDegeneration (a disease that leads to loss of vision in the macula at the center of the eye, it is difficult to make details visible in the results).
Contact lenses called "Me, Contact", a port controlled by a computer mouse, the cursor movement in the eyeball-motion, are designed to help people with disabilities.
· They are researchers at the University of Washington have developed contact lenses with electronic circuits and red LED for the jobLenses (they are ultimately the human neuronal electrical activity), which could one day allow viewing Tele / microscopic, people who see images of the infrared light spectrum, making videos, and even overlap the images from the Internet via WiFi.
Hearing:
· More than 100,000 deaf people currently with a bionic ear (cochlear implants, which are based on a direct neural connection), stimulates the auditory nerve in the inner earunderstand speech and other sounds. Research is currently the activation of cochlear implants to distinguish between speech and other background noise is concentrated.
Mind Controlled mobility:
• Although the research to provide the mobility and the ability for quadriplegics (of which about 1.25 million of the world population) is important for devices such as televisions and computers is still in its infancy, to make good progress.
o In 2008, a monkeysuccessfully moved a robot arm through neural implants. In another case, ran a rhesus monkey (Idoya) in North Carolina, a robot in Japan led by thought alone, as part of the Brain by Miguel AL Nicolelis computational neuroscientist with researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
Researchers at Osaka University in Japan, or, are currently working with four human subjects, each of which had a sheet of electrodedirectly into their brains arranged to brain wave activity through the motions of the arm, elbow and fingers to recognize the activities planned purpose-driven movement of the future prosthesis attached to it may determine. Currently, researchers can determine the proposed activity, with more than 80% of the activity.
or have the same time, European scientists a non-intrusive brain-computer interface (BCI) (if still under research and development), the human brain uses createdActivities and embedded artificial intelligence to operate equipment (eg computers, wheelchairs, prosthetics). BCIS finally afford quadriplegic mobility and skills once unimaginable.
Cybernetic limbs:
· Part synthetics are routinely used for replacement hip and knee. Regarding the latter, a newly developed knee (currently in limited release in the United States and the Netherlands), synchronizes the movement of a user with natural bone is so effective thatTheir receivers can simply get up, run up the stairs and even extreme sports.
• An arm, called the "Luke arm" after Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars character, has been developed that allow the movement of nerves, muscles and Bluetooth ® enabled by the user without eating shoe pad arms, please make use of small objects and can control their prosthetic arms and hands are in the same way to individuals with the arms and hands.
• An Australian woman was assembled in 2009 with thethe first fully functioning artificial fingers curl and may fall as a finger through the natural use of the nerve endings.
Research · is underway to find a way to graft bone to metal, so that her skin grew around to create a combination plastic / biological parts.
• The effort is made to implant the artificial intelligence, micro-systems in the muscles and nerves, users move their limbs again by thought alone(In accordance with the human control of natural limbs).
Cardiac Treatment:
· Measuring ventricular assist (VAD) are currently used by patients who, although they require some kind of heart function, provide technical assistance to preserve their lives.
· Artificial hearts have been with the CardioWest Temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH-t) and the AbioCor Replacement Heart, with products for human use have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed. ThoughResearch and development is underway for a permanent facility. Currently, artificial hearts were usually only temporarily (until a donor was found) was used with few exceptions. In such an exception, a patient survived 512 days with the AbioCor device.
Alzheimer's / Parkinson's and epilepsy:
° for the BBC (August 13, 2008) researchers (in 2008) at the University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom has created a multi-electrode array, consisting of approximately 300,000 neuronsextracted from a fetal rat control robot motion. Cells, separated from the robot in a temperature-controlled container shelf life (filled with a solution of broth pink) with electrodes via Bluetooth ® short-wave radio. The goal is to get a better understanding of neurons in the hope that effective treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease (both disabling neurological diseases, negative effect on memory in Alzheimer's disease Parkinson'sThe disease is characterized by muscle rigidity, tremor, slowness of physical movement, and language disorders and involuntary functions) and epilepsy (a common neurological disorder characterized by repeated spontaneous seizures by).
Robotics / Computer Technology:
Future robots and computers can use living and nonliving components in the same way. Perhaps this could be very problematic if the technology is used in a harmful or immoral, since it could lead to anew generation of slaves. Consequently, international protocols to deal with (including those relating to the ethical treatment of animals) and other protective provisions to address these problems will be developed as a cybernetic technology.
Meanwhile, a team of scientists led by Charles Higgins of the University of Arizona in Tucson is leading the search for insects turn into "high level of sensory robot control [because] the vision (which is expensive) beat [today] does not living systems,the ground in order to recognize objects or to detect the movement "[1]
At the same time, scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center and the California Institute of Technology in the process of developing a new generation of microprocessors that use DNA to life with the goal of creating devices smaller, faster and less expensive.
Conclusion:
Cyborg, once relegated to science fiction to scientific reality offers great military / intelligence / law enforcement,Medical and technological perspectives. If the cybernetic technology is benevolent and ethically, in which the human mind remains the primary driver rather than imposed mind control used, it will open new windows of opportunity - greater freedom and better living conditions is taken to quadriplegics in their bodies to blindly imprisoned in a world of darkness, the pigeons confined in a prison of silence, and for people who need to age or injury, transparent syntheticSpare parts for worn or damaged. It will also expand human capabilities in terms of speed, vision, communication and perseverance. Finally, if this technology is gaining wide acceptance and use, it is likely that most of humanity will be a cyborg, even if not provided in terms of fiction.
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[1] The cyborg animal spies hatching in the laboratory. New Scientist. March 6, 2008.
Additional sources:
AmandaO'Brien. A big step for robokind: Cyber-arts. The Australian. August 15, 2009.
Cyborg Spies. Discovery.com. February 13, 2009. August 29, 2009. blogs.discovery.com/good.idea/2009/02/cyborg- insects spies.html
Cyborg - science fiction to scientific reality
