Archive for the ‘Bionic’ Category
In Ableism, Bionic, Olympics, Paralympics, Sport on January 19, 2010 at 3:25 am
The Talks
As Canada prepares to host the world’s best, Vancouver 2010, The Globe and Mail, and the University of British Columbia in collaboration with universities across Canada, are partnering on a unique project inviting the public to flex their intellect via podcasts by some of the country’s best minds on topics related to the 2010 Winter Games.
My podcast is live
Gregor Wolbring
Who will be the future Olympic and Paralympic athlete? The impact of advances in science and technology and bodily assistive devices on Sport.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/intellectual-muscle/the-talks/article1312702/
The transcript of the podcast is situated here
http://www.bioethicsanddisability.org/vancouverpodcast.html
Bionic
In Artificial Intelligence, Bionic on April 21, 2009 at 11:02 pm
In Bionic, Cogno, Health, Neuro on February 14, 2009 at 4:32 am
Learn about the frontiers of human health from seven of Stanford’s most innovative faculty members. Inspired by a format used at the TED Conference (http://www.ted.com), each speaker delivers a highly engaging talk in just 10-20 minutes about his or her research. Learn about Stanford’s newest and most exciting discoveries in neuroscience, bioengineering, brain imaging, psychology, and more.
more here
In Bionic, Computer, Disabled People, Health on February 14, 2009 at 4:17 am
….new kind of artificial arm that moves more easily than other devices and that she can control by using only her thoughts.
more here
see also
Thanks to Mindhack
In Bionic, Disabled People, Health, Vision on February 14, 2009 at 3:59 am
Jan. 17, 2008
By Hannah Hickey
Contact lenses with metal connectors for electronic circuits were safely worn by rabbits in lab tests. The lenses were manufactured at the microscopic level by researchers at the UW. Contact lenses with metal connectors for electronic circuits were safely worn by rabbits in lab tests. Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes — visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.
more here
Bionic, brain, Cogno, implant, Neuro
In Bionic, Cogno, Disabled People, Enhancement, Neuro on July 26, 2008 at 6:41 pm
A method to develop neural implants that not only translate brain signals into movement, but also evolve with the brain as it learns has been devised by University of Florida researchers.
see here and
more here
Enhancement, nano, Perception
In Artificial Intelligence, Bionic, Cogno, Enhancement, nano, Nanoscale on July 17, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Educating the public about nanotechnology and other complex but emerging technologies causes people to become more “worried and cautious” about the new technologies’ prospective benefits, according to a recent study by researchers at North Carolina State University.
more here
Ableism, disablement, insurance, legs, payment, prosthetics
In Ableism, Bionic, Disabled People, Governance, Health, Law, Medicine on June 10, 2008 at 6:29 pm
By Dave Gram, Associated Press
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. – After bone cancer forced the amputation of her
right leg below the knee, Eileen Casey got even more bad news: Her
insurer told her that she had spent her $10,000 lifetime coverage limit
on her temporary limb and that the company wouldn’t pay for a permanent
one……
more here
Question: One the one hand society promotes a body image and a social environment that seems to make legs essential 9most places are still not set up for non leg modes of movements)and on the other hand they are not willing to enable one to have the legs.
Technorati Tags: legs, prosthetics, insurance, payment, ableism, disablement,
Code, Enhancement, Europe, nano
In Ableism, Bionic, Disabled People, Enhancement, Governance, nano, Nanoscale on May 30, 2008 at 12:32 am
here
and here
of interest
4.1.16 N&N research organisations should not undertake research aiming for non-therapeutic enhancement of human beings leading to addiction or solely for the illicit enhancement of the performance of the human body.
THis suggests that every other enhancement research is allowed like ‘therapeutic’ (who decides what is therapeutic), and non therapeutic work that is not used for doping purposes or leads to addictions.. Additions are mostly drug related at first glance but may be one say that one can become addicted to ones enhancements like emotionally addicted.
In general the section seem to give the go ahead for most enhancement work
Some of the other wordings of the code might be usable for us but will see.Technorati Tags: Code, Nano, Enhancement, Europe
Cheers
Gregor
aircraft, artificial muscle, Bionic, metal, rubber, wearable computer
In Bionic, Health, Information Technology, Medicine on May 24, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Chemists Create Self-assembling Conductive Rubber
Uses of metal rubber include bendy, electrically charged aircraft wings, artificial muscles and wearable computers.
more here
Technorati Tags: wearable computer, rubber, metal, aircraft, artificial muscle, bionic, ore
Bionic, contact lens, eye, Vision
In Bionic, Vision on May 24, 2008 at 4:28 am
cognition, Enhancement, Health, nano, Neuro
In Ableism, Bionic, Cogno, Disabled People, Enhancement, Health, nano, Nanoscale, NBICS, Neuro on May 24, 2008 at 2:01 am
The neurotech industry is engaged in a $2 trillion race to fix your brain. Many players will fail, but the payoff will be huge for those who succeed.
more here
Technorati Tags: Neuro, Cognition, enhancement, health, nano
brain machine interface, cognition, Disabled People, Health, Neuro, Robotics
In Bionic, Cogno, Disabled People, Enhancement, Governance, Health, Information Technology, nano, Nanoscale, NBICS, Neuro, Robotics on May 23, 2008 at 2:26 am
20 May 2008—A group of mechanical engineers at Caltech have come up with a way to guide miniature robots in the task of inserting and positioning electrode arrays in brain tissue. What they propose would be the first robotic approach to establishing an interface between computers and the brain by positioning electrodes in neural tissue.
more here
Technorati Tags: Health, brain machine interface, neuro, cognition, disabled people, enhancement
Bio
In Bionic, Disabled People, Health on May 20, 2008 at 10:37 pm
An improved artificial cornea, which could restore the vision of more than 10 million people worldwide who are blind due to diseased corneas, finally is moving toward reality, scientists in California conclude in a new analysis of research on the topic.
more here
Technorati Tags: Cornea, Health,
Bio, Law, Nano scale technologies/sciences, NBICS, NBICS Disabled people, Olympic, Paralympic, Pistorius, Sport, Sports
In Ableism, Bionic, Disabled People, nano on May 20, 2008 at 10:31 pm
in SCRIPT-ed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society
Gregor Wolbring, pp.139-160
Oscar Pistorius is a Paralympic bionic leg runner and record holder in the 100, 200, and 400 meters who wants to compete in the Olympics. This paper provides an analysis of a) his case; b) the impact of his case on the Olympics, the Paralympics and other –lympics and the relationships between the –lympics; c) the impact on other international and national sports; d) the applicability of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. It situates the evaluation of the Pistorius case within the broader doping discourse and the reality that new and emerging science and technology products increasingly generate internal and external human bodily enhancements that go beyond the species-typical, enabling more and more a culture of increasing demand for, and acceptance of modifications of the human body (structure, function, abilities) beyond its species-typical boundaries and the emergence of new social concepts such as transhumanism and the transhumanisation of ableism.
online open access here
Technorati Tags: Technology, Politics, Sports, Pistorius
Ableism, Aging, Bio, Enhancement, Genetic, Longevity, nano, Synthetic Human
In Ableism, Bionic on May 20, 2008 at 5:13 pm
John Harris
In the future there will be no more human beings. This is not something we should worry about.
Much of today’s scientific research may enable us eventually to repair the terrible vulnerability to which our present state of evolution has exposed us. It is widely thought inevitable that we will have to face the end of humanity as we know it. We will either have died out altogether, killed off by self-created global warming or disease, or, we may hope, we will have been replaced by our successors.
more here
Law, Olympics, Paralympics, Pistorius, Sport, Sports
In Bionic, Disabled People on May 17, 2008 at 1:07 am
see here for the Court of Arbitration for Sports decision
and here the press release
My two main thoughts after reading the ruling and the press release are
1) The ruling I assume will be interpreted to be a ruling against the scientific data claiming that the cheetah legs lead to an unfair advantage. The ruling leaves the door open that one could exclude a runner with prosthetics from competing in a ‘natural leg’ running event if it can be proven that the ‘artificial’ legs lead to an unfair advantage.
This makes sense . So far the process of investigating theses new ‘artificial’ legs is not developed enough to be called a golden standard so its open for interpretations. Once tests are developed that are accepted as the golden standard and they show an unfair advantage one can see that that runner won’t be allowed to run against the ‘biological leg’ runners.
2) However the ruling seems to give the answer to another question. Are the Olympics about athletes who have a body adhering to the norm of the homo sapient species? In other words is the Olympics about athletes with a ‘normal biological body’? The ruling cements the view that the Olympics are not about biological bodies per se. So one can compete in the Olympics independent of whether certain biological parts are replaced by artificial parts.
If the replacement does not lead to a competitive advantage athletes with artificial body parts can compete against athletes where the body part in question is biological and not artificial.
If the replacement does leads to a competitive advantage one could see the ruling opening the door for the scenario where the athletes with artificial body parts compete against each others in the Olympics
whereby the artificial body parts are treated like a pole used in pole vaulting…
Cheers
Gregor
Gregor Wolbring and the WolbPack 