Two paralysed patients controlled robotic arms by simply thinking of the movements in an ongoing clinical trial called BrainGate. Progressing from controversial tests in monkeys and no-hands cursor control, the technology called Neural interface systems enabled the paralysis patients to independently carry out everyday tasks like drinking coffee. A tiny electrode is inserted into the primary motor cortex, the part of the brain that handles movement. When the patient imagines moving the hand towards the coffee, picking it up and bringing it back, the neurons in this part of the brain start sending out electric signals. These are picked up the electrode and tran-sferred through a wire into a sophisticated algorithm.
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John travolta accuser withdraws lawsuit
A MALE masseur who accused John Travolta of sexual battery has withdrawn a lawsuit, his lawyer said on Tuesday, as the star’s attorney vowed a similar second legal action would also fail.
The first alleged victim, identified only as John Doe, filed his lawsuit last week, seeking $2 million and alleging that Travolta grabbed his penis after receiving a massage at a Beverly Hills hotel in January.
Travolta’s heavyweight lawyer Martin Singer dismissed the claim as “a complete fiction and fabrication,” saying the Hollywood A-list actor was on the East Coast on the day in question, January 16.
A few days later, the same lawyer, Okorie Okorocha, filed another lawsuit including a second alleged victim, identified as John Doe #2 for an alleged assault in Atlanta, Georgia on January 28. On Tuesday Okorocha said he had withdrawn the first lawsuit. — AFP
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‘Ancient loch ness monsters had arthritis’
SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATING fossils of an extinct marine reptile discovered that ancient creatures resembling stout-necked Loch Ness Monsters had also developed arthritis and eventually succumbed to diseases of old age.
A team of researchers, who studied a 150-million-year-old marine reptile called pliosaur, found the beast was apparently afflicted with an arthritis-like disease.
The carnivore, which was unearthed in 1994 and since held in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery in England, was a 26-feet old female with a 10-foot-long crocodile-like head, whale-like body, short neck and four powerful flippers to propel it through water to hunt down prey.
“This pliosaur, like many of its relatives, was truly huge,” researcher Michael Benton, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England, told LiveScience. — PTI