[Link: www.economist.com...]
ANYONE who saw Claire Lomas complete this year's London marathon on May 7th cannot fail to have been impressed by her grit and determination. Ms Lomas, once a show jumper, was paralysed from the chest down by a riding accident in 2007, so finishing a marathon, albeit at walking pace, was a dramatic feat. Some of the adulation, however, should be reserved for the technology that helped her do so: a pair of bionic legs.
Ms Lomas's legs were designed by Amit Goffer, an Israeli engineer who is himself paralysed. They have various modes ("sit", "stand" and "walk", and "ascend" and "descend" for staircases) and are controlled by a keypad worn on the wrist. Walking also requires the assistance of a pair of crutches. But Dr Goffer's legs allowed Ms Lomas to travel the 42.195km (26 miles and 385 yards) of the marathon course in stages, over a period of 16 days.
That record may not last long, however. Another engineer, José Contreras-Vidal of the University of Houston, in Texas, has what may prove an even better design: a pair of bionic legs that respond directly to signals from the brain. (An early version is pictured above.)
The idea of controlling machines by thought is not new. Research both on people and on monkeys has shown it is possible for them to move mechanical limbs with great precision, using software which interprets signals collected by electrodes implanted in their brains. (The latest such experiment, allowing quadriplegic people to control robotic arms and hands, is described in this article.) The problem with this approach is that implanting electrodes into a brain is a dangerous procedure--and, even if it succeeds and does no damage, the wires leading out of the skull to the computer open a passage into the body which can lead to infection.
[Link: www.fastcodesign.com...]
Anyone else see The Avengers? Just like in Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark has the coolest interactive 3-D displays. He can pull a digital wire frame out of a set of blueprints or wrap an exoskeleton around his arm. Those moments aren't just sci-fi fun; they're full of visionary ideas to explore and manipulate objects in 3-D space. Except for one thing: How would Stark feel all of these objects to move them around? In reality, he'd be touching nothing but air.
Jinha Lee, from the Tangible Media Group of the MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with Rehmi Post, has been playing with the idea of manipulating real floating objects in 3-D space to create a truly tactile user interface. His prototype is called the ZeroN, and it will drop your jaw when you see it working for the first (and second and third) time.
It's essentially a small field in which gravity doesn't overcome an object. Through the efforts of finely tuned electromagnetism, a user can place a metal ball in midair as easily as they'd place something on a shelf. The ball can be repositioned by hand or by computer, it can be animated on a path, and with the help of software, it can even serve as a virtual camera or light source in a 3-D scene (a sort of 3-D animation suite that you can touch)."There is something fundamental behind motivations to liberate physical matter from gravity and enable control. The motivation has existed as a shared dream amongst humans for millennia. It is an idea found in mythologies, desired by alchemists, and visualized in science fiction movies," Lee tells Co.Design. "I have aspired to create a space where we can experience a glimpse of this future. A space where materials are free from gravitational constraints and controllable through computing technologies."
[Link: www.japantimes.co.jp...]
In 2001, when it made a successful bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing promised there would be complete freedom for the foreign media to report in China. While this did not occur, more liberal rules were introduced, such as not requiring official permission before conducting interviews.
However, the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia of 2010 triggered fear in Beijing that the Arab Spring movement might spill over into China and, very soon, there was a clampdown on the media, which has now led to the first expulsion of a foreign correspondent in more than a decade: Melissa Chan, the reporter for Al Jazeera's English-language channel.
Last year, when there were calls on the Internet for a gathering outside McDonald's at Beijing's Wangfujing shopping area, Chinese security authorities forbade reporting from the site.
Chan tweeted at the time that "police warned most serious consequence of breaking reporting laws would be revocation of my visa and press card."
[Link: www.dailymail.co.uk...]
Queen of Disco: Donna Summer, pictured in 1979, is understood to have passed away
Hot Stuff singer Donna Summer is understood to have died this morning after a battle with cancer at 63.
The star, known as the Queen of Disco, passed away in Florida, according to TMZ.
Sources say she had attempted to keep the extent of her illness from fans and was recently trying to finish up her latest album.
The news has not yet been confirmed by her spokesperson.
[Link: www.haaretz.com...]
Palestinian prisoners at the Megido Prison. Photo by Itzik Ben-Malki
Palestinian society, like every society waging a struggle for national liberation, feels a special responsibility toward those of its sons and daughters who have sacrificed their lives or their freedom for the collective. Palestinians consider the people we call "terrorists" or "murderers" as "freedom fighters" and "national heroes." In many cases, as in South Africa and Northern Ireland, it was prisoner leaders who effected reconciliation.
Many of the Palestinians with whom Israel conducts peace talks and security ties, and who are frequently interviewed in Hebrew by the Israeli media, spent the best years of their lives in Israeli prisons. Public opinion polls in the territories show that the fate of some 5,000 prisoners and administrative detainees is of more concern to the Palestinian public than all the issues relating to a final-status arrangement.
Despite this, the situation of these jailed Palestinians has been pushed to the margins of Israel's security and foreign-policy agenda. Israeli decision makers deal with this issue only when they are negotiating for the release of Israeli captives, or when, as happened recently, they fear the death of hunger-striking prisoners might spark riots in the territories and attract international attention to the human rights situation there.
The recent agreement between the Israel Prison Service and the prisoners' representatives, with praiseworthy mediation by Egypt, corrected a few of the distortions in Israel's solitary confinement and family visits policy for prisoners from the Gaza Strip. Israel also promised to review the files of more than 300 administrative detainees, some of whom have been jailed for many months without even being told what their crime is.
In return the prisoners promised to refrain from all terror-related activity in prison. This can be seen as another sign of the Palestinians' recognition of the advantages of nonviolent protest over armed struggle.
[Link: www.haaretz.com...]
Masked Palestinians hurling stones at Israeli troops outside the Ofer military prison near Ramallah, in the West Bank, on Tuesday. Photo by AP
Germany's surrender in World War II was commemorated on May 9 in many places throughout the world. That same day, thousands of neo-Nazis held "mourning marches" over the "day of disaster." In their own country and especially outside it they are a shunned minority. The vast majority view that period as a time of spiritual degeneration when their leaders, scholars and military commanders were gripped in an insanity that resulted in genocide, campaigns of conquest and the defeat of many nations. These are the lessons that most Germans, and most of the nations who collaborated with them, have learned from the "day of disaster."
Of all the nations that sent soldiers to aid the Nazis' deeds, only one has never expressed regret. On the contrary, it dedicates May 15 - the day Arab armies invaded the newly declared State of Israel - to mourning the failure to achieve their goal. It's not the sin of their aggression that the Arabs regret, but rather the fact that they weren't able to complete the job that Hitler left unfinished. Unlike the Germans, they aren't ashamed of their ancestors' murderousness. Instead, they're ashamed of their weakness, of their inability to execute the mission.
Israel's Arab citizens have never expressed remorse for the fact that their forefathers murdered dozens of Jews in Haifa Bay workshops, murdered the defenders of Gush Etzion after they surrendered, slaughtered 79 doctors and nurses in a convoy to Hadassah Hospital, murdered 35 soldiers sent to reinforce Gush Etzion and mutilated their corpses. Their writings contain no expression of regret for these and many other murderous acts. The regret is only over their failure to do to all of the Jews what they managed to do to a small number of them.
No Arab leader, historian, philosopher or cleric has ever stood up to tell his people - as German, Polish and Dutch intellectuals did (and as Jewish intellectuals did with regard to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians ) - that they need to do some soul-searching. That they need to change the false narrative that is preached in mosques and taught in Arab schools, with funding from the State of Israel, according to which the "disaster" stemmed from a Jewish plot funded and encouraged by Western colonialists.
Not one of them labels the late Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a murderer. Yet this was a man who, apart from the massacres committed on his orders during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, joined Hitler's efforts to carry out the Final Solution and even dispatched a brigade to help the cause.
[Link: www.foreignpolicy.com...]
Writing in the Wall Street Journal this week on the occasion of Israeli Independence Day, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren penned a powerful op-ed on the erosion of Israel's image.
His conclusion: Israel's image has deteriorated in large part because of a "systematic delegitimization of the Jewish state."
"Having failed to destroy Israel by conventional arms and terrorism," he writes, "Israel's enemies alit on a subtler and more sinister tactic that hampers Israel's ability to defend itself, even to justify its existence."
First, some full disclosure. I like and respect Michael Oren. He's a remarkably talented historian, astute analyst, and able diplomat.
I also have no doubt that there are efforts to delegitimize Israel, that anti-Semitism pervades some of the anti-Israel rhetoric, that Israel is one of the few countries in the world that's judged by impossibly high standards, and that the perception and reality of its power causes many to ignore the realities of its vulnerability.
But I just don't buy the argument that Israel's image has eroded principally because of a dedicated campaign to delegitimize it.
Three other factors drive Israel's very bad PR: the realities of nation-building, the image of the asymmetry of power, and Israel's own actions, which, like those of so many other countries, value short-term tactics over long-term strategy.
[Link: intelligencecareers.com...]
We manage and publish 143 job blogs focused on various niches -- oriented to geography and/or to skillset.
[Link: ca.news.yahoo.com...]
Law enforcement and homeland security personnel face an average of 55 daily encounters with "known or suspected terrorists" named on government watchlists, officials told Reuters.
The figure - which equals more than 20,000 contacts per year - underscores the growing sweep of the watchlists, which have expanded significantly since a failed Christmas Day 2009 bombing attempt of a U.S. airliner. But officials note that very few of those daily contacts lead to arrests.
Civil liberties groups question the use of watchlists, and they have been ridiculed for ensnaring innocent citizens.
U.S. officials said the encounters, which involve airport and border security personnel as well as federal and local law enforcement officers, are reported to the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), an interagency unit led by an FBI official based in a tightly guarded building in northern Virginia.
At its headquarters, the TSC operates a 24-hour command center, resembling something from a Hollywood thriller, complete with giant wall-screen projections and signs flashing "SECRET."
Officials said that when a law enforcement or homeland security officer in the field stops a person whose name matches a name in the TSC's databases, the officer is supposed to phone the TSC command center for instructions. Based on information in the databases, the TSC then will advise the officer in the field how to proceed, which could range from releasing the suspect to calling in federal officers as backup.
The command center gets between 100 and 150 inquiries a day, of which an average of 55 involve individuals who turn out to be listed on one of the federal watch lists, officials said. Of those calls, about 60 percent come from federal officers at border or airport security posts; the rest come from local police.
"There are incidents every single day," said TSC director Timothy Healy.
The watchlists include the best known "no fly list" as well as a "selectee list" of people who the government thinks should get extra screening or questioning before being allowed to board an airplane.
LISTS GET LONGER
[Link: www.washingtonpost.com...]
The United States is on the hunt for Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the al-Qaeda master bombmaker behind the just-thwarted plot to bring down a U.S.-bound jetliner. If previous patterns hold, at some point in the coming weeks or months a drone launched from a secret CIA base will take al-Asiri out -- and we will celebrate another "success" in what was once called the war on terror.
Mr. President, don't do it.
A drone strike would vaporize this ingenious terrorist intent on attacking the United States. But it would also vaporize all the intelligence inside his brain. Our national security would be better served if the United States captured al-Asiri and kept him alive for questioning, so we can find out what he knows.
What would be lost if President Obama chose to kill, rather than capture, al-Asiri? According to former senior intelligence officials involved in terrorist captures, a high-ranking terrorist leader such as al-Asiri could provide us with treasure trove of information on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- the terror network that poses the greatest threat to the homeland today.
Al-Asiri could tell us "who's who" in the AQAP network -- identifying the couriers, financiers, operators, commanders, supporters and facilitators who make the network run, as well as the phone numbers, e-mail addresses and kunyas (or code names) they use so that we can track them down.
