Flo-was-here - Flo Was Here, But Will He Come Back?

When You Put An Ikea Print In A Modern Art Museum

By Jessica Hamzelou

In future you may not even need eyes to see. Next year, a blind person in Australia will be the first to receive “bionic eyes” that bypass most of the visual system entirely. Instead, a camera mounted on a pair of glasses will feed information about the world directly to the brain.

The breakthrough should help restore vision in people without a working retina. “You don’t need an eyeball at all,” says Arthur Lowery at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria, who is developing the bionic eye.

The plan is to implant up to 11 small tiles, each loaded with 43 electrodes, into areas of the brain that deal with vision. When these areas are stimulated, people report seeing flashes of light. Lowery believes that each electrode could create a dot of light that is similar to seeing one pixel. In total, the tiles will provide around 500 pixels – enough to create a simple image. Although this resolution is far cruder than the 1 to 2 million pixel image a normal eye can produce, it should restore the basic elements of sight.

“If all goes to plan, the blind volunteers will wake up with a crude sense of vision” Images picked up by the camera will be sent to a pocket-sized processor worn by the user. This device will pull out the relevant parts of an image and send it to the tiles. “The processor is like a cartoonist,” says Lowery. “It has to represent a complex situation with minimal information.” A face could be recreated with just 10 dots, Lowery says. “It doesn’t sound like much but there’s more information in that than you’d think.” He recalls a blind receptionist who couldn’t tell if someone was coming or going, so never knew whether to say hello or goodbye. “If there’s a dot moving away from you, you stop talking,” he says.

The first volunteers will have recently lost their sight due to injury, as the device may not work for those blind since birth. If all goes to plan, the volunteers will wake up with a crude sense of vision, “like a John Logie Baird television from the 1920s”, says Lowery.

Let’s All Look at the Moon!

Celebrating Earth’s Nearest Neighbor

Humanity has observed the nighttime sky for millennia, eyeing celestial bodies with wonder. Until the last 50 years or so, telescopes provided our best views of the sky at night. That is, until the Ranger mission broadcast the craft’s descent onto the moon live on March 24, 1965.

+Learn more about Ranger 9

+Watch the video

Our fascination with the moon continues, and since 2010 the organizers of International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) have turned it into a worldwide, public celebration of lunar science and exploration held annually. One day each year, they invite everyone, everywhere to learn about the moon and to celebrate the cultural and personal connections. We’ll all invited and anyone can host an InOMN event. 

+Locations of InOMN Events Around the World

+ Visit International Observe the Moon Night’s site

And, we’re doing our part to let the public know more about our moon. This month’s “What’s up” video is very moon-centric.

+View JPL’s What’s Up for October

Our Night Sky Network at JPL, which bills itself as “astronomy clubs bringing the wonders of the universe to the public,” has a list of astronomy clubs and events across by area, as well as a monthly calendar.

+Learn more 

Organizations in our Museum Alliance across the country are also hosting activities. The Museum Alliance was created to be the “front door” to NASA for the world of informal education. The Alliance is a NASA-centric STEAM "community of practice" that includes informal educational organizations, namely, all those outside of the traditional K-12 school system. Our STEAM–Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math–communities include more than 1,400 professionals at more than 700 U.S. museums, science centers, planetariums, NASA Visitor Centers, Challenger Centers, observatories, parks, libraries, camps, and youth-serving organizations as partners in the Museum Alliance.  

+Learn more about the Museum Alliance

All us Earth-dwellers can tour the moon via our Moon Tours app that lets you explore the lunar surface from your mobile device. The app includes imagery from lunar orbiters and Apollo missions and is a free download for iOS and Android.

+iOS

+Android

+Check out a full range of NASA apps

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Well, People Voted For Him

“Percussive maintenance” is the technical term for hitting something until it works. source

image via simplybusiness

Flip Disc Over

Same Movie