Life emulates Star Trek for the blind

[RedjackRyan]

ST. LOUIS) - More than a million people in the United States are legally blind. Many of them once had vision but tragically lost it. Now a breakthrough device could give them back some of their sight.

Some call her the bionic woman. Others call her a medical miracle. But Cheri Robertson has given herself another title:

"I just call myself the robo-chick."

Robertson is blind, but this device allows her to see, not with her eyes but with her brain! Fifteen years ago, she lost both of her eyes in a car accident. She was just 19 years old

http://rdu.news14.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=82612

[Eva]

How wonderfull!

Eva

[Dar]

Wow, that's incredible!! Although it's so scarily reminiscent of Borgs!!

[Changeling]

very cool story
I hadn't realized that the technology had progressed so far

[Marcia Drummergal]

Wow, that's incredible!! Although it's so scarily reminiscent of Borgs!!

Naw Dar! Just think of "Geordi!" Remember him?

Marcia :)

[SongDragon]

Sort of frightening, but also wonderful! I must admit, my vision isn't too good, but I know I would be heartbroken to lose it (I'm a photographer by nature). It's not great yet, but at least it's headed in the direction of good for sight...

~Song

[Alicia]

Redjack, wonderful story. It's really great to see that technology can help people in such a way. I think the technology that allows paraplegics to turn on computers and lights and things completely with brain waves is awesome too. Amazing where we can go when we see no limits. We do have Star Trek to thank for a lot of that! Did you see the special on Science Channel called "How William Shatner Changed the World?"

[RedjackRyan]

Alicia, i did see that special. Lotta fun stuff and shatner finally seems to be able to make fun of himself. Some of the links they made were a stretch, but Star Trek really has influenced a lot of things that we now take for granted. I do confess, Trek is chiefly responsible for my interest in science and computers.

The next 10 years are going to be fantastic for medical advances :)

[Bat]

The next 10 years are going to be fantastic for medical advances


They will if the damned government gets out of the way and allows stem cell research to happen! If they'd let the doctors and researchers do their jobs, a lot of people would be rehabbed in the future...every day that goes by that research is not allowed to be done, is a day lost for someone who might be able to move again.
Sorry for the rant...I just don't understand people who don't believe in science!

[RedjackRyan]

I hear ya Bat. Won't make a difference, the research is coming with or without government approval. If the research isn't done here in the U.S. it will be done overseas, only a matter of time. Its far too late to put the genie back in the bottle no matter how hard they try.

[Bat]

I hear ya Bat. Won't make a difference, the research is coming with or without government approval. If the research isn't done here in the U.S. it will be done overseas, only a matter of time. Its far too late to put the genie back in the bottle no matter how hard they try.


It's a good thing that the rest of the world is so progressive...but I truly regret our fall from scientific leadership in most fields, just as we have lost our industrial base to overseas competition, as well as from outsourcing. It is a benefit to the world, but we need to become more than a service economy.
Perhaps there will be a renaissance in this country, but I fear we'll have to go through a dark age first...hopefully a relatively short one!

[RedjackRyan]

I think we've already entered our dark age.. thanks to folks like Pat Robertson..lol .. still we do lead in a few tech fields, i'm very impressed with the advances in propulsion systems and outside of the box thinking the private sector is doing for space vehicles. Scaled Composites is way ahead of the rest of the field in that regard.. we're ahead of the curve in genetic research (with or without stem cells) our nanotech research also appears to be way ahead of anyone else and we're second only to Japan in robotic technology.

All this and still no bubblecars though..<sigh> (You knew i was going there BGG!)

I'm cautiously optimistic though, Bat. The dreamer in me still believes in good old american ingenuity and tenacity.. We'll just have to see what the future holds for us.

[Bat]

I was just thinking about the companies that are outsourcing their workers and the ones who maintain main offices in, say, Bermuda to avoid paying taxes...
I think they should be made to pay tariffs as if they were foreign companies, stiff ones!, and domestic competition should be fostered by offering tax breaks for a few years to those who want to start new companies here, provided that their personnel and ownership is in no way connected to the companies that they are replacing, or at least their connections should have been severed for 5 years.
And all that war money could help some businesses who are on the brink of bankruptcy (such as Delta Airlines, and some others who have gone belly up) with limits on how much the CEOs can scrape off the top instead of cutting the pilots' and flight personnels' wages, and letting the physical machines age and deteriorate. Gas prices should be controlled, too, since OPEC doesn't seem to be doing such a good job of it. Yeah, I know, I'm dreaming:rolleyes:

[DaveM]

I have to agree with Redjack....those silly people who feel the pain of stem cells but cannot see that of adult human beings.... They have "morals", which for whatever reason seem to involve putting someone else down (and presumably do not apply when one of them needs a transplant or an abortion). I don't get it.

I cannot help but recall a historical event as summarized by James Michener: in 1054 there was a supernova such as has never been otherwise recorded during civlized history. For more than one year, it was visible during daylight hours and at times it was brighter and of greater diameter than the full moon.

We know of this through the intricately written accounts and observations of countless Arab astronomers, who wrote freely of what they saw and to the best of their scientific knowledge, commented on it. From the archives of Europe we do not have so much as one word. Apparently while the Church had absolute sway in Europe, no one dared to look up at the sky--or at least to write of what they saw there (remember, this was centuries before Copernicus, then Galileo were officially condemned, only to be "pardoned" during the 1970s).

In Michener's words, an age is called dark not because its light refuses to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

Light a light, light a light....

[Bat]

There is a wealth of stem cells in every umbilical cord that every baby is born with that is cut off right after birth...I don't get where the shortage is when there is such a supply right under every OB/GYN's nose!! Some places are even storing that supply for the infant whose it is, in case of future need, I think they are, anyway...it's been mentioned as a possibility. If they don't choose to save it, the parents could donate that source for research, couldn't they? I don't even know if they are asked at the birth...what do they do with the umbilical cord, throw it away??