I’m sure anyone with a phone in their pocket nowadays has stuffed it full (or had it come out of the box stuffed full) of apps. From Twitter and Google Maps, to Rocket Man and Instagram, apps are the route by which a staggering amount of information in our world is mediated and packaged for our use.
But having a phone in your pocket with instant access fosters an intimate relationship with the apps in your life. Emotions come into play — we have apps that reassure us that we’re not lost, that we’re ever closer to becoming fluent in Dutch, that everyone around us is trying to catch Pokémon too, so we must be cool. Jesse Barron of Real Lifehas analyzed this heretofore uncomplicated intimacy, in a piece that takes Silicon Valley to task for the infantilizing virtual relationship with our most closely trusted apps.
Barron’s analysis begins as a screed against Seamless, which rolled out a New-York-City-specific ad campaign that used a “cool babysitter” tone to convince users to basically abandon their autonomy and social relationships, in favour of using their app to order restaurant food for delivery. Barron then began to see a tonal trend in other apps, like Yelp, Lyft, and Uber, where the modus operandi favoured the cutesy over the slick, the brightly coloured over the sleek monochrome, and the mascot-laden over the utilitarian.
On first assessment, this trend towards soothingly cute app experiences can be seen as a “demand-side” phenomenon: in today’s uncertain times, nervous users just want to be coddled and made to feel as secure as they were when they were children.
But Barron does not believe this theory holds water. He posits that the power in this relationship emanates from the Silicon Valley development offices where these apps are born, and it is wielded to a very specific purpose — to eventually make the giving up of personal information for the purposes of monetization so innocuous-seeming that it becomes unremarkable.
“There is no better example of cuteness applied in the service of power-concealment than Pokémon Go, which is a large data-collection and surveillance network devised by the former Google Earth engineers at Niantic and then candy-coated with Nintendo IP. The privacy policy — unlocking the door to your profile information, geodata, camera, and in some cases emails — is so disturbing that it has set off alarms even in the tech world. […]
I would bet that Pokémon and similar games will ultimately allow corporations to collect real-time photographic data on almost anything they want, anywhere in the world. An investment bank wants to put money into McDonald’s, but the rumor is that third-quarter earnings will be weak. Ten thousand Pikachus appear in ten thousand restaurants, luring customers in to serve as unwitting spies on the success of the entire chain in real time. The privacy agreement allows Niantic Labs to snap a photo of what the user thinks is a Pikachu but Niantic knows is $500,000 worth of market research. Now imagine the client is a police chief, or the Department of Homeland Security.”
The philosophical and moral position this puts us in as users is deeply interesting — not only have we internalized the fallacy that it is our needs driving the sickly-sweetening of our online lives, but that anyone who objects to it is against fun, openness, and joy — which is what these apps purport to foster. Can we continue to live online lives where an app’s cheery helpfulness is what makes it suspect?
This week, scientists are looking to the sea and its citizens again for a new human tech innovation.
We recently investigated the new invention of self-repairing fabric, which uses a polymer derived from squid sucker teeth to “heal” torn fabric without sewing. Now, a team out of the University of Connecticut has turned to squid and jellyfish skin for inspiration, developing a material that could obscure secret messages — and self-destruct after reading!
The researchers used man-made materials to mimic what happens when squid and jellyfish do to their skin to scare predators: Jellyfish wrinkle their skin to become opaque; and squid contract the muscles around their chromatophores (that is, the pigment sacs in the skin), revealing colours that may shock their predators into losing their appetite.
“Skin was replicated by placing a thin film of polyvinyl alcohol on a rubbery base of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). If it was wrinkled, for example, it would be opaque. When it was flattened out or if moisture was added, it would become transparent and expose a message.
Researchers added that the degree of crosslinking between polymer chains in the film could indicate whether the wrinkling was reversible. When there’s little or no crosslinking, it can only be smoothed out once, which can ‘self-destruct’ a message after reading.”
There could be other, non-spycraft-related applications for this innovation: if the crosslinking is to such a degree that the wrinkles can never be unwrinkled, a small patch of the material inside, say, a cellphone, could act as a “tell” to a vendor that a customer dropped the phone into a puddle — thus voiding the warranty.
It’s the result of our unfortunate bias as land animals that we have only begun to understand the wonderful functions of the humble squid, so I’m looking forward to “collaborations” between our species to come. I only hope we can offer something — being a human seems much less impressive now…!
Now, I’m as suspicious as anyone of the chip-in-our-brain future we seem to be careening towards. But I’m still fascinated by the wealth of applications of this new innovation from UC Berkeley: “neural dust.” While definitely not chips, these incredibly tiny, battery-less sensors could be implanted deep within the body, to transmit information about nerves, muscles, and other components. At the moment, researchers have tested the concept in rats, and are very excited about the huge leap represented by this technology, which is:
“unique in that ultrasound is used both to power and read out the measurements. Ultrasound technology is already well-developed for hospital use, and ultrasound vibrations can penetrate nearly anywhere in the body, unlike radio waves, the researchers say.
‘I think the long-term prospects for neural dust are not only within nerves and the brain, but much broader,’ said Michel Maharbiz, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and one of the study’s two main authors. ‘Having access to in-body telemetry has never been possible because there has been no way to put something supertiny superdeep. But now I can take a speck of nothing and park it next to a nerve or organ, your GI tract or a muscle, and read out the data.’”
Having something that low profile in our healthcare arsenal could mean greater accessibility for untold amounts of information and therapies. Once the technology is miniaturized enough, neural dust could be used to control prosthetics, suppress appetite, or even monitor hormone levels. (“Neural dust” does sound a little mystical too — thus proving Arthur C. Clarke’s third law?
Scientists have made yet another real-world connection between human physical health and the state of the microbes that live in and on our bodies, and tag along for the ride our entire lives.
This time, a team out of the University of Chicago sought to investigate why the Amish population in the United States experiences half the national average rates of asthma. As a comparison, they also studied culturally and genetically similar Hutterite communities, where asthma is 75% more prevalent than in the Amish.
The primary difference between the Amish and their more asthmatic counterparts was found to be the presence of cows. While the greater US population, as well as the Hutterite communities, has moved towards machines for their transport and farming use, the Amish still rely on draft animals — oxen, and horses. This means that Amish babies and children are exposed to a unique combination of microbes in their daily lives, which lead them to become asthma-resistant adults. The researchers proved this with the help of another animal: mice!
“The study […] recruited 30 Amish children from Indiana, [and] 30 Hutterite children from South Dakota. […]
[R]esearchers descended on both communities, taking blood tests, sampling the air and drawing up detailed maps of the microbes in both Hutterite and Amish homes.
The first clue was blood tests showing that the Amish children had much more robust immune systems than the Hutterites. For instance, the Amish carried a higher rate of neutrophils, a type of disease-fighting white blood cell.
Then, researchers gathered dust from Hutterite and Amish homes and exposed it to lab mice.
The mice hit with Hutterite dust were relatively unaffected, but the Amish-dusted mice soon became noticeably resilient to allergens.”
The researchers hope to harness (no pun intended!) the healthful effect that cow microbes have on mice and humans, to create an inoculation for those unlucky enough to live away from our bovine friends. I, however, will continue to try to lure my neighbours over to the fence for a quick hit of microbes every once in a while.
With Vogue’s much-storied September issue hitting newsstands right now, I have been inspired to pay more attention to the art of fashion. It’s hard to do way out in the glorious woods where we at DFC live and work; out here, with the ticks and the flies
The neat thing about this is that the fabric itself is not some kind of space-age material: the researchers developed a polyelectrolyte coating that can be applied to any fiber, thus keeping costs low. When that fiber is dipped in water, the coating activates, and torn pieces can simply be pressed together to effect the repair.
And, enzymes can be impregnated into the coating as well. This would protect the wearer from pesticides, biological weapons, or toxic spills, depending on the enzymes used. The garment thus becomes a protective suit!
“Many toxic substances can be absorbed through the skin. Organophosphates, for example, which are used as herbicides and insecticides are absorbed through the skin and can be lethal. Some of these chemicals have also been used as nerve agents. A garment coated with a self-healing film containing an organophosphate hydrolase, an enzyme that breaks down the toxic material, could limit exposure. The squid ring teeth polymer is self-healing in the presence of water, so laundering would repair micro and macro defects in the coating, making the garments rewearable and reusable.”
In addition to making workplaces safer, and fashion more durable, this technology could find applications in the medical field, assisting with wound healing processes. The folks at Penn State will keep working on this innovation; until then, I look forward to the day I will never have to go clothes shopping again!
Over the past several years, 3D printing has gone from theory, to fun novelty, to possible threat. Now, the concept is being used as a medical game changer – helping several patients with unique facial prosthetic needs.
The first such patient was Shirley Anderson, an Indiana man who lost his jaw and Adam’s apple to treatment for an aggressive tongue cancer. Living life without a chin was difficult; an attempt by Dr. Travis Bellicchi, of the Indiana University School of Dentistry, to reconstruct his jaw using his own tissue didn’t take, and traditional prosthetics proved too heavy and unrealistic-looking.
Enter Professor Zebulun Wood, an IU coworker of Dr. Bellicchi’s at the School of Informatics and Computing, specializing in, among other subjects, 3D printing. Prof. Wood saw a way to use technology to not only create a lighter, more streamlined facial prosthesis for Shirley Anderson, but to avoid the labour and wait times required by traditional sculpting.
“For Shirley’s new prosthesis, instead of the uncomfortable impression process, they created what they call a ‘virtual patient’ — a digital model of Shirley’s face using CT scan data to capture bone detail, overlaid with a 3D facial scan. Dr. Bellicchi watched in amazement as Cade Jacobs, an IU student, designed a prosthesis in ZBrush 3D sculpting software in a fraction of the time it would have taken to sculpt it in clay.
The team used Formlabs 3D printers to turn the digital sculpt into a 3D printed mold, ready to cast for the final prosthesis. […]
The new 3D printed mold has a number of improvements on the original. It looks more realistic and is much lighter and more breathable so that Shirley feels comfortable wearing it for a longer period of time. The new prosthesis also has a ‘feather-edge margin’ around the outside, a tapered silicone edge that creates a more natural break.”
Shirley now has a new prosthesis that allows him to go about his public life seamlessly and in comfort, and IU has the bragging rights for having invented a faster, more helpful method for creating these important medical devices! It has been dubbed “The Shirley Technique” in dedication; the team has already expanded their patient pool to several others, and is actively seeking more.
Back in 2012, before I moved to Eastern Ontario and started to get back into playing music, we profiled a special project in this blog: Music & Memory, which gifted donated iPods filled with personalized music to people in nursing homes experiencing dementia. 
The change in the recipients was astonishing: listening to the music of their prime had the effect of unlocking their memories and bringing them back to their minds; to quote Dr. Oliver Sacks, it “return[ed] them to themselves.” (The Music & Memory project continues and has only grown bigger! Go here for more info and how to get involved.)
Another benefit of music to our aging selves has just been discovered: it may help alleviate hearing loss. According to Dr. Benjamin Zendel of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, quoted in a recent webisode of InstruMental, age-related hearing loss is actually part physical and part cognitive. It’s the latter half that we have control over — and can improve — specifically by musical training.
Dr. Zendel states that, in addition to our experiencing the cilia death that begins to limit the sounds we can physically hear as we age, our brains also start to have difficulty organizing the sounds that are still detectable. The establishment is still figuring out why the training — i.e. learning an instrument or performance technique — has the effect it does, “[b]ut it seems that musical training protects against that part of hearing loss. It keeps the brain organizing sound at a higher level, the same way that a young person would do it.”
There is much research into the effect singing has on learning and thought already so I imagine its only a matter of time before the connection between musical training and hearing strength is fully understood.
In the meantime, I’m going to continue practicing my viola, and hedging my bets! But let’s not use this as an excuse to shred our eardrums at a live concert, standing too close to the stage to watch the lead guitarist’s technique to apply at home. Then, training or no, we’ll all be pretty well sunk!
As I write this, we are experiencing a heat wave in most of Ontario. With temperatures hitting around 40°C (with humidex), it’s way too hot to even think about wearing something like leather!
But, if you do manage to bypass that particular mental block when considering this week’s topic, you may find another one waiting for you. Fashion student Tina Gorjanc has created a line of clothing and accessories – called “Pure Human” – that she presents as being made from the cloned skin of late designer Alexander McQueen.
The collection is inspired by McQueen’s own physical foray into his design work: when he graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, as Gorjanc is doing now, his first collection featured locks of his hair sewn into the garments’ labels. Gorjanc’s collection is currently a thought experiment – the pieces are actually made out of pig skin, with freckles and McQueen’s tattoos carefully copied for verisimilitude. But, she remains committed to one day cloning “hide” out of the follicles of McQueen’s hair, having made contact with both a lab willing to culture the skin, and the owner of one of the hair-endowed pieces from McQueen’s first collection, which can provide the “seed”.
Gorjanc is including a political complication in this artistic endeavour as well, presenting Pure Human as
“An exploration of the intersection between luxury and biology. […] Skin related biotechnologies seem to have caught the interest of the luxury industry. Major fashion and cosmetic companies have already signed research collaboration agreement[s] with bioengineering institutes. Those collaborations are enabling the development of existing skin technologies that were firstly designed for specific medical problems into enhancement of normal human functions and the extension of one’s self beyond its body. […] The [Pure Human] project is projecting the shift that is happening in the field of ethics and security regarding the tissue engineering technologies.”
To me, the collection seems the right kind of creepy — the uncanny kind that allows us to have critical distance from something so “homelike” as human skin (after all, we’re all covered in it!) and lets us see the darker, societal repercussions underneath. I look forward to the weather cooling, if only to see if it is just the heat weirding me out about this project!
Call it confirmation bias, but it seems like nearly everything we investigate in these blogs circles back to that good old microbiome!
Everyone’s favourite bacterial colony (that actually makes up about 90% of, well, everybody) is just starting to be studied in real depth. As we become aware that the health of the bacteria that live in us and on us is closely related to our health, we’re starting to trace solutions to previously mysterious problems. Researchers from Cornell University have found in the state of subjects’ microbiomes a possible source for the pernicious and inscrutable Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In a recent study published in the Journal Microbiome, they lay out their findings:
“‘Our work demonstrates that the gut bacterial microbiome in chronic fatigue syndrome patients isn’t normal, perhaps leading to gastrointestinal and inflammatory symptoms in victims of the disease,’ said Maureen Hanson, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell and the paper’s senior author. ‘Furthermore, our detection of a biological abnormality provides further evidence against the ridiculous concept that the disease is psychological in origin.’”
While still far from a smoking gun as to the source of CFS, the team is confident that narrowing it down to somewhere in the miocrobiome can only mean that we’re getting closer to full understanding of a condition that defies pinning down, and is estimated to affect up to 3% of the world’s population. And, if we can solve this mystery, who knows what else we can uncover in the depths of the bacteria colonies that call our bodies home?
There are some amazing things happening at the genetic level nowadays – beyond the usual, controversial, modifications to increase crop yield, or make plants glow. Researchers have now devised a method to rewrite the DNA of living bacteria, encoding information into them like mini microscopic hard drives.
This feat was accomplished through the use of CRISPR, a defense mechanism present in many kinds of bacteria, which records the genes of invading viruses in order torecognize them when they attack again.This talent has been handily repurposed into what is being called a “genome editing tool:”
“‘We write the information directly into the genome,’ [co-author Jeff Nivala, part of the team from Harvard, said. ‘While the overall amount of DNA data we have currently stored within a genome is relatively small compared to the completely synthetic DNA data storage systems, we think genome-based information storage has many potential advantages.” These advantages, he says, could include higher fidelity and the capability to directly interface with biology. For example, a bacterium could be taught to recognize, provide information, and even kill other microorganisms in its midst, or provide a record of genetic expression.
‘Depending on how you calculate it, we stored between about 30 to 100 bytes of information,’ said Nivala. ‘Which is quite high compared to the previous record set within a living cell, which was ~11 bits.’”
While these results had been achieved with the above-mentioned earlier experiment, the DNA and encoding were manufactured, rather than modified from their natural state. In this new experiment, importantly, this edited information appears to be inheritable to the next generation. This could bode very well, not only as an information storage solution, but also for the understanding of genetic disorders in creatures great and small!