Having tabs in Mozilla’s Thunderbird 3 email client is a nice feature, but for the most part I hardly ever use them. I’ve find that they are bulky and take up a lot of space. Here’s a quick way to disable them:

• Open Thunderbird’s Preferences window (Tools -> Options on Windows, Edit -> Preferences on Linux and Thunderbird -> Preferences on Mac)
• Click on “Advanced”
• Click on the “Config Editor” button (which is under the “General” tab)
• Search for “mail.tabs.autoHide”
• Double-click on the setting so that it becomes “true” (and the font changes to bold)

Enjoy.

In a 2009 article in Nature Nanotechnology, Dr. Seeman shared the results of experiments performed by his lab, along with collaborators at Nanjing University in China, in which scientists built a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them. The device was approximately 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size — over a million could fit in a single red blood cell. Using robust error-correction mechanisms, the device can place DNA molecules with 100% accuracy. Earlier trials had yielded only 60-80% accuracy.

The nanorobotic arm is built out of DNA origami: large strands of DNA gently encouraged to fold in precise ways by interaction with a few hundred short DNA strands. The products, around 100 nanometers in diameter, are eight times larger and three times more complex than what could be built with a simple crystalline DNA array, vastly expanding the space of possible structures. Other nanoscale structures or machines built by Dr. Seeman and his collaborators including a nanoscale walking biped, truncated DNA octahedrons, and sequence-dependent molecular switch arrays. Dr. Seeman has exploited structural features of DNA thought to be used in genetic recombination to operate his nanoscale devices, tapping into the very processes underlying all life.

The advances in DNA nanotechnology keep coming, and many observers are wondering if this will be the path that leads us to the next Industrial Revolution. Only time — and many more experiments — will tell.

Schematics (a) and Atomic Force Micrographs (b) of the Origami Arrays and Capture Molecules. Panel i of (a) illustrates the origami array containing slots for the cassettes and a notch to enable recognition of orientation; the slots and notches are visible in the AFM in (b). Panels ii show the cassettes in place; the color coding in (a) used throughout the schematics is green for the PX state and violet for the JX2 state; the presence of the cassettes is evident in the AFM image in (b). Panels iii illustrate the PX-PX state which captures a triangle pointing towards the notch in the schematic (a) and in the AFM image (b). Panels iv illustrate the PX-JX2 state (a), containing a triangle that points away from the notch, which is evident in the AFM image (b). Panels v illustrate the JX2- PX state which captures a diamond-shaped molecule (a); its shape is visible in the AFM image (b). Panels vi show the linear molecule captured by the JX2-JX2 state, both schematically (a) and in the AFM image (b).

via Nanoscale: Robot Arm Places Atoms and Molecules With 100% Accuracy | h+ Magazine.

A brain wave study presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society shows that people with electrodes in their brains can “type” (input data into a computer) using just their minds. Neurologist Jerry Shih, M.D. Shih and other Mayo Clinic researchers worked with Dean Krusienski, Ph.D., from the University of North Florida in an experiment involving two patients with epilepsy. Both patients were already being monitored for seizure activity using electrocorticography (ECoG), in which a sheet of electrodes is laid directly on the surface of the brain. This procedure requires a craniotomy, a surgical incision into the skull. Dr. Shih and colleagues hypothesized that feedback from electrodes placed directly on the brain would be much more specific than data collected with EEG (electroencephalography) alone, in which electrodes are placed on the scalp. Most studies of mind-machine interaction have occurred with EEG. “There is a big difference in the quality of information you get from ECoG compared to EEG. The scalp and bony skull diffuses and distorts the signal, rather like how the Earth’s atmosphere blurs the light from stars,” says Dr. Shih. “That’s why progress to date on developing these kinds of mind interfaces has been slow.”

Dr. Shih’s patients at the Mayo Clinic were asked to look at a computer screen containing a 6-by-6 matrix with a single alphanumeric character inside each square. Every time the square with a certain letter flashed, the patient focused on it and a computer application recorded the brain’s response to the flashing letter. The computer software calibrated the system with the individual patient’s specific brain wave patterns. When the patient then focused on a letter, the letter appeared on the screen. “We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy,” Shih explains. “While this is comparable to other researchers’ results with EEGs, this approach is more localized and can potentially provide a faster communication rate.”

In addition to the ability to “mind read” vowels, consonants, and individual letters, brain wave applications also include algorithms to turn brain waves into music and even “tweeting” (using the popular Twitter Internet application) by thought alone. Brain music therapy is a form of neurofeedback using EEG based on a variable ratio of fast and slow rhythms –- it can be used to turn a person’s brain waves into music notes using a computerized mathematical formula. Dr. Galina Mindlin, a neuropsychiatrist with the Brain Music Therapy Center in New York City brought this to the U.S. from Moscow in 2006 as a form of entrainment therapy. Interviewed on NBC’s Today Show, she said, “Brain waves are translated into music digitally with a special algorithm. Once the brain waves are converted into musical sounds, they are placed on a CD with a relaxing file and activating file and instructions on how to use them.” What does this mind-machine interface sound like? “It sounds like classical piano music,” says Dr. Mindlin. Here’s a video showing the use of an EEG mind-machine interface to control sampled sound clips on a piano:

Article From: By Thought Alone: Mind Over Keyboard via H+ Magazine

In light of a recent announcement at the 2009 Society for Neuroscience conference in Chicago, “mind reading” has taken another scientific leap forward. Researchers are now able to determine what vowel and consonants a person is thinking of by recording activity from the surface of the brain. Jack Gallant, and colleague Shinji Nishimoto, leading “neural decoders” at the University of California, Berkeley, have produced some of the field’s most impressive results yet.

They showed that they could create a crude reproduction of a movie clip that someone was watching just by viewing their brain activity.

Other neuroscientists claim that such neural decoding can be used to read memories and future plans and even to diagnose eating disorders. These developments are raising concerns about the potential exploitation of “mind reading” technologies by advertisers or oppressive governments. So it’s understandable that researchers are wary of having their work referred to as mind reading. Emphasizing its limitations, they call it neural decoding.

Toyota is developing an advanced brain-sensing system that controls the movement of a wheelchair by reading a user’s thoughts alone.

By detecting and processing brain wave patterns, the system can “propel a wheelchair forward, as well as make turns, with virtually no discernible delay between thought and movement,” according to a recent press release. Rival automaker Honda’s Asimo robot can also be manipulated by detecting brain signals. Honda is exploring the concept that humanoid robots may one day replace home care nurses:

What was once speculative fiction — the ability to read minds and to control the movement of objects using thought alone, sometimes called mind-over-matter –- is rapidly becoming neurotechnological fact.

The upside of this technology will more freedom for the physically impaired –- imagine wheelchair-bound physicist Stephen Hawking able to control his wheelchair and capture and communicate his thoughts and sentences with a neuroheadset. The obvious downside is the potential dystopian nightmare of “thought police” strapping you to a chair to view the contents of your mind and gain a confession.

Article Reposted from H+ Magazine “Mind Reading (Neural Decoding) Goes Mainstream“.