CNN tells the story of a new medical breakthrough for Keven Walgamott, who 17 years ago lost one hand and part of his forearm in an electrical accident.

Now, Walgamott can use his thoughts to tell the fingers of his bionic hand to pick up eggs and grapes. The prosthetic arm he tested also allowed Walgamott to feel the objects he grasped. A biomedical engineering team at the University of Utah created the “LUKE Arm,” named in honor of the robotic hand Luke Skywalker obtains in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” after Darth Vader slices off his hand with a lightsaber.
A new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics explained how the arm revived the sensation of touch for Walgamott. The University of Chicago and the Cleveland Clinic were also involved in the study… The LUKE Arm sends signals to the brain in order to mimic the way a human hand can feel and sense information about an object, like whether it’s soft, hard, lightweight or heavy. “We changed the way we are sending that information to the brain so that it matches the human body…” said Jacob George, study author and biomedical engineering doctoral student at the University of Utah. “We’re making more biologically realistic signals…”

Utah Emeritus Distinguished Professor Richard A. Normann invented the Utah Slanted Electrode Array, a grouping of 100 microelectrodes and wires implanted in the forearm’s nerves and connected to an external computer. The array was able to read signals from the nerves remaining in Walgamott’s arm while the computer converted them into digital signals. The signals would act like messages for the arm to move. But in order to be successful, things would have to work the opposite way as well, meaning the LUKE Arm would need to be able to sense objects and understand the necessary pressure needed to hold them. Sensors in the hand of the LUKE Arm send signals through the Array to the existing nerves, communicating the feeling the hand should be receiving when it touches something.

Created by DEKA R&D (founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen), the LUKE arm “was in development for 15 years and is composed of metal motors with a clear silicon overlay that mimics skin,” the article points out.

While it currently draws power from an external battery (and is wired to a computer), they’re working on creating a wireless version.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Luke Skywalker-Inspired Prosthetic Arm Lets Amputee Feel Objects Again

An activism director and a legislative analyst at the EFF have co-authored an essay arguing that the key to children’s safetly online “is user empowerment, not censorship,” reporting on a recent hearing by the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Commitee:

While children do face problems online, some committee members seemed bent on using those problems as an excuse to censor the Internet and undermine the legal protections for free expression that we all rely on, including kids. Don’t censor users; empower them to choose… [W]hen lawmakers give online platforms the impossible task of ensuring that every post meets a certain standard, those companies have little choice but to over-censor.

During the hearing, Stephen Balkam of the Family Online Safety Institute provided an astute counterpoint to the calls for a more highly filtered Internet, calling to move the discussion “from protection to empowerment.” In other words, tech companies ought to give users more control over their online experience rather than forcing all of their users into an increasingly sanitized web. We agree.

It’s foolish to think that one set of standards would be appropriate for all children, let alone all Internet users. But today, social media companies frequently make censorship decisions that affect everyone. Instead, companies should empower users to make their own decisions about what they see online by letting them calibrate and customize the content filtering methods those companies use. Furthermore, tech and media companies shouldn’t abuse copyright and other laws to prevent third parties from offering customization options to people who want them.

The essay also argues that Congress “should closely examine companies whose business models rely on collecting, using, and selling children’s personal information…”

“We’ve highlighted numerous examples of students effectively being forced to share data with Google through the free or low-cost cloud services and Chromebooks it provides to cash-strapped schools. We filed a complaint with the FTC in 2015 asking it to investigate Google’s student data practices, but the agency never responded.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – EFF Argues For ‘Empowerment, Not Censorship’ Online