Mind-Reading May Be Reality Soon

By looking only at maps of electrical activity in the human brain, scientists were able to tell which words a person was listening to. The discovery is a major step toward being able to “hear” the thoughts of people who can’t speak.

"If someone was completely paralyzed, or if a patient had locked-in syndrome with no movement, but the brain was still active and we could understand it well enough, we could develop devices to take advantage of that and restore communication," said Brian Pasley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

"It's still very early," he added. "And a lot of work still needs to be done."

For decades, scientists have been trying to understand how our brains manage to process audible sounds and extract abstract meaning from words and sentences. As part of that effort, lots of work on animals has helped narrow in on the brain regions involved in hearing and responding to sounds.

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To see how those findings might be applicable in people, Pasley and colleagues enlisted the help of 15 patients with epilepsy or brain tumors who had electrodes attached to the surface of their brains in order to map out the source of their seizures. With electrodes in place, participants listened to about 50 different speech sounds in the form of sentences and words, both real and fake, such as "jazz," "peace," "Waldo," "fook' and "nim."

After mapping out the brain's electrical responses to each sound, the research team found that they could predict which of two sounds from the study set the brain was responding to, and they could do it with about 90 percent accuracy

LG Optimus Sol (LG E730)

The "Sol" in the phone's name means "Sun". In order to make the Optimus Sol visible in sunny conditions, the handset has what LG call an "Ultra AMOLED" display. This 3.8" 800 x 480 pixel panel is the latest iteration of AMOLED technology, and since LG have a strong reputation in display technologies then there's a good chance that it will be every bit as good as they say.

Unlike the not very popular Optimus 3D, the Optimus Sol does seem to address a real market. If you try to use a standard TFT LCD display outdoors then the ambient light does wash it out and make it difficult to read, but even AMOLED displays suffer somewhat when the sun is really bright. Electronic paper displays, such as those found in the Amazon Kindle and Motorola FONE work very well in sunlight, but they are useless in the dark. AMOLED based displays seem to offer the best compromise in these situations.

One side effect of the different technologies is the different power drain characteristics. TFT displays always draw the same amount of power from the battery, no matter what is displayed. AMOLED screens draw more power from the battery when they are brighter and much less when darker, so LG are shipping the Optimus Sol with a specially designed dark UI to maximise battery life.Display aside, this is a fairly typical upper midrange Android smartphone with a 1GHz single core CPU and 512Mb of RAM, a 5 megapixel primary camera plus a VGA video calling camera, WiFi 802.11 b, g and n connectivity plus 3.5G, DLNA, a media player, FM radio, Bluetooth, GPS, a microSD slot (with 2GB in the box) and all the usual Android features. An NFC variant should also be available, although NFC is not installed as standard. The operating system is Android 2.3 with LG's own Optimus UI on top.

nlike the previous PRADA phones, the LG PRADA 3 (we will call it that for the sake of simplicity) is a fully featured smartphone with a technical specification than can rival some of the best in its class.

The LG PRADA 3 is an Android 2.3 smartphone with a bright 4.3" 480 x 800 pixel display, an 8 megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture and a dual-core dual-channel 1GHz CPU with 1GB of RAM.

The high-end technical specifications are combined with a carefully designed handset that is very much in line with PRADA's design philosophy, plus a unique and very understated user interface that looks distinctly different from other Android devices.

At just 8.5mm thick, the PRADA 3 is a very slim device and some clever trickery by the designers actually makes it appear much thinner. The back of the handset has PRADA's Saffiano pattern on it, and the overall design is quite pleasing although fundamentally this is just another black slabby smartphone.

Samsung Star 3 and Star 3 DUOS

The Star 3 is not a million miles away from last year's Star II or Galaxy Y in terms of features. It's worth pointing out that the Star II though that currently retails for about €80 SIM-free, a lot cheaper than the €120 the Galaxy Y goes for, so we can expect the Star 3 to be under €100 too.

The display is a 3" 240 x 320 pixel panel, on the back is a basic 3.2 megapixel camera. The Star 3 lacks 3G support, but it does come with WiFi and EDGE data instead. There's no GPS and the Star 3 isn't a smartphone, although it does support a range of social media and internet applications.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S

The Xperia Arc is one of the more elegant Android smartphones on the market, and with a large 4.2" 480 x 852 pixel display panel, it has one of the best screens as well. The weak point in the original Xperia Arc was the processor - it launched with a 1GHz single-core CPU just at the point that high-end competitors were switching to dual-core, so this useful update makes the Xperia Arc S much more competitive.Other improvements seem to be mostly software based with access to content from "Music Unlimited" and "Video Unlimited" in certain markets, plus enhancements to the camera and video output and numerous other software tweaks. The operating system is Android 2.3.4.

Sony Tablet S and Sony Tablet P

The Sony Tablet S is a somewhat conventional looking Android tablet, but it is perhaps the Sony Tablet P that will steal the show. The Tablet P comes with two displays with a hinge down the middle, so it folds up like a book, measuring 180 x 79 x 26mm when closed.

This design may seem completely mad when compared to conventional Android tablets, but this approach works well on a much smaller scale with the Nintendo DS. For example, you can use the bottom screen as a game controller while playing the game in the top screen, but obviously this will require a specially written application.The twin displays on the Sony Tablet P are each 5.5" 1024 x 480 pixel panels. Inside is a 1GHz dual-core processor with 512BMB of RAM. The Tablet P ships with Android 3.2 and supports both WiFi and 3.5G connectivity. Internal memory is just 4GB, but the Tablet P also has a microSD slot with a 2GB card in the standard sales package. On the front is a VGA camera for video calling, and on the back is a 5 megapixel primary camera with HD video capture.

Sony Xperia ion Preview

Heading exclusively for the AT&T network in the US, the Xperia ion is presumably a taste of things to come as far as the rest of the world is concerned. And if this is what Sony are offering the world during 2012, then it looks like it could be a very good year.

This is a powerful beast. Inside is a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor. On the front is a 4.6" 720 x 1280 pixel HD display and an HD camera for video recording. On the back of the Xperia ion is a 12 megapixel Exmor-enhanced camera with 1080p HD video capture capabilities. The Xperia ion is a 4G LTE device, one of a number of new 4G devices for AT&T and other US carriers.

Sony Xperia S

The Sony Xperia S is a seriously high-end device, powered by a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor with 1GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in flash memory. The large 4.3" display has 720 x 1280 pixels resolution, giving full 720p HD playback capabilities. On the back is a 12 megapixel camera with 1080p HD video recording, and there is a secondary 1.3 megapixel camera on the front for video calling.

There are lots of Sony enhancements built in to the Xperia S, including an Exmor-R enhanced image sensor, BRAVIA engine enhanced graphics, xLoud and TrackID music enhancements, integration with Sony's entertainment services and the Xperia S is also PlayStation certified.

Other features include an FM radio, HDMI port and of course the Xperia S has all the usual features such as 3.5G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. The Xperia S will ship with Android 2.3, upgradable to Android 4.0 during Q2 2012. The handset is also NFC capable and has a set of optional NFC tags, although quite how useful that will be remains to be seen.

Nokia Asha 200 and Nokia Asha 201

Both devices are Series 40 feature phones rather than smartphones, but they can still download and run simple Java applications, in addition to those applications that are built into the handsets. Pre-installed software includes a web browser, a music player that can cope with MP3 and AAC formats, an email client, social networking support and in some markets the Asha 200 and 201 will support Nokia Life Tools.

The hardware is simple enough - these are dual-band GSM devices with a 2.4" 320 x 240 pixel TFT display, a smallish QWERTY keyboard, a basic 2 megapixel camera with rudimentary video capture capabilities, a stereo FM radio with a 3.5mm audio connector, a microSD slot and Bluetooth. Although the download speeds are limited to EDGE data only, the Nokia Browser is designed to make web browsing much faster on this type of connection

Nokia Asha 303

The Asha 303 is a bit of an oddity, as are several other recent low-cost Nokia devices. Although this isn't a smartphone, it really pushes the limits of what plain old "feature phones" can do. It packs a relatively small 2.6" 240 x 320 pixel touch sensitive display, it has a 1GHz processor inside, and a 3.2 megapixel camera on the back, an FM radio, a media player and a microSD slot plus Bluetooth. This is a 3.5G capable device with WiFi support as well, which is pretty impressive when you consider that it will cost just €115 before tax and subsidy.

This is a Series 40 device, which means that it is nowhere near as flexible as a smartphone when it comes to available software, but it can still download Java applications and perhaps most importantly of all, it comes with a pre-installed version of Angry Birds Lite.