Brain Image Reproduction

Starting a few years ago I began to wonder if it would be possible to record what you saw like a video.  Or keep track of all of the great and fleating thoughts that you had throughout the day, without having to write them all down.  What if you could take an image that you created in your imagination and make it come to life without the need to have great fine motor skills.  That would be great for minds like mine which are creative but forgetful and lack some of the skills required to express or recreate your thoughts and ideas.

Apparently research being conducted in japan at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories is working on solving this problem.  As of right now they can only roughly recreate black and white images viewed by a person.  But maybe the ability to read neurotransmisions and rectreate there significance digitally is not an acheivement that should be prefaced with the preposition “Only”.

More info at: Pink Tentacle

Research Abstract

I recently submitted my first abstract for a materials Conference.  The first conference to which I have submitted the abstract was PACRIM8, hopefully I will still submit the abstract to ACERS and TMS.  below is the current draft of the abstract.  Research as always is continuing and the project develops as time goes on.  Check back for updates, or ask any questions you may have.

Crystallographic Characterization of Rare-Earth Hafnates

Thomas J. Anderson

Dr. Rick Ubic

The nature and degree of disorder in the Ln₂Hf₂O₇ (Ln = La → Lu) series has never been fully quantified. The purpose of this study is to investigate the structure of such pyrohafnates and specifically to determine the degree of both cation and anion disorder, both of which have implications for ionic conductivity. Towards that end, several lanthanide pyrohafnate compounds, Ln₂Hf₂O₇ (Ln = La, Pr, Nd, Tb, Dy, Yb, and Lu), have been synthesized via a solid-state reaction mechanism. The crystal structures were determined by electron diffraction, and Rietveld structural refinements were conducted using neutron diffraction data collected at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. As expected, low-Z lanthanides result in pyrochloric compounds whereas high-Z lanthanides form fully fluoritic ones. Intermediate lanthanides form partially disordered pyrochlores, and some show anionic disorder unconnected to cation disorder. As expected, the fluorite-equivalent cubic lattice constant was found to decrease as Z increases.