Saturday Links and Open Thread

Prosthetic limbs are getting better all the time, but they’re still not able to convey the sense of touch to the user. That’s a serious limitation given just how important touch is for hand use. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a piece of cake or the fork we use to take a bite out of it. A research team led by Robert A. Gaunt from the University of Pittsburgh is the first to develop a system that overcomes this limitation, allowing a paralyzed 28-year-old man to feel objects through a robotic limb.

To make it work, the researchers implanted tiny microelectrode arrays—each about the size of a shirt button—into the primary somatosensory cortex of the patient’s brain—the part of the brain that receives all sensory input from the body. Prior to the surgery, brain scans were used to determine where the patient processes touch in each of his fingers and his palm.

After the surgery, currents were delivered through the electrodes. With the help of a computer, this allowed the patient to experience the sensation of touch through a robotic arm.
http://gizmodo.com/brain-implant-allows-paralyzed-man-to-feel-objects-with-1787800112

Gaius Publius is great. Here is a piece from March on the decline:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/03/gaius-publius-the-goal-of-the-neo-liberal-consensus-is-to-manage-the-decline.html

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/306d6dccce950badb45ae16fccaa9a6c74559687e7285d8b079c78864efcc199.jpg

“This is the conundrum of the current welfare state: For the most part, there isn’t one.”

Some examples:
• TANF, meant to connect women to education and jobs, is set at 1996 funding levels and has a 5-year lifetime limit.

• SNAP, meant to provide food assistance, provides less money than is necessary in most states’ grocery stores, and requires recipients to visit agency offices during work hours.

• EITC, meant to provide low-income families with a cash-infusion big enough for emergencies, comes once a year — so is irrelevant for most emergencies.

The list goes on…

The American Social Safety Net Does Not ExistIn 1996, Aid to Families With Dependent Children—that is, welfare as we knew it—ended. The Republican Party, which had dominated the federal government since the Reagan Revolution, had had welfare in its sights ever since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society expanded antipoverty programs. Liberals and progressives labeled welfare reform one of the worst things President Bill Clinton did, and rightly blamed it for the increase in child poverty that followed.

This is just fucking evil:
D.C. Hivemind Mulls How As Deadline Looms, WikiLeaks Reveals Corporate Demands from the European Union in the Trade in Services Agreement

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/10/15/deadline-looms-wikileaks-reveals-corporate-demands-european-union-trade-services

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/138f7a826605b161a93dd34b4f2986ace445eb89be36b856763af35ccff87ef5.jpg

This is pretty cool if you like that history stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mexNOFv70R8

Virginia Apgar, the Woman Whose Name Saves NewbornsShe was a pioneer in several fields of medicine, helping to establish anesthesiology as a medical specialty, working to study and improve obstetrical anesthesia, and advancing the study of birth defects. She helped organize and administer the first Division of Anesthesia at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, her alma mater, and became the first woman to be a full professor there.

As a teacher of medicine, Apgar was known for her uninhibited sense of humor and could talk about anything without embarrassment. Because her own tailbone was at an odd angle, she would have medical students feel for it to help them learn how to administer spinal anesthetics. She always traveled with a resuscitation kit that included a penknife and an endotracheal tube (a plastic tube inserted into the windpipe to ventilate the lungs). “Nobody, but nobody, is going to stop breathing on me!” she reportedly declared.