Steven Novella

Now this is not the first time that they've developed fabric that has this phase change property for thermal management, but the previous versions were stiff and sometimes they leaked on the wearer and that's not good.

You don't want the shirt melting on you, you know what I mean?

So what they did was they developed these synthetic fibers and they sort of made them really fluffy like cotton so that it would maintain its flexibility.

They're also completely water resistant.

They do not absorb water at all.

And then they embedded within them these phase change aerogel materials that would alter the property of the fabric in whole depending on the temperature.

So they're really insulating, really, really, really good insulators.

But at room temperature, that strong insulation property goes away and they become more phase- Cool, man.

More heat-releasing.

Yeah, pretty cool.

Again, I don't know if this is commercializable, but it's a pretty cool proof of concept.

Wow.

Well, let's talk about this.

So neuroscientists at the University of Michigan have developed an implantable wireless brain-computer interface that allows subjects with aphasia due to damage to their speech areas regain functional speech.

This one is the fiction, but the first half of that sentence is correct.

Neurosurgeons at University of Michigan have implanted a wireless brain-computer interface into a subject.

They've been developing this technology.

They have an external part of the device that is what it wirelessly communicates to.

And what they're going for is to help patients who can't speak, but not because they're aphasic and not because of damage to their speech errors, because Bob is exactly right.

That's like way more complicated than we could do right now.