What will be next? And an amazing cat....

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."—C.S. Lewis
Airports Could Get Mind-Reading Scanners
Bill Christensen, technovelgy.com, Jan 29, 2010
Israeli company, WeCU Technologies is building a mind-reading scanner that can tell if a given traveler is a potential danger—without the subject's knowledge. WeCU Technologies (pronounced "we see you") is creating a system that would essentially turn the public spaces in airports into vast screening grounds:
"The system ... projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, company CEO Ehud Givon said.
"The logic is that people can't help reacting, even if only subtly, to familiar images that suddenly appear in unfamiliar places. If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, Givon explained, you couldn't help but respond.
"The reaction could be a darting of the eyes, an increased heartbeat, a nervous twitch or faster breathing, he said. The WeCU system would use humans to do some of the observing but would rely mostly on hidden cameras or covert biometric sensors that can detect a slight rise in body temperature and heart rate," as reported in Raw Story.
Science fiction writers have been playing with the idea of mind-reading machines for a long time. For example, you may recall the Veridicator from H. Beam Piper's 1962 novel Little Fuzzy:
"There was a bright conical helmet on his head, and electrodes had been clamped to various portions of his anatomy. On the wall behind him was a circular screen which ought to have been a calm turquoise blue, but which was flickering from dark blue through violet to mauve. That was simple nervous tension and guilt and anger at the humiliation of being subjected to veridicated interrogation. "
More recently, the Farscape science fiction series introduced the Aurora Chair, which was designed to extract information more efficiently than conventional interrogation methods. "The chair" is employed throughout the Peacekeeper military is believed one of the most effective means of gaining information from unwilling subjects. The chair can painfully sort through its subject's memories, pushing farther and harder depending on the setting. It is designed to sort through and uncover the mind's "layers".
Hopefully, the TSA won't start sponsoring research into Aurora Chair technology...
Book profiles furry angel of death: Oscar the cat
By Ray Henry, AP, Jan 31, 2010
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)—The scientist in Dr. David Dosa was skeptical when first told that Oscar, an aloof cat kept by a nursing home, regularly predicted patients' deaths by snuggling alongside them in their final hours.
Dosa's doubts eroded after he and his colleagues tallied about 50 correct calls made by Oscar over five years, a process he explains in a book released this week, "Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat." (Hyperion, $23.99) The feline's bizarre talent astounds Dosa, but he finds Oscar's real worth in his fierce insistence on being present when others turn away from life's most uncomfortable topic: death.
"People actually were taking great comfort in this idea, that this animal was there and might be there when their loved ones eventually pass," Dosa said. "He was there when they couldn't be."
Dosa, 37, a geriatrician and professor at Brown University, works on the third floor of the Steere House, which treats patients with severe dementia. It's usually the last stop for people so ill they cannot speak, recognize their spouses and spend their days lost in fragments of memory.
He once feared that families would be horrified by the furry grim reaper, especially after Dosa made Oscar famous in a 2007 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine. Instead, he says many caregivers consider Oscar a comforting presence, and some have praised him in newspaper death notices and eulogies.
The nursing home adopted Oscar, a medium-haired cat with a gray-and-brown back and white belly, in 2005 because its staff thinks pets make the Steere House a home. They play with visiting children and prove a welcome distraction for patients and doctors alike.
After a year, the staff noticed that Oscar would spend his days pacing from room to room. He sniffed and looked at the patients but rarely spent much time with anyone—except when they had just hours to live.
He's accurate enough that the staff—including Dosa—know it's time to call family members when Oscar stretches beside their patients, who are generally too ill to notice his presence. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, he'll scratch at doors and walls, trying to get in.
Nurses once placed Oscar in the bed of a patient they thought gravely ill.
Oscar wouldn't stay put, and the staff thought his streak was broken.
Turns out, the medical professionals were wrong, and the patient rallied for two days. But in the final hours, Oscar held his bedside vigil without prompting.