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Sep 11, 2023

System combines light and electrons to unlock faster, greener computing

Posted by in categories: particle physics, robotics/AI

Computing is at an inflection point. Moore’s Law, which predicts that the number of transistors on an electronic chip will double about every two years, is slowing down due to the physical limits of fitting more transistors on affordable microchips. Increases in computer power are slowing down as the demand grows for high-performance computers that can support increasingly complex artificial intelligence models.

This inconvenience has led engineers to explore new methods for expanding the computational capabilities of their machines, but a solution remains unclear.

Photonic computing is one potential remedy for the growing computational demands of models. Instead of using transistors and wires, these systems utilize photons (microscopic light particles) to perform computation operations in the analog domain.

Sep 11, 2023

Lumigrids Projects a Laser Grid In Front Of Your Bicycle To See Terrain Changes at Night

Posted by in categories: mapping, transportation

Not everyone uses their bicycle at night, but for those that do, safety is key! You’ve probably already have a bicycle helmet, a bicycle safety light and reflectors, but what about seeing the road/path in front of you. Well, this ingenious invention helps map the terrain changes in front of you while you’re riding. It’s called Lumigrids, and it’s essentially a mini projector that you mount on the front of your bicycle handlebars, and it places a grid of laser lights in front of you, mapping any terrain changes such as bumps, curbs, potholes, and more, to make it easy for you to see and maneuver around them.

The creators of the Lumigrids bicycle grid projection light claims that its an improvement over regular bicycle lights which cast shadows over ridges, bumps, and concaves which make it harder to for the bike rider to react properly to the terrain in front of them. Since the Lumigrids projecting light uses a grid system, it makes it much easier to identify issues with the terrain in front of you whether a spot is concaved, convexed, etc. If lines on the grid don’t line up properly, you’ll know there’s something in front of you.

You can change the settings of the bicycle grid projector to emit a larger or smaller sized grid depending on your needs, including a small grid for single bicycle usage at lower speeds, a higher speed setting for single bicycle usage which emits a larger grid, as well as an extra large grid that measures for use with multiple bikers.

Sep 11, 2023

AI training models will be 1,000x larger in three years

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

If you thought ChatGPT was impressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet…

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman predicts ongoing, exponential progress in LLMs and other generative AI. But the emergence of such powerful technology raises huge ethical and safety concerns.

Continue reading “AI training models will be 1,000x larger in three years” »

Sep 11, 2023

Groundbreaking Quantum Leap: Physicists Turn Schrödinger’s Cat on Its Head

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Researchers from the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Physics, in collaboration with experts from the QOT Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies, have pioneered an innovative technique that allows the fractional Fourier Transform of optical pulses to be performed using quantum memory.

This achievement is unique on the global scale, as the team was the first to present an experimental implementation of the said transformation in this type of system. The results of the research were published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.

Physical Review Letters (PRL) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Physical Society. It is one of the most prestigious and influential journals in physics, with a high impact factor and a reputation for publishing groundbreaking research in all areas of physics, from particle physics to condensed matter physics and beyond. PRL is known for its rigorous standards and short article format, with a maximum length of four pages, making it an important venue for rapid communication of new findings and ideas in the physics community.

Sep 11, 2023

An Immunotherapy Strategy Against All Blood Cancers

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

In the study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers used engineered CAR T cells to target CD45—a surface marker found on nearly all blood cells, including nearly all blood cancer cells. Because CD45 is found on healthy blood cells too, the research team used CRISPR base-editing to develop a method called “epitope editing” to overcome the challenges of an anti-CD45 strategy, which would otherwise result in low blood counts, with potentially life-threating side effects. The early results represent a proof-of-concept for epitope editing, which involves changing a small piece of the target CD45 molecule just enough so that the CAR T cells don’t recognize it, but it… More.


A broad new strategy could hold hope for treating virtually all blood cancers with CAR T cell therapy, which is currently approved for five subtypes of blood cancer. A new preclinical, proof-of-concept study details the “epitope-editing” approach.

Sep 11, 2023

A.I. Sampling and how the Music Industry will change forever

Posted by in categories: media & arts, robotics/AI, transportation

If people remember how sampling changed music, watch what this guys does to make AI music. A long time ago when people said AI will replace musicians, I replied AI is just a sampler. If people use a Tupac voice on a song like this guy did, they just pay royalties. Then with samplers arists made sample disks royalty free. They make money when you buy the sample disk. The same with AI, you just upload your sample disk into your AI, whether the music AI is from Meta or Google. Yeah Meta has music AI, you can see it used here.


Welcome to a showcase of sounds sampled through the power of artificial intelligence. Gone are the days of vinyl digging; now, we embrace prompt digging…

Continue reading “A.I. Sampling and how the Music Industry will change forever” »

Sep 11, 2023

Neuroscientists Identify Brain Mechanism that Drives Focus

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

PHILADELPHIA—Trying to finish your homework while the big game is on TV? “Visual-movement” neurons in the front of your brain can help you stay focused, according to a new study from neuroscientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the study, published recently in Neuron, the scientists sought to illuminate the neural mechanism that helps the brain decide whether to focus visual attention on a rewarding task or an alluring distraction. By analyzing neuron activity in animal models as they faced this kind of attentional conflict, the researchers discovered that a pattern of coordinated activity called “beta bursts” in a set of neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC)—a section in the front of the brain responsible for motivation and rewards—appears to have a major role in keeping attention task-focused, essentially by suppressing the influence of the distracting stimulus.

“Our research suggests that while all brains have the ability to focus on a rewarding task and filter out distractions, some are better at it than others,” said senior author Bijan Pesaran PhD, the Robert A Groff II Professor of Neurosurgery at Penn Medicine. “By understanding how our brains process rewarding stimuli, we hope to be able to also understand failures to do so in a variety of cognitive and psychiatric disorders, including attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

Sep 11, 2023

AI has now learned how to intentionally deceive humans

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

With the emergence of AI, researchers are diving into the capabilities of these large language models, and one researcher has found intent for deception.

Sep 11, 2023

Scientists Build Computer Chips Out of Mushrooms

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

Excitingly, the researchers told New Scientist that if kept out of UV light, the products have the potential to last for a very long time. When it ultimately comes time to sunset the device, the substrate can simply be placed in soil, where it will biodegrade — thus naturally separating from the more recyclable computer components that the substrates hold.

The results have been promising. According to a press release, the material was tested by soldering a standard computer chip into it — and the researchers say the mushroom skin did pretty a solid job. And though it’s not ready for production just yet, the hope is that one day this mycelium material will become the substrate norm for printed circuit boards, flexible electronics, and even some medical devices.

“The prototypes produced are impressive,” Andrew Adamatzky, a computer scientist at the University of the West of England, told New Scientist, “and the results are groundbreaking.”

Sep 11, 2023

A physics-based Ising solver based on standard CMOS technology

Posted by in categories: computing, mapping, quantum physics

Quantum computers, systems that perform computations by exploiting quantum mechanics phenomena, could help to efficiently tackle several complex tasks, including so-called combinatorial optimization problems. These are problems that entail identifying the optimal combination of variables among several options and under a series of constraints.

Quantum computers that can tackle these problems should be based on reliable hardware systems, which have an intricate all-to-all node connectivity. This connectivity ultimately allows representing arbitrary dimensions of a problem to be directly mapped onto the .

Researchers at University of Minnesota recently developed a new electronic device based on standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology that could support this crucial mapping process. This device, introduced in a paper in Nature Electronics, is a physics-based Ising solver comprised of coupled ring oscillators and an all-to-all node connected architecture.