Lifeboat Foundation

Can we connect human brains together? What are the limits of what we can do with our brain? Is BrainNet our future?
In science fiction movies, scientists’ brains are downloaded into computers and criminal brains are connected to the Internet. Interesting, but how does it work in real life?
Original title: The greedy brain.
Scientific journalist Rob van Hattum wondered what information we can truly get from our brain and came across an extraordinary scientific experience.
An experiment where the brains of two rats were directly connected: one rat was in the United States and the other rat was in Brazil. They could influence the brain of the other directly. Miguel Nicolelis is the Brazilian neurologist who conducted this experiment. In his book ‘Beyond Boundaries’ he describes his special experiences in detail and predicts that it should be possible to create a kind of BrainNet.
For Backlight, Rob van Hattum went to Sao Paulo and also visited all Dutch neuroscientists, looking for what the future holds for our brain. He connected his own brain to computers and let it completely be scanned, searching for the limits of reading out the brain.
Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2014.
© VPRO Backlight July 2014

On VPRO broadcast you will find nonfiction videos with English subtitles, French subtitles and Spanish subtitles, such as documentaries, short interviews and documentary series.
VPRO Documentary publishes one new subtitled documentary about current affairs, finance, sustainability, climate change or politics every week. We research subjects like politics, world economy, society and science with experts and try to grasp the essence of prominent trends and developments.

Continue reading “Connecting Brains: The BrainNet — VPRO documentary” »

Researchers at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna recently devised a universal mechanism to invert the evolution of a qubit with a high probability of success. This protocol, outlined in Physical Review Letters, can propagate any target qubit back to the state it was in at a specific time in the past.

The introduction of this protocol builds on a previous paper published in 2020, where the same team presented a series of time translating protocols that could be applied in uncontrolled settings. While some of these protocols were promising, in most tested scenarios their probability of success was found to be too small. In their new study, the researchers thus set out to create an alternative protocol with a higher probability of success.

“Our newly developed protocol inverts the unitary evolution of a qubit,” David Trillo, one of the researchers who carried out the study together with Benjamin Dive and Miguel Navascués, told Phys.org. “A qubit (or quantum bit) is a two-level quantum system that serves as the quantum equivalent of bits used in quantum computers. Any quantum system has some natural evolution in time that needs to be controlled or at least accounted for when designing physical processes around them (e.g., when building a quantum computer). Our protocol takes a qubit and outputs the same system, but in the state that it would be in if it had evolved backwards in time.”

Quantum computing promises to be a revolutionary tool, making short work of equations that classical computers would struggle to ever complete. Yet the workhorse of the quantum device, known as a qubit, is a delicate object prone to collapsing.

Keeping enough qubits in their ideal state long enough for computations has so far proved a challenge.

In a new experiment, scientists were able to keep a qubit in that state for twice as long as normal. Along the way, they demonstrated the practicality of quantum error correction (QEC), a process that keeps quantum information intact for longer by introducing room for redundancy and error removal.

Magnetic spin excitations can combine with photons to produce exotic particles that emit laser-like microwaves.

One of the challenges for building systems for quantum computing and communications has been the lack of laser-like microwave sources that produce sufficient power but don’t require extreme cooling. Now a research team has demonstrated a new room-temperature technique for making coherent microwave radiation—the kind that comes from a laser [1]. The device exploits the interaction of a magnetic material with electromagnetic fields. The researchers expect that the work will lead to microwave sources that can be built into chips employed in future quantum devices.

The devices that store quantum bits for quantum computers often require microwave signals to input and retrieve data, so lasers operating at microwave frequencies (masers)—and other sources of coherent microwaves—could be very useful. But even though masers were invented before lasers, most maser technologies work only at ultracold temperatures. A 2018 design works at room temperature but doesn’t produce very much power [2].

After almost a decade, Google have finally managed to develop a file sharing function like Apple’s AirDrop. Called Nearby Share, here’s how your use it.

Whatever your opinion about which operating system is the best, iOS has had one major advantage over Android and Windows for some time, its AirDrop feature. In fact, for more than a decade, AirDrop has been a source of pride for Apple users and a cause of resentment for many who desire an easy way to share files between Windows and Android.

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A quantum computational solution for engineering materials. Researchers at Argonne explore the possibility of solving the electronic structures of complex molecules using a quantum computer. If you know the atoms that compose a particular molecule or solid material, the interactions between those atoms can be determined computationally, by solving quantum mechanical equations — at least, if the molecule is small and simple. However, solving these equations, critical for fields from materials engineering to drug design, requires a prohibitively long computational time for complex molecules and materials.

In an advance they consider a breakthrough in computational chemistry research, University of Wisconsin–Madison chemical engineers have developed model of how catalytic reactions work at the atomic scale. This understanding could allow engineers and chemists to develop more efficient catalysts and tune industrial processes—potentially with enormous energy savings, given that 90% of the products we encounter in our lives are produced, at least partially, via catalysis.

Catalyst materials accelerate chemical reactions without undergoing changes themselves. They are critical for refining petroleum products and for manufacturing pharmaceuticals, plastics, food additives, fertilizers, green fuels, industrial chemicals and much more.

Scientists and engineers have spent decades fine-tuning catalytic reactions—yet because it’s currently impossible to directly observe those reactions at the extreme temperatures and pressures often involved in industrial-scale catalysis, they haven’t known exactly what is taking place on the nano and atomic scales. This new research helps unravel that mystery with potentially major ramifications for industry.

Simulating a wormhole has long been a goal in quantum physics. But current quantum computers don’t have enough qubits to teleport particles.

Samsung Electronics plans to cut back memory chip production as its operating profit in the first quarter of 2023 is expected to plummet about 96% from the previous year. This will be the lowest profit posted by the South Korean tech giant since Q1 2009.

The global macroeconomic slowdown, memory chip oversupply and sluggish demand have hurt its profit, the world’s largest memory chip maker said in its preliminary earnings release on Friday.

“Samsung is adjusting to lower its memory production to a meaningful level,” it noted. Samsung claims to optimize line operations to secure enough memory chip volume for future demand. The tech company added that it will continue to invest in infrastructure and research and development to strengthen its tech leadership in the industry.