Big initiatives to understand the workings of the brain
Neuroscience has a data problem. In our efforts to understand the brain researchers are generating ever greater amounts of data. The problem is, how can they gain meaning from it?
DARPA announces a new type of cryptography to protect the Big Tech firm profits from the dawn of quantum computers and allow backdoor access into 3 trillion internet-connected devices.
by Raul Diego
Continue reading “DARPA Launches Project CHARIOT in Bid to Shield Big Tech Profits” »
Elon Musk’s controversial ‘brain chip’ might be coming to us sooner than we first thought, with the technology entrepreneur promising a working demo by the end of this week.
The news comes a little over a month after Musk announced his latest start-up, Neuralink, was in the process of developing a brain-computer interface that allegedly has a life-changing range of benefits – including the ability to stream music straight into your brain.
Now, Neuralink, which has already received more than $158 million in funding, will be demonstrating a working device this coming Friday, August 28, at approximately 6.00pm ET (11.00pm BST).
Elon Musk’s Neuralink will likely show off its design for a brain-computer interface Friday evening. The concept it unveiled last summer involves surgically implanting it into the brain to detect the activity of neurons. The US military also wants to develop a brain-computer interface, as we explain in this story from October. But here’s the kicker: no surgery required—and the device could be put on and taken off like a helmet or headband.
In August, three graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University were crammed together in a small, windowless basement lab, using a jury-rigged 3D printer frame to zap a slice of mouse brain with electricity.
The brain fragment, cut from the hippocampus, looked like a piece of thinly sliced garlic. It rested on a platform near the center of the contraption. A narrow tube bathed the slice in a solution of salt, glucose, and amino acids. This kept it alive, after a fashion: neurons in the slice continued to fire, allowing the experimenters to gather data. An array of electrodes beneath the slice delivered the electric zaps, while a syringe-like metal probe measured how the neurons reacted. Bright LED lamps illuminated the dish. The setup, to use the lab members’ lingo, was kind of hacky.
Continue reading “The US military is trying to read minds” »
Our kidneys are crucial for keeping us alive and healthy. A sort of chemical computer that keeps our blood chemistry stable—whether we’re eating a sugary birthday cake or a vitamin-filled salad—they prevent waste buildup, stabilize our electrolyte levels, and produce hormones to regulate our blood pressure and make red blood cells.
Kidneys clean our blood using nephrons, which are essentially filters that let fluid and waste products through while blocking blood cells, proteins, and minerals. The latter get reintegrated into the blood, and the former leave the body in urine.
Scientists have struggled to come up with viable treatments for kidney disease and renal failure, and their complexity means kidneys are incredibly hard to synthetically recreate; each kidney contains around one million intricately-structured nephrons.
NEURALINK, ELON MUSK’S HUMAN-BRAIN LINKUP FIRM, WILL HOLD AN EVENT THIS WEEK – and it’s expected to feature a demonstration of the brain’s neurons firing in real-time.
The secretive firm has been relatively quiet since its first public event in July 2019, when Musk and his team explained how the firm plans to use chips to link human brains up to computers. In July 2020, Musk revealed that the company was planning a second event for Friday, August 28. He also reiterated the company’s mission statement: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
Neuralink is set to hold its next event this week. Here’s what you need to know about the human-brain linkup firm’s plans.
Continue reading “Neuralink event: what to know about Elon Musk’s highly-anticipated reveal” »
Clarke urges other companies to also get ready now by investing in developing a quantum-ready workforce. “Quantum computing requires a specialized workforce, expertise that is pretty rare today,” he says. Clarke also advises companies to work with government agencies that are sponsoring quantum computing experiments and to fund quantum research in universities. He also supports nation-wide initiatives to spread the word all the way down the education system, even to high-school students, “so people aren’t scared or intimidated by the word quantum.”
Intel aims to achieve quantum practicality—commercially-viable quantum computing—by the end of this decade.
For the first time, researchers have designed a fully connected 32-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer register operating at cryogenic temperatures. The new system represents an important step toward developing practical quantum computers.
Junki Kim from Duke University will present the new hardware design at the inaugural OSA Quantum 2.0 conference to be co-located as an all-virtual event with OSA Frontiers in Optics and Laser Science APS/DLS (FiO + LS) conference 14—17 September.
Instead of using traditional computer bits that can only be a zero or a one, quantum computers use qubits that can be in a superposition of computational states. This allows quantum computers to solve problems that are too complex for traditional computers.
A trio of researchers has found a way to pick an ordinary physical lock using a smartphone with special software. The three, Soundarya Ramesh, Harini Ramprasad, and Jun Han, gave a talk at a workshop called HotMobile 2020 at this year’s International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, outlining their work.
With traditional locks, such as those found on the front doors of most homes, a person inserts the proper (metal) key and then turns it. Doing so pushes up a series of pins in the lock by a certain amount based on the ridges on the key. When the pins are pushed in a way that matches a preset condition, the tumbler can turn, retracting the metal piece of the door assembly from its berth, allowing the door to open. In this new effort, the researchers have found that it is possible to record the sounds made as the key comes into contact with the pins and then as the pins move upward, and use software to recreate the conditions that produce the same noises. Those conditions can be used to fabricate a metal key to unlock the door. The result is a system the team calls SpiKey, which involves use of a smartphone to record lock clicks, decipher them and then create a key signature for use in creating a new metal key.
The researchers acknowledged in their presentation that the weak link in their system is recording the key unlocking the door. Because of its nature, they assume that the recording would have to be done secretly so as to not alert a homeowner that their lock is being picked. They suggest that several possible options for wrongdoers, including walking past while holding a microphone, hiding a microphone nearby, or installing software on the victim’s phone. Each has its own risks, they note, which would minimize the likelihood of run-of-the-mill burglars using such an approach. But for high-profile victims, the effort might be worth the risk. They say that they next plan to investigate ways to foil such attacks by modifying traditional locks.
Lambda School, the startup that offers online computer science classes to be paid for after a student gets a job, has raised an additional $74 million in funding, the company announced Friday.
TechCrunch first reported news of the Series C round, which was led by Gigafund.
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