US researchers report that they have been able to restore sensation to the hand of a research participant with a severe spinal cord injury using a brain-computer interface (BCI) system.
Category: computing – Page 577
Xilinx 7-series and some 6-series FPGAs deemed vulnerable to new Starbleed vulnerability.
Researchers have found a way to decode neural signals and transform them back into movement and touch sensation for paralyzed patients.
Circa 2010
An economical way to make sheets of the blingest material known to man could bring a new era of high-power electronics that don’t need cooling.
In a paper published on Nature Communications in 20 April 2020 by (read the original paper), Tianda Fu et al. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst proposed a new kind of diffusive memristor based on the protein nanowires sourced from the bacterium named Geobacter sulfurreducens that can potentially resolve the problem. The artificial neurons built on such memristors can function on the level of biological voltages, and they express “temporary integration feature that is similar to real neurons in our brain” according to the authors.
MANILA, Philippines — A dengue case forecasting system using space data made by Philippine developers won the 2019 National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s International Space Apps Challenge. Over 29,000 participating globally in 71 countries, this solution made it as one of the six winners in the best use of data, the solution that best makes space data accessible, or leverages it to a unique application.
Dengue fever is a viral, infectious tropical disease spread primarily by Aedes aegypti female mosquitoes. With 271,480 cases resulting in 1,107 deaths reported from January 1 to August 31, 2019 by the World Health Organization, Dominic Vincent D. Ligot, Mark Toledo, Frances Claire Tayco, and Jansen Dumaliang Lopez from CirroLytix developed a forecasting model of dengue cases using climate and digital data, and pinpointing possible hotspots from satellite data.
When people say quantum computing is “hot” right now they are most definitely talking metaphorically; today’s leading devices have to operate at close to absolute zero. Now two research groups have demonstrated technology that run s 15 times hotter, which could be a big step towards making the devices affordable and practical.
The reason quantum computers have to be run at such low temperatures is that the quantum states they rely on are incredibly fragile, and the slightest disturbance can cause the information encoded in them to be lost. To prevent this these devices are chilled to near absolute zero, where vibrations and thermal fluctuation are almost non existent.
But reaching these temperature requires incredibly powerful refrigeration technology, and it can easily cost millions of dollars to keep even today’s experimental devices at operating temperatures.
John Martinis brought a long record of quantum computing breakthroughs when he joined Google in 2014. He quit after being reassigned to an advisory role.
Compared to a conventional computer, this device has a learning capability that is not software-based.
Only 10 years ago, scientists working on what they hoped would open a new frontier of neuromorphic computing could only dream of a device using miniature tools called memristors that would function/operate like real brain synapses.
But now a team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has discovered, while on their way to better understanding protein nanowires, how to use these biological, electricity conducting filaments to make a neuromorphic memristor, or “memory transistor,” device. It runs extremely efficiently on very low power, as brains do, to carry signals between neurons. Details are in Nature Communications.
As first author Tianda Fu, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, explains, one of the biggest hurdles to neuromorphic computing, and one that made it seem unreachable, is that most conventional computers operate at over 1 volt, while the brain sends signals called action potentials between neurons at around 80 millivolts—many times lower. Today, a decade after early experiments, memristor voltage has been achieved in the range similar to conventional computer, but getting below that seemed improbable, he adds.