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Archive for the ‘computing’ category: Page 631

Apr 22, 2017

Elon Musk’s new company wants to link human brains with computers in 4 years

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, Elon Musk, neuroscience, space travel, sustainability

Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with computers by creating micron-sized devices.

Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke and cancer lesion in about four years, Musk said in an interview with the website Wait But Why on Thursday.

“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview. Neuralink will be Musk’s third company along with Tesla and SpaceX.

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Apr 21, 2017

Google says it is on track to definitively prove it has a quantum computer in a few months’ time

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

The search giant plans to reach a milestone in computing history before the year is out.

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Apr 20, 2017

Facebook Literally Wants to Read Your Thoughts

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience

“Our brains produce enough data to stream 4 HD movies every second. The problem is that the best way we have to get information out into the world — speech — can only transmit about the same amount of data as a 1980s modem,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.


At Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, on Wednesday, the group unveiled what may be Facebook’s most ambitious—and creepiest—proposal yet. Facebook wants to build its own “brain-to-computer interface” that would allow us to send thoughts straight to a computer.

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Apr 20, 2017

What if you could type directly from your brain at 100 words per minute?

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, neuroscience

(credit: Facebook)

Regina Dugan, PhD, Facebook VP of Engineering, Building8, revealed today (April 19, 2017) at Facebook F8 conference 2017 a plan to develop a non-invasive brain-computer interface that will let you type at 100 wpm — by decoding neural activity devoted to speech.

Dugan previously headed Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects Group, and before that, was Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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Apr 19, 2017

Facebook is working on a way to let you type with your brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, neuroscience

Facebook today unveiled a project from its secretive Building 8 research group that’s working to create a brain-computer interface that lets you type with your thoughts. Regina Dugan, a former director of DARPA and the ex-head of Google’s experimental ATAP research group, announced the news today onstage at Facebook’s F8 developer conference. Dugan, who now heads up Building 8, says the goal is “something as simple as a yes-no brain click” that could fundamentally change how we interact with and use technology. While it does not exist today outside of very specific medical research trials, Dugan says her team is actively working to make it a reality.

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Apr 19, 2017

This Chip Interfaces With The Brain to Help The Blind See

Posted by in categories: computing, cyborgs, neuroscience, transhumanism

The blind may be able to see with help from this chip.

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Apr 17, 2017

This New Graphene-Based Electrode Could Boost Solar Storage

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones, solar power, sustainability

Drawing inspiration from the plant world, researchers have invented a new electrode that could boost our current solar energy storage by an astonishing 3,000 percent.

The technology is flexible and can be attached directly to solar cells — which means we could finally be one step closer to smartphones and laptops that draw their power from the Sun, and never run out.

A major problem with reliably using solar energy as a power source is finding an efficient way to store it for later use without leakage over time.

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Apr 15, 2017

Ray Kurzweil interviews the Father of Nanotechnology Eric Drexler

Posted by in categories: computing, nanotechnology, Ray Kurzweil, solar power, sustainability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIm9yIm0zo

Unimaginable Radical Abundance:

Yesterday I took the time to read chapter 11 of Eric Drexler’s book Radical Abundance as to get a glimpse of what might be possible with Atomically Precise Manufacturing (APM). I highly recommend the book.

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Apr 15, 2017

The FDA Just Struck a Deal That Could Replace Animal Testing With a Tiny Chip

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

“A future without animal testing is getting closer. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration agreed to a research-and-development collaboration with Emulate, a company that makes “organs-on-chips” technology.

The hope is that instead of testing new drugs or supplements on animals, researchers can use Emulate’s chips.

To start, the collaboration between the FDA and Emulate will focus on the company’s Liver-Chips, which are meant to show how an animal’s liver may react to a certain drug.

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Apr 15, 2017

Trapped ions and superconductors face off in quantum benchmark

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

The race to build larger and larger quantum computers is heating up, with several technologies competing for a role in future devices. Each potential platform has strengths and weaknesses, but little has been done to directly compare the performance of early prototypes. Now, researchers at the JQI have performed a first-of-its-kind benchmark test of two small quantum computers built from different technologies.

The team, working with JQI Fellow Christopher Monroe and led by postdoctoral researcher Norbert Linke, sized up their own small-scale against a device built by IBM. Both machines use five qubits—the fundamental units of information in a quantum computer—and both machines have similar error rates. But while the JQI device relies on chains of trapped atomic ions, IBM Q uses coupled regions of superconducting material.

To make their comparison, the JQI team ran several quantum programs on the devices, each of which solved a simple problem using a series of logic gates to manipulate one or two qubits at a time. Researchers accessed the IBM device using an online interface, which allows anyone to try their hand at programming IBM Q.

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