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Archive for the ‘internet’ category: Page 203

Mar 3, 2020

Biological and artificial neurons connect and communicate online

Posted by in categories: biological, internet, neuroscience, supercomputing

Researchers in Europe and the UK have managed to connect biological and artificial neurons together – and allow them to communicate long distances through the internet. The biological neurons were grown in one country, sent signals through an artificial synapse located in another to electronic neurons in a third country.

As advanced as supercomputers get, the human brain still utterly leaves them in the dust. It’s made up of neurons that communicate with each other through pulses of electrical signals, passed across tiny gaps known as synapses. These neurons can both process and store information, unlike computers that require separate types of memory for each task.

Artificial versions of neurons and synapses have shown to be far more powerful than traditional computer chip designs, but they’re still in the experimental stage. And now, a team of researchers has taken the next step and connected the artificial and biological versions between three different countries.

Feb 29, 2020

Airplane Wi-Fi Could Get Massive Upgrade in the Near Future

Posted by in categories: energy, habitats, internet

If planes were as reliable as in-flight Wi-Fi, we’d never get on a flight again. Fortunately, industry group Seamless Air Alliance is working to change that. The group operates under the mission of bringing “industries and technologies together to make the in-flight internet experience simple to access and delightful to use.” Its idea? To get rid of the toxic brew of current proprietary systems operated by each airline and instead establish a standard for in-flight Wi-Fi that can be flexibly swapped in and out to better allow airlines to respond as technology improves.

“The goal of the Alliance is to deliver high-speed, low-latency 5G quality access inside the plane,” the FAQ section of the group’s website states. “Access to the network will be seamless, meaning any enabled user device will work without any login, sign-on or other activities. The internet experience itself will be as good as, and in many cases better than, the home experience, including low latency, high speed, and a gate-to-gate continuity of service.”

An article for IEEE Spectrum notes that “a plane’s antennas are currently stored in a relatively small hump on the top of the craft, typically about 45 centimeters high. Even though it’s so small, that hump causes tremendous amounts of wasted jet fuel, [Seamless Air Alliance CEO Jack] Mandala says, causing an estimated minimum of an extra $75,000 per aircraft per year in fuel costs.”

Feb 28, 2020

Artificial neurons now talking to real neurons with hope of creating a hybrid brain network

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, internet, robotics/AI

In focal brain diseases, a patient’s neural network loses key connections, preventing the brain from functioning as it miraculously should. But what if there was a way to restore those connections? An EU funded study is seeking to do just that by getting real biological neurons to synaptically communicate with artificial ones.

Though still in the early stages of study, SYNCH, a team of scientists from the U.K., Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, have created what they describe as a “synaptically connected brain-silicon Neural Closed-loop Hybrid system.” Basically, they’ve taken actual brain cells and artificial brain cells, and got them talking back and forth over the internet.

Feb 26, 2020

Artificial and Biological Neurons Just Talked Over the Internet

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, internet, nanotechnology, robotics/AI

For now, it’s a simple network. But, it could be an important first step toward smarter and more adaptive prosthetics and brain-computer interfaces — and potentially lay the groundwork for a world where neural implants create real brain networks.

“On one side it sets the basis for a novel scenario that was never encountered during natural evolution, where biological and artificial neurons are linked together and communicate across global networks; laying the foundations for the Internet of Neuro-electronics,” Themis Prodromakis, a nanotechnology researcher and director at the University of Southampton’s Centre for Electronics Frontiers said in a press release.

“On the other hand, it brings new prospects to neuroprosthetic technologies, paving the way towards research into replacing dysfunctional parts of the brain with AI chips.”

Feb 25, 2020

UN warns of rise of ‘cybertorture’ to bypass physical ban

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, internet

Rapporteur warns against trivialising psychological torture as states exploit internet to target individuals.

Feb 25, 2020

Russia’s AI Quest is State-Driven — Even More than China’s. Can It Work?

Posted by in categories: government, internet, military, robotics/AI

Handicaps: weak private sector, Soviet-style bureaucracy. Helps: Great STEM education — and history.

More than Western governments and even more than China’s, the Russian government is trying to position itself as a facilitator of innovation in artificial intelligence, the technology that Vladimir Putin said will lead whoever masters it to global advantage. Russia seeks “to go our own way,” said Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, borrowing Lenin’s 1917 words about various anti-capitalist ideologies to describe his government’s 21st-century attempt to shake the world.

Those who doubt that this uniquely state-heavy approach can succeed would do well to remember that today’s internet and mobile telecommunications grew out of Pentagon-funded research, that the Soviet Union led the Space Race for a decade, and that U.S. astronauts currently ascend to orbit atop Russian rockets.

Feb 23, 2020

Is the polyglot brain different? MIT researchers are trying to find out

Posted by in categories: internet, neuroscience

There are more theories than facts about polyglots. Because internet lists of polyglots identify mainly men, there’s the belief that the male brain is more predisposed to multilingualism. Others believe that polyglots are disproportionately gay and/or left-handed.

These unfounded theories infuriate Ev Fedorenko, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her lab is conducting a study seeking to dispel them and establish a basic understanding of how the polyglot brain works.

Recently, a polyglot named Susanna Zaraysky submitted to a two-hour session of tests inside an fMRI machine. Zaraysky speaks nine languages, most of them the usual suspects — French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian — but also Ladino, the version of Spanish spoken by Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century.

Feb 20, 2020

Mixed-signal hardware security thwarts powerful electromagnetic attacks

Posted by in categories: encryption, information science, internet, security

Security of embedded devices is essential in today’s internet-connected world. Security is typically guaranteed mathematically using a small secret key to encrypt the private messages.

When these computationally secure encryption algorithms are implemented on a physical hardware, they leak critical side-channel information in the form of power consumption or electromagnetic radiation. Now, Purdue University innovators have developed technology to kill the problem at the source itself—tackling physical-layer vulnerabilities with physical-layer solutions.

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Feb 19, 2020

Russian billionaire ‘100% confident’ he can make humans IMMORTAL by 2045

Posted by in categories: business, holograms, internet, life extension, robotics/AI

A BONKERS Russian billionaire claims he’ll make you immortal by 2045.

Internet businessman Dmitry Itskov, 38, is bankrolling a far-fetched plan to uploaded people’s personalities to artificial brains.

These “brains” can then be jammed into robots or holograms, allowing us to live on forever as artificial versions of ourselves, Dmitry claims.

Feb 17, 2020

Nearing the Simulation Singularity: What Would Immersive Computing Mean to the Human Mentality?

Posted by in categories: internet, mobile phones, physics, robotics/AI, singularity, supercomputing

Moving ever closer to the Web v.5.0 – an immersive virtual playground of the Metaverse – would signify a paramount convergent moment that MIT’s Rizwan Virk calls ‘The Simulation Point’ and I prefer to call the ‘Simulation Singularity’. Those future virtual worlds could be wholly devised and “fine-tuned” with a possibility to encode different sets of “physical laws and constants” for our enjoyment and exploration.


We are in the “kindergarten of godlings” right now. One could easily envision that with exponential development of AI-powered multisensory immersive technologies, by the mid-2030s most of us could immerse in “real virtualities” akin to lifestyles of today’s billionaires. Give it another couple of decades, each of us might opt to create and run their own virtual universe with [simulated] physics indistinguishable from the physics of our world. Or, you can always “fine-tune” the rule set, or tweak historical scenarios at will.

How can we be so certain about the Simulation Singularity circa 2035? By our very nature, we humans are linear thinkers. We evolved to estimate a distance from the predator or to the prey, and advanced mathematics is only a recent evolutionary addition. This is why it’s so difficult even for a modern man to grasp the power of exponentials. 40 steps in linear progression is just 40 steps away; 40 steps in exponential progression is a cool trillion (with a T) – it will take you 3 times from Earth to the Sun and back to Earth.

Continue reading “Nearing the Simulation Singularity: What Would Immersive Computing Mean to the Human Mentality?” »