BENGALURU: After working for five years, a team of three from department of Biosciences and Bioengineering (BSBE) at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay and IITB-Monash Research Academy has designed smart amyloid based hydrogels that are able to guide stem cell to differentiate to neuron and successfully transplanted these stem cells in the brain of Parkinson’s disease (PD) animal models with unique amyloid hydrogels.
DARPA sees a real possibility for spaced based conflict. So, it’s hoping to create breakthrough technology to dissuade U.S. adversaries who might consider attacking from space.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency assists national security with efforts in space. It focuses on making space a “real-time operational domain,” as DARPA Director Dr. Arati Prabhakar recently said.
“The questions we ask ourselves at DARPA about the space domain … is what would it take to make the space domain robust for everything that we need militarily and for intelligence, and what would it take to make space a real-time operational domain, which it’s not at all today,” the director said last week at the 4th annual Defense One Summit. Many nation-states now orbit the Earth. Conflict is a real possibility, believes Prabhakar.
The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition. Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain — which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer.
Isher’s hypothesis faces the same daunting obstacle that has plagued microtubules: a phenomenon called quantum decoherence. To build an operating quantum computer, you need to connect qubits — quantum bits of information — in a process called entanglement. But entangled qubits exist in a fragile state. They must be carefully shielded from any noise in the surrounding environment. Just one photon bumping into your qubit would be enough to make the entire system “decohere,” destroying the entanglement and wiping out the quantum properties of the system. It’s challenging enough to do quantum processing in a carefully controlled laboratory environment, never mind the warm, wet, complicated mess that is human biology, where maintaining coherence for sufficiently long periods of time is well nigh impossible.
Implanting false memories could cure Alzheimer’s, PTSD, and depression. It could also make scapegoating easier, allow for witness tampering, or give those under a brutal dictatorship false patriotism.
Transfer printing microstructures onto novel hydrogel interfaces and customised composite electrodes could increase the compatibility and information transfer between body tissue and electronic devices.
Implantable devices such as pacemakers, cochlear implants, and deep brain stimulation devices enhance the quality of life for many people. Improving the integration of such devices with the body could enable the next generation of brain-machine interfaces (such as, implantable devices that can record and modulate neurological function in vivo) to monitor physiology, detect disease, and deploy bioelectronic medicines.
