Lifeboat Foundation

Human and animal movements generate slight neural signals from their brain cells. These signals obtained using a neural interface are essential for realizing brain-machine interfaces (BMI). Such neural recording systems using wires to connect the implanted device to an external device can cause infections through the opening in the skull. One method of solving this issue is to develop a wireless neural interface that is fully implantable on the brain.

However, the neural interface implanted on the brain surface should be of small size and minimally invasive. Furthermore, it requires the integration of a power source, antenna for wireless communication, and many functional circuits.

Now, a research team at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology has developed a wafer-level packaging technique to integrate a silicon large-scale integration (LSI) chip in a very thin film of a thickness 10 µm (Sensors, “Co-design method and wafer-level packaging technique of thin-film flexible antenna and silicon CMOS rectifier chips for wireless-powered neural interface systems”).

Continue reading “Wirelessly supplying power to brain” »

“Over the past year, Google engineers have experimented and developed a set of building blocks for the Internet of Things - an ecosystem of connected devices, services and “things” that promises direct and efficient support of one’s daily life. While there has been significant progress in this field, there remain significant challenges in terms of (1) interoperability and a standardized modular systems architecture, (2) privacy, security and user safety, as well as (3) how users interact with, manage and control an ensemble of devices in this connected environment.

It is in this context that we are happy to invite university researchers¹ to participate in the Internet of Things (IoT) Technology Research Award Pilot.”

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“Produced by the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA, these gloriously retro space posters make a trip to the stars look like a holiday”

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Built from the ground up with researchers in mind, the BioStampRC™ system is the simplest way to gather complex physiological data.

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Karl Sagan ka thene dikur se ka me shume yje ne univers se sa kokrriza rere ne te gjitha plazhet e Tokes. Ne te njejten kohe, ka me shume molekula H₂O ne dhjete pika uji se sa ka yje.
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The scale of the universe (HD)

Published on Sep 23, 2015.

Continue reading “Shkalla e Universit!” »

A rabbit’s brain has been successfully returned from long-term cryogenic storage, marking the first time a whole mammalian brain has been recovered in near-perfect condition.

It marks a significant breakthrough in the field of cryonics and boosts the prospect of one day bringing frozen human brains back to life.

Researchers from 21st Century Medicine (21CM) used a new technique called Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation that filled the vascular system of the rabbit brain with chemicals that would allow it to be cooled to −211 degrees Fahrenheit (−135 degrees Celsius). When it was thawed, the cell membranes, synapses, and intracellular structures remained intact.

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Physicists have found the most convincing signs of a tetraneutron — a four neutron-no proton particle — to date, adding weight to the possibility that the hypothetical particle really does exist. According to theory, this highly elusive particle cluster is impossible, because of how unstable lone neutrons are, but scientists in Japan say they’ve spotted its signature during recent experiments.

While the results need to be replicated independently before we can truly say the fabled tetraneutron exists, if other teams can confirm its existence, we’re going to have to make some serious changes to current understanding of nuclear forces. “It would be something of a sensation,” nuclear theorist Peter Schuck from France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, who wasn’t involved in the discovery, told Science News.

Physicists have been searching for the tetraneutron for decades, and while this 1965 paper concluded that no evidence could be found and “the existence of tetraneutrons is most unlikely”, four separate papers have since reported experimental observations of the particle.

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Imagine a party on a warm summer’s evening. You can see the beautiful greenery and the dipping sun, you can smell the freshly cut grass and taste the cool drinks on offer. You hear someone walk up behind you and feel them tap you on the shoulder. Now imagine you’re not really at the party – but sitting at home and the scene and all these sensations are coming from your TV.

Working out how television programmes could one day stimulate all our senses is an interesting question for researchers like myself, who are exploring the future of TV. But the bigger, more exciting challenge is how we can not only imitate what is happening on the screen, but also use smell, taste and touch in a way that’s not a novelty and enhances the emotional experience of a show, just as a soundtrack does.

Continue reading “Here’s how the future of TV could involve all your senses” »

There’s still much that we don’t understand about obesity and its underlying causes, but scientists in Germany say they’ve discovered a genetic ‘switch’ that could effectively turn obesity on or off.

The new report is based on epigenetics research — that is, the way the genes in our bodies change based on chemical and environmental factors, rather than modifications in the fundamental DNA genetic code itself. We’re all born with a certain set of genes, but these can be turned on or off, or dialled up or down, though processes inside the body (it’s part of the reason why identical twins don’t always look identical).

It’s one of these epigenetic tags that the scientists have identified, and it works like a light switch rather than a dimmer. “Once the switch is triggered, it is a lifelong, epigenetically-driven decision that ends in a stable, either a lean or obese phenotype,” lead author Andrew Pospisilik from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics. “The effect is akin to a light switch — on or off, lean or obese. Typically, we usually consider epigenetic control of disease to act much more like a dimmer, shifting phenotypes like body weight up or down gradually.”

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