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Neural Nanonics here we come: “Could lead to future autonomous, fully implantable neuroprosthetic devices”

Memristor chip (credit: University of Southampton)

A bio-inspired electronic device called a memristor could allow for real-time processing of neuronal signals (spiking events), new research led by the University of Southampton has demonstrated.

The research could lead to using multi-electrode array implants for detecting spikes in the brain’s electrical signals from more than 1,000 recording channels to help treat neurological conditions, without requiring expensive, high-bandwidth, bulky systems for processing data. The research could lead to future autonomous, fully implantable neuroprosthetic devices.

Continue reading “Synapse-like memristor-based electronic device detects brain spikes in real time” | >

Two years ago, Studio Roosegaarde created a glow-in-the-dark bike path in Eindhoven, Netherlands, helping to light the route in a exciting way. Inspired by that, a materials technology center in Lidzbark Warminski, Poland, has followed suit, with equally dazzling results.

The materials tech center, TPA Gesellschaft für Qualitätssicherung und Innovation (TPAQI), tells New Atlas that it first drew attention to the Eindhoven bike path at a local road forum event. The underlying concept was floated as a potential option for creating something that would reflect the beauty of the surrounding landscape.

Work began about a year ago, with lab tests into how the glowing effect would be created. A variety of different materials and colors were tested, with the aim of creating something that would both look great and that would increase safety for cyclists and pedestrians.

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Verizon has joined the likes of Facebook, Google and fellow telecommunications giant AT&T in exploring the potential of internet-connected unmanned aircraft. While its vision involves expanding 4G coverage across the US, it has an immediate focus on shoring up communications for first responders in emergency situations, and recently carried out trials to that effect.

Verizon has dubbed the initiative Airborne LTE Operations (ALO) and says it has actually been in the pipeline for around two years. The company has been working to integrate internet connectivity into unmanned aerial vehicles and hook them up to its 4G network, daisy chaining coverage and beaming it down to unconnected areas in the process. This is similar to how Facebook hopes its Aquila drones will work.

Verizon recently teamed up with company American Aerospace Technologies to see how using drones as gliding cell towers could have an impact in disaster relief scenarios. In a simulated mission in New Jersey, the team set a drone with a 17-foot (5.2 m) wingspan in flight to put the onboard technologies through their paces.

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Since the arrival of flat-screen TVs, there’s not been a whole lot to get excited about in the world of televisions — how many ways can you improve on a big slab of glass, after all? Well, how about by making it almost invisible when you’re not using it?

That’s the thinking behind a new prototype from Panasonic that’s just been shown off at the CEATEC electronics expo in Japan this week. When switched on, it’s just like a normal TV. When switched off, it’s as transparent as glass, meaning you can see the wall or shelving behind.

Panasonic describes it as the “future of display screens” — although as you might expect, the company’s staying tight-lipped about the technology behind its transparent TV, just in case its competitors have something similar in mind.

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Just last month, physicists made the best case yet for why time crystals — hypothetical structures that have movement without energy — could technically exist as physical objects.

And now, four years after they were first proposed, scientists have managed to add a fourth dimension — the movement of time — to a crystal for the first time, giving it the ability to act as a kind of perpetual ‘time-keeper’.

First proposed by Nobel-Prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek back in 2012, time crystals are hypothetical structures that appear to have movement even at their lowest energy state, known as a ground state.

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Scientists have succeeded in creating the world’s smallest transistor, producing a switch with a working 1-nanometre gate. If you want to know how incredibly tiny that is, a human hair is around 80,000 to 100,000 nanometres wide.

Unlike regular transistors, the researchers’ new prototype isn’t made out of silicon – and the smaller size means we can still improve performance in integrated circuits by populating them with greater amounts of incredibly small components.

And it could help us keep Moore’s Law alive too.

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A great new biomarker for senescent cells is available and will allow researchers to more measure levels of aged cells easier and faster. Great news for gerontologists wishing to demonstrate changes to aged cell populations after therapies.

Scientists have discovered a new way to look for ageing cells across a wide range of biological materials; the new method will boost understanding of cellular development and ageing as well as the causes of diverse diseases.

Frustrated by the limitations of commercially available biomarkers — researchers led by The University of Manchester’s Professor Paul Townsend and senior author of the resulting paper, and honorary professor at Manchester, Professor Vassilis Gorgoulis, have developed a universally applicable method to assess senescence across biomedicine, from cancer research to gerontology.

Cellular senescence is a fundamental biological process involved in every day embryonic and adult life, both good – for normal human development – and, more importantly to researchers, dangerous by triggering disease conditions. Up to now available senescence detecting biomarkers have very limited and burdensome application. Therefore, a more effective, precise and easy-to-use biomarker would have considerable benefits for research and clinical practice.

Continue reading “New method to detect ageing cells – and aid rejuvenation therapies — developed” | >

You often hear people say we’re in the early days of artificial intelligence, probably the most important tech theme of the next century. It’s important to put real measurements on improvements to the technology. Google tried to do just that at a press event in San Francisco this morning. Here are the top lines:

• Image recognition has improved to 93.9% accuracy from 89.6% in 2014. It’s also more detailed; it can detect colors and analyze the content in images with more than one subject.

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Amazing Stories has resumed publishing original science fiction, and they just happened to have led with a story of mine. Amazing Stories was the first SF magazine, dating to 1926, and was edited by Hugo Gernsback (as in “Hugo Awards”). My story contains speculation about human-AI interaction, and the future of user interfaces (disguised as comedy).

Posting this with Eric Klien’s permission, as it’s self-promotional.

Never trust an app in the form of a woman you don’t know, even if you are a hipster knight. A Gernsback Contest winning short story.

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