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Brain maps seem to come out in rapid succession these days. They take various forms: a map for word concepts, a map of individual cells’ activity, a map based on the organ’s physical contours.

What they share in common is the aspiration to take the lumpy mass of the brain and categorize it, somehow, into useable areas — not unlike the textbook brain images with their colored denotations of “occipital lobe” and “frontal cortex.”

But these maps often come along with a problem: They may not sync up with the other maps. Now a group of scientists have managed to sync up two of the most commonly used types of brain maps — for gene expression and brain structure — and they’re releasing their methods to any and all in the scientific community.

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There is a computing revolution coming, although nobody knows exactly when. What are known as “quantum computers” will be substantially more powerful than the devices we use today, capable of performing many types of computation that are impossible on modern machines.

But while faster computers are usually welcome, there are some computing operations that we currently rely on being hard (or slow) to perform.

Specifically, we rely on the fact that there are some codes that computers can’t break – or at least it would take them too long to break to be practical. Encryption algorithms scramble data into a form that renders it unintelligible to anyone that does not possess the necessary decryption key (normally a long string of random numbers).

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A discussion that I have had often.


In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) wrote in “Ethics I”: “Nothing in Nature is random. … A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.”

In modern physics, certain quantum processes are deemed fundamentally random.

Hmmmm.


The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a new generation of electronic warfare systems that are based on artificial intelligence (A.I.). If the program were to prove a success, the new A.I.-driven systems would provide the United States military a way to counter evermore-capable Russian and Chinese radars.

“One of our programs at DARPA is taking a whole new approach to this problem, this is an effort we refer to as cognitive electronic warfare,” DARPA director, Dr. Arati Prabhakar, told the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on February 24. “We’re using artificial intelligence to learn in real-time what the adversaries’ radar is doing and then on-the-fly create a new jamming profile. That whole process of sensing, learning and adapting is going on continually.”

Current generation aircraft—including the stealthy Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35—have a preprogrammed databank of enemy radar signals and jamming profiles stored in a threat library. But if those warplanes encounter a signal that has not previously been encountered, the system registers the threat as unknown—which means the aircraft is vulnerable to that threat.

Did anyone from Lifeboat attend today’s HAARP’s open house in Alaska today?


HAARP, aka the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, lives out a quiet existence in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. But for one reason or another, this ionospheric research facility has become the favorite scratching post for conspiracy theorists – attracting accusations of being a weather-altering superweapon, the force behind chemtrails, and even a mind-control device.

The new management of HAARP – The University of Alaska Fairbanks – aren’t too happy with these claims. So this Saturday, they’re opening its doors and inviting the public to come visit the facility for free. The open house will include facility tours, a mobile planetarium, a permafrost exhibit, science talks, and a barbecue.

“We hope that people will be able to see the actual science of it,” a spokesperson from the University of Alaska, who run HAARP, told Alaska Dispatch News. “We hope to show people that it is not capable of mind control and not capable of weather control and all the other things it’s been accused of.”

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Researchers at Bar Ilan University and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, both in Israel, have developed new technology that allows tiny bots to release drugs into the body controlled by human thought alone. The test involved a man using his thoughts to activate nano robots inside a cockroach.

The bots have been built using a DNA origami structure with hollow shell-like components, and they come with a “gate” that can be opened and shut with the help of iron oxide nanoparticles that act as a “lock” – which can be prized open using electromagnetic energy.

The Israeli team believe the bots could help in controlled release of drugs over time. Led by Dr Ido Bachelet of Bar Ilan University, scientists demonstrated how to control this process with human brainwaves. Using a computer algorithm, they trained the system to detect when a person’s brain was under strain from doing mental arithmetic. The team then placed a fluorescent drug in the bots and injected them into various cockroaches that were placed inside an electromagnetic coil.

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