The recreation of the human brain is giving clues to essentially how we engineer a super brain someday đ.
Nobodyâs quite sure what it means yet. But weâre sure that itâs important.
This is leading to even better brain engineering đ đ đ đ đ.
Computer-augmented brains, cures to blindness, and rebuilding the brain after injury all sound like science fiction. Today, these disruptive technologies arenât just for Netflix, âTerminator,â and comic book fodder â in recent years, these advances are closer to reality than some might realize, and they have the ability to revolutionize neurological care.
Neurologic disease is now the worldâs leading cause of disability, and upwards of 11 million people have some form of permanent neurological problem from traumatic brain injuries and stroke. For example, if a traumatic brain injury has damaged the motor cortex â the region of the brain involved in voluntary movements â patients could become paralyzed, without hope of regaining full function. Or some stroke patients can suffer from aphasia, the inability to speak or understand language, due to damage to the brain regions that control speech and language comprehension.
Continue reading “Science Fiction Meets Neuro-Reality: Organoids to Rebuild the Brain” »
The question â Does P = NP? â is a grand theoretical challenge. Scientists took the approach of spoon-feeding ideas to GPT-4 to seek an answer.
Since founding OpenAI in 2015, Sam Altman has spent many days thinking that the companyâs generative artificial-intelligence products need a new kind of device to succeed. Since leaving Apple in 2019, Jony Ive, the designer behind the iPhone, iPod and MacBook Air, has been considering what the next great computing device could be.
Now, the two men and their companies are teaming up to develop a device that would succeed the smartphone and deliver the benefits of A.I. in a new form factor, unconstrained by the rectangular screen that has been the dominant computing tool of the past decade, according to two people familiar with the discussionsâŠ
ââŠMany tech executives believe the technology has the power to introduce a new paradigm in computing that they call âambient computing.â Rather than typing on smartphones and taking photographs, they imagine a future device in the form of something as simple as a pendant or glasses that can process the world in real time, using a sophisticated virtual assistant capable of fielding questions and processing images.â
Continue reading “A Silicon Valley Supergroup Is Coming Together to Create an A.I. Device” »
The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon.com, Inc. alleging that the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power. The FTC and its state partners say Amazonâs actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.
The complaint alleges that Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging. By stifling competition on price, product selection, quality, and by preventing its current or future rivals from attracting a critical mass of shoppers and sellers, Amazon ensures that no current or future rival can threaten its dominance. Amazonâs far-reaching schemes impact hundreds of billions of dollars in retail sales every year, touch hundreds of thousands of products sold by businesses big and small and affect over a hundred million shoppers.
âOur complaint lays out how Amazon has used a set of punitive and coercive tactics to unlawfully maintain its monopolies,â said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. âThe complaint sets forth detailed allegations noting how Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on Amazon to reach them. Todayâs lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.â
Ultimately, the researchers discovered 270 different cycles of autocatalytic reactions. âAutocatalysis may not be that rare, but instead it might be a general feature of many different environments, even those that are really different from Earth,â Kaçar said.
Related: NASA may have unknowingly found and killed alien life on Mars 50 years ago, scientist claims
Most of the 270 cycles did not employ organic compounds. Some centered around elements that are absent or exceedingly rare in life on Earth, such as mercury, or the radioactive metal thorium. A number of cycles likely only happen under extremely high or low temperatures or pressures.
Could changing your diet play a role in slowing or even preventing the development of dementia? Weâre one step closer to finding out, thanks to a new UNLV study that bolsters the long-suspected link between gut health and Alzheimerâs disease.
The analysis â led by a team of researchers with the Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine (NIPM) at UNLV and published this spring in the Nature journal Scientific Reports â examined data from dozens of past studies into the belly-brain connection. The results? Thereâs a strong link between particular kinds of gut bacteria and Alzheimerâs disease.
UNLV study pinpoints 10 bacterial groups associated with Alzheimerâs disease, provides new insights into the relationship between gut makeup and dementia.
The University of Alberta is 3rd in the world for AI research.
Researchers meet the challenge of developing a model that uses speech traits to detect cognitive decline, paving the way for a potential screening tool.
Researchers are striving to make earlier diagnosis of Alzheimerâs dementia possible with a machine learning (ML) model that could one day be turned into a simple screening tool anyone with a smartphone could use.
Continue reading “Machine learning model able to detect signs of Alzheimerâs across languages” »
The studyâs authors compared the influence of two components of the brainâs physical structure: the outer folds of the cerebral cortex â the area where most higher-level brain activity occurs â and the connectome, the web of nerves that links distinct regions of the cerebral cortex. The team found that the shape of the outer surface was a better predictor of brainwave data than was the connectome, contrary to the paradigm that the connectome has the dominant role in driving brain activity. âWe use concepts from physics and engineering to study how anatomy determines function,â says study co-author James Pang, a physicist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
A model of the brainâs geometry better explains neuronal activity than a model based on the âconnectomeâ.
