Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: New research unveils a probable unique human ability to recognize and remember sequential information. Despite being our closest relatives, bonobos struggle to learn the order of stimuli in the same manner as humans.

This discovery contributes to understanding the cognitive distinctions between humans and other animals, explaining why only humans possess certain cultural abilities like language and advanced planning. This sequential memory might be the foundational block behind many uniquely human behaviors and capabilities.

Metalens for AR and VR.

BEIJING, Sept. 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — WiMi Hologram Cloud Inc. (NASDAQ: WIMI) (“WiMi” or the “Company”), a leading global Hologram Augmented Reality (“AR”) Technology provider, today announced that a metasurface eyepiece for augmented reality has been developed, which is based on metasurfaces composed of artificially fabricated subwavelength structures. The metasurface eyepiece employs a special optical design and engineered anisotropic optical response to achieve an ultra-wide field of view(FOV), full-color imaging, and high-resolution near-eye display.

At the heart of the WiMi’s metalens are see-through metalens with a high numerical aperture(NA), a large area and broadband characteristics. Its anisotropic optical response allows it to perform two different optical functions simultaneously. First, it can image virtual information, acting as an imaging lens for virtual information. Second, it can transmit light, serving as a transparent glass for viewing a real-world scene. This design allows the transparent metalens to be placed directly in front of the eye without the need for additional optics, resulting in a wider FOV.

Fabrication of metalens is done using nanoimprinting technology, which is capable of fabricating large-area metalens with sub-wavelength structures. First, a mould or template with the desired structure is prepared. Then, the mould or template is contacted with a transparent substrate and the nanoscale structure is transferred by applying pressure and temperature. Through this nanoimprinting process, the subwavelength structure of the metalens is successfully replicated onto the transparent substrate, resulting in the formation of the metalens.

Continue reading “WiMi Developed Metasurface Eyepiece for Augmented Reality with Ultra-wide FOV” »

Artificial intelligence not only affords impressive performance, but also creates significant demand for energy. The more demanding the tasks for which it is trained, the more energy it consumes.

Víctor López-Pastor and Florian Marquardt, two scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, present a method by which artificial intelligence could be trained much more efficiently. Their approach relies on physical processes instead of the digital artificial neural networks currently used. The work is published in the journal Physical Review X.

The amount of energy required to train GPT-3, which makes ChatGPT an eloquent and apparently well-informed Chatbot, has not been revealed by Open AI, the company behind that artificial intelligence (AI). According to the German statistics company Statista, this would require 1,000 megawatt hours—about as much as 200 German households with three or more people consume annually. While this energy expenditure has allowed GPT-3 to learn whether the word “deep” is more likely to be followed by the word “sea” or “learning” in its data sets, by all accounts it has not understood the underlying meaning of such phrases.

It’s easy to trick the large language models powering chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. In one experiment in February, security researchers forced Microsoft’s Bing chatbot to behave like a scammer. Hidden instructions on a web page the researchers created told the chatbot to ask the person using it to hand over their bank account details. This kind of attack, where concealed information can make the AI system behave in unintended ways, is just the beginning.

Hundreds of examples of “indirect prompt injection” attacks have been created since then. This type of attack is now considered one of the most concerning ways that language models could be abused by hackers. As generative AI systems are put to work by big corporations and smaller startups, the cybersecurity industry is scrambling to raise awareness of the potential dangers. In doing so, they hope to keep data—both personal and corporate—safe from attack. Right now there isn’t one magic fix, but common security practices can reduce the risks.

“Indirect prompt injection is definitely a concern for us,” says Vijay Bolina, the chief information security officer at Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence unit, who says Google has multiple projects ongoing to understand how AI can be attacked. In the past, Bolina says, prompt injection was considered “problematic,” but things have accelerated since people started connecting large language models (LLMs) to the internet and plug-ins, which can add new data to the systems. As more companies use LLMs, potentially feeding them more personal and corporate data, things are going to get messy. “We definitely think this is a risk, and it actually limits the potential uses of LLMs for us as an industry,” Bolina says.

Never let it be said that scientists don’t have an eye for the sublime.

Encoding and deciphering a Chinese symbol for duality and harmony into the quantum states of two entangled photons, physicists recently demonstrated the superior efficiency of a new analytical technique.

Researchers from the Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Ottawa in Canada used a method similar to a popular holographic technique to quickly and reliably measure information of a particle’s position.

Summary: Neuroscientists have unveiled a new hybrid cell, straddling the line between the well-known neurons and glial cells in the brain.

Previously, glial cells, especially astrocytes, were believed to merely support neuron functions. However, recent research highlights the ability of these cells to release neurotransmitters and directly influence neural circuits.

This groundbreaking discovery challenges traditional beliefs about brain cell functionality and paves the way for novel therapeutic strategies.

If you want to read a long and complex article on EMF and oxidative stress, here’s one. And when I did a Google search on my Pixel 6 that has generative results, the result said it affected the blood brain barrier but I think it combined several websites as a source and summarized them. I’ll post a screenshot.

Free radicals are reactive molecules produced during the conversion of foods into energy through oxygen. The formation of free radicals is an oxidation reaction that occurs on an oxygen basis. [27]. Since oxygen is essential for survival, the formation of free radicals cannot be avoided. However, factors including ionizing and non-ionizing radiation alter the transcription and translation of genes such as JUN, HSP 70 and MYC, via the epidermal growth factor receptor EGFR-ras, leading to the generation of ROS [28,29] and resulting in the overproduction of ROS in tissues [30].

The Fenton reaction is a catalytic process that converts hydrogen peroxide, a product of mitochondrial oxidative respiration, into a highly toxic hydroxyl free radical. Some studies have suggested that EMF is another mechanism through the Fenton reaction, suggesting that it promotes free radical activity in cells [31,32]. Although some researchers have reported that ROS perform beneficial function, a high degree of ROS production may cause cellular damage, resulting in a range of diseases. These radicals react with various biomolecules, including DNA ( Fig. 1 ). Namely, the energy of free radicals is not enough, and for this reason they behave like robbers who seize energy from other cells and rob a person to satisfy themselves [33]. Many studies have suggested that EMF may trigger the formation of reactive oxygen species in exposed cells in vitro [34,35,36,37] and in vivo [7, 31,38]. The initial stage of the ROS production in the presence of RF is controlled by the NADPH oxidase enzyme located in the plasma membrane. Consequently, ROS activate matrix metalloproteases, thereby initiating intracellular signaling cascades to warn the nucleus of the presence of external stimulation. These changes in transcription and protein expression are observed after RF exposure [39]. Kazemi et al. investigated the effect of exposure to 900-MHz on the induction of oxidative stress and the level of intracellular ROS in human mononuclear cells. Excessive elevation in ROS levels is an important cause of oxidative damage in lipids and proteins and nucleic acids. It therefore causes changes in enzyme activity and gene expression, eventually leading to various diseases, including sleep disorder, arthrosclerosis, loss of appetite, diabetes, dizziness, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, nausea and stroke [40,41,42]. In addition, degradation of the pro-oxidant-antioxidant balance due to an uncontrolled increase in ROS may also result in lipid peroxidation. Lipid peroxidation is the process in which cell membranes are rapidly destroyed due to the oxidation of components of phospholipids containing unsaturated fatty acids. By continuing this reaction, lipid peroxides (-C0, H) accumulate in the membrane, and transform polyunsaturated fatty acids into biologically active substances [43]. Consequently, lipid peroxidation leads to significant damage in the cells, such as disturbances in membrane transport, structural changes, cell membrane fluidity, damage to protein receptors in membrane structures, and changes in the activity of cell membrane enzymes [44]. Hoyto et al. demonstrated significant induction of lipid peroxidation after exposure to EMF in the mouse SH-SY5Y cell and L929 fibroblast cells [45]. Epidemiological studies have also suggested that oxidative damage to lipids in blood vessel walls may be a significant contributor to the development of atherosclerosis [46,47,48].

Robotaxi company Cruise is “just days away” from getting regulatory approval that would pave the way for mass production of its purpose-built driverless vehicle, CEO Kyle Vogt said on Thursday in comments reported by the Detroit Free Press.

General Motors-backed Cruise unveiled the vehicle — called Origin — in early 2020, presenting the kind of driverless car that we all dreamed of when R&D in the sector kicked off years ago; a vehicle without a steering wheel and without pedals. A vehicle with passenger seats only.

Quantum technology’s future rests on the exploitation of fascinating quantum mechanics concepts—such as high-dimensional quantum states. Think of these states as basic ingredients of quantum information science and quantum tech. To manipulate these states, scientists have turned to light, specifically a property called orbital angular momentum (OAM), which deals with how light twists and turns in space. Here’s a catch: making super bright single photons with OAM in a deterministic fashion has been a tough nut to crack.

Now, enter quantum dots (QDs), tiny particles with big potential. A team of researchers from Sapienza University of Rome, Paris-Saclay University, and University of Naples Federico II combined the features of OAM with those of QDs to create a bridge between two cutting-edge technologies.

Their results are published in Advanced Photonics.