Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 3101

So why not break the AI apart?

In a new study published in PNAS, the team took a page from cognitive neuroscience and built a modular AI agent.

The idea is seemingly simple. Rather than a monolithic AI—a single network that encompasses the entire “self”—the team constructed a modular agent, each part with its own “motivation” and goals but commanding a single “body.” Like a democratic society, the AI system argues within itself to decide on the best response, where the action most likely to yield the largest winning outcome guides its next step.

Read more | >

The transition to chaos is ubiquitous in nonlinear systems. Continuous-wave-driven photonic-chip-based Kerr microresonators exhibit spatiotemporal chaos, also known as chaotic modulation instability.

For more than fifteen years such modulation instability states have been considered impractical for applications compared to their coherent-light-state counterparts, such as soliton states. The latter have been the centerpiece for numerous high-profile application demonstrations, from long-range to photonic computing.

Now, researchers from the group of Tobias Kippenberg at EPFL have found a new way to harness the unique features of chaotic frequency combs to implement unambiguous and interference-immune massively parallel ranging by utilizing the intrinsic random amplitude and phase modulation of the chaotic comb lines.

Read more | >

Images of thousands of Purkinje cells reveal that almost all human cells have multiple primary dendrites. These structures, when observed in mice, facilitate connections with multiple climbing fibers originating from the brain stem.

In 1906, the Spanish researcher Santiago Ramón y Cajal received the Nobel Prize for his trailblazing exploration of the microscopic structures of the brain. His renowned illustrations of Purkinje cells within the cerebellum depict a forest of neuron structures, with multiple large branches sprouting from the cell body and splitting into beautiful, leaf-like patterns.

Despite these early portrayals showing multiple dendrites branching out from the cell body, the enduring consensus among neuroscientists is that Purkinje cells possess only a single main dendrite that forms a connection with a lone climbing fiber originating from the brain stem. However, a recent study from the University of Chicago, recently published in the journal Science, reveals that Cajal’s sketches were indeed accurate — practically all Purkinje cells in the human cerebellum have multiple primary dendrites.

Read more | >

Two of humanity’s most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for a novel, low-cost energy storage system, according to a new study. The technology could facilitate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal power by allowing energy networks to remain stable despite fluctuations in renewable energy supply.

The two materials, the researchers found, can be combined with water to make a supercapacitor—an alternative to batteries—that could provide storage of electrical .

As an example, the MIT researchers who developed the system say that their supercapacitor could eventually be incorporated into the concrete foundation of a house, where it could store a full day’s worth of energy while adding little (or no) to the cost of the foundation and still providing the needed structural strength. The researchers also envision a concrete roadway that could provide contactless recharging for as they travel over that road.

Read more | >

Using conventional testing techniques, it can be challenging—sometimes impossible—to detect harmful contaminants such as nano-plastics, air pollutants and microbes in living organisms and natural materials. These contaminants are sometimes found in such tiny quantities that tests are unable to reliably pick them up.

This may soon change, however. Emerging nanotechnology (based on a “twisted” state of light) promises to make it easier to identify the of impurities and their geometrical shape in samples of air, liquid and live tissue.

An international team of scientists led by physicists at the University of Bath is contributing toward this technology, which may pave the way to new environmental monitoring methods and advanced medicines. Their work is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Read more | >