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Aug 13, 2022
An artificial neuron that can receive and release dopamine
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: chemistry, nanotechnology, particle physics, robotics/AI
A team of researchers from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China and Nanyang Technological University and the Agency for Science Technology and Research in Singapore developed an artificial neuron that is able to communicate using the neurotransmitter dopamine. They published their creation and expected uses for it in the journal Nature Electronics.
As the researchers note, most machine-brain interfaces rely on electrical signals as a communications medium, and those signals are generally one-way. Electrical signals generated by the brain are read and interpreted; signals are not sent to the brain. In this new effort, the researchers have taken a step toward making a brain-machine interface that can communicate in both directions, and it is not based on electrical signals. Instead, it is chemically mediated.
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Aug 13, 2022
Quantum computer made of 6 super-sized atoms could imitate the brain
Posted by Jose Ruben Rodriguez Fuentes in categories: information science, particle physics, quantum physics, robotics/AI
Simulations of a quantum computer made of six rubidium atoms suggest it could run a simple brain-inspired algorithm that can learn to remember and make simple decisions.
Aug 13, 2022
Local renewable energy employment can fully replace US coal jobs nationwide
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: employment, energy, sustainability
Across the United States, local wind and solar jobs can fully replace the coal-plant jobs that will be lost as the nation’s power-generation system moves away from fossil fuels in the coming decades, according to a new University of Michigan study.
As of 2019, coal-fired electricity generation directly employed nearly 80,000 workers at more than 250 plants in 43 U.S. states. The new U-M study quantifies—for the first time—the technical feasibility and costs of replacing those coal jobs with local wind and solar employment across the country.
The study, published online Aug. 10 in iScience, concludes that local wind and solar jobs can fill the electricity generation and employment gap, even if it’s required that all the new jobs are located within 50 miles of each retiring coal plant.
Aug 13, 2022
Ransomware gangs move to ‘callback’ social engineering attacks
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: cybercrime/malcode
At least three groups split from the Conti ransomware operation have adopted BazarCall phishing tactics as the primary method to gain initial access to a victim’s network.
This allows the threat actors to deploy highly-targeted attacks that are more difficult to detect and stop because of the social engineering component.
Aug 13, 2022
Microsoft blocks UEFI bootloaders enabling Windows Secure Boot bypass
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: computing, security
Some signed third-party bootloaders for the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) could allow attackers to execute unauthorized code in an early stage of the boot process, before the operating system loads.
Vendor-specific bootloaders used by Windows were found to be vulnerable while the status of almost a dozen others is currently unknown.
Threat actors could exploit the security issue to establish persistence on a target system that cannot be removed by reinstalling the operating system (OS).
Aug 13, 2022
Double universality of the transition in the supercritical state
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: futurism
Aug 13, 2022
An ultrafast and highly performing nonlinear splitter based on lithium niobate
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: computing, electronics
Optics, technologies that leverage the behavior and properties of light, are the basis of many existing technological tools, most notably fiber communication systems that enable long-and short-distance high-speed communication between devices. Optical signals have a high information capacity and can be transmitted across longer distances.
Researchers at California Institute of Technology have recently developed a new device that could help to overcome some of the limitations of existing optical systems. This device, introduced in a paper published in Nature Photonics, is a lithium niobate-based device that can switch ultrashort light pulses at an extremely low optical pulse energy of tens of femtojoules.
“Unlike electronics, optics still lacks efficiency in required components for computing and signal processing, which has been a major barrier for unlocking the potentials of optics for ultrafast and efficient computing schemes,” Alireza Marandi, lead researcher for the study, told Phys.org. “In the past few decades, substantial efforts have been dedicated to developing all–optical switches that could address this challenge, but most of the energy-efficient designs suffered from slow switching times, mainly because they either used high-Q resonators or carrier-based nonlinearities.”
Aug 13, 2022
Bug eyes and bat sonar: Bioengineers turn to animal kingdom for creation of bionic super 3D cameras
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI, transhumanism
A pair of UCLA bioengineers and a former postdoctoral scholar have developed a new class of bionic 3D camera systems that can mimic flies’ multiview vision and bats’ natural sonar sensing, resulting in multidimensional imaging with extraordinary depth range that can also scan through blind spots.
Powered by computational image processing, the camera can decipher the size and shape of objects hidden around corners or behind other items. The technology could be incorporated into autonomous vehicles or medical imaging tools with sensing capabilities far beyond what is considered state of the art today. This research has been published in Nature Communications.
Aug 13, 2022
A simple way of sculpting matter into complex shapes
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: particle physics, quantum physics
A new method for shaping matter into complex shapes, with the use of ‘twisted’ light, has been demonstrated in research at the University of Strathclyde.
When atoms are cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero (−273 degrees C), they stop behaving like particles and start to behave like waves.
Atoms in this condition, which are known as Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), are useful for purposes such as realization of atom lasers, slow light, quantum simulations for understanding the complex behavior of materials like superconductors and superfluids, and the precision measurement technique of atom interferometry.