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Year 2020 face_with_colon_three

An international team of scientists have restored the vision in blind rats using a nanoparticle-based artificial retina prosthesis that can be injected directly into the eye. The scientific advance has been successfully demonstrated for a period of eight months without the need for surgery. While it is still early days for the research, it suggests it might one day be possible to use the conjugated polymer nanoparticle (P3HT-NP) treatment in humans to correct eye problems –ranging from hereditary retinal dystrophies to the incredibly common age-related macular degeneration.

“In our ‘liquid retina device,’ P3HT nanoparticles spread out over the entire subretinal space and promoted light-dependent activation of spared inner retinal neurons, recovering subcortical, cortical and behavioral visual responses,” Fabio Benfenati, research director at the Italian Institute of Technology, told Digital Trends. “We think that P3HT-NPs provide a new avenue in retinal prosthetics.”

Retinal prostheses refer to implantable devices that are designed to help restore sight in patients with retinal degeneration. They work by introducing visual information into the retina through the electrical stimulation of surviving retinal neurons. While promising, current retinal prostheses have so far been shown to only return low-resolution vision: Useful for things like distinguishing between light and dark or recognizing simple shapes and objects. This new nanotech approach appears far more promising, offering significantly higher resolution. After just one injection, activity in the rats’ visual cortex and visual acuity were the same as those found in healthy rats.

Continue reading “Nanotech Injections Restore Vision In Blind Rats” | >

Summary: Researchers have identified a correlation between control energy consumption and glucose metabolism in temporal lobe epilepsy. The mechanism provides a biological basis for the application of network control theory in the study of brain dynamics.

Source: USTC

A team led by researcher He Xiaosong from the University of Science and Technology (USTC) revealed the correlation between control energy consumption and glucose metabolism in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), providing the biological basis for the application of network control theory (NCT) in the study of brain dynamics.

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How could we one day travel between the stars with real physics? Perhaps the greatest challenge to interstellar flight is energetics — it takes vast amounts of energy to accelerate even small ships to 20% the speed of light. But what if we could steal that energy from where? Perhaps even a black hole. Enter the “halo drive”, a video by Prof David Kipping based on his new peer-reviewed research paper on the subject.

This video is based on research conducted at the Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, New York. You can now support our research program directly here: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support.

Further reading and resources:
► Kipping, David (2018), “The Halo Drive: Fuel Free Relativistic Propulsion of Large Mases via Recycled Boomerang Photons”, JBIS, 71458: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.03423
► Dyson, Freeman (1963), “Gravitational Machines”, in A.G.W. Cameron, ed., Interstellar Communication, New York Benjamin Press: https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast242_s14/Dyson_Machines.pdf.
► Breakthrough Starshot homepage: https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3
► Our Cool Worlds video giving some background on Breakthrough Starshot: https://youtu.be/Ksb6Vh0BT_E
► Our Cool Worlds video on relativistic moving mirrors: https://youtu.be/msK9d9k6K0E
► Our Cool Worlds video on mirror distortion effects: https://youtu.be/1iNA-GTocI0
► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: http://www.astro.columbia.edu.
► Cool Worlds Lab website: http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu.

There’s an error in the video at around 8:30, 2 trillion joules is the cumulative energy output of a typical nuclear power station after 2000 seconds, not 20 days.

Continue reading “The Halo Drive” | >

“ESA is ready to invest in defining the necessary adaptations of space hardware in an effort to enable these otherwise excellently qualified professionals to serve as professional crew members on a safe and useful space mission,” said the agency in a press release in February 2021, when it first issued the call for people with disabilities to apply for what ESA calls the “Parastronaut Feasibility Project.”

McFall’s selection is a huge step forward, but it’s not happening in a vacuum.

On December 14, twelve people with different disabilities will take off on a zero-gravity flight with AstroAccess, aboard Zero Gravity Corporation’s “G-Force One.” They’ll perform experiments to help answer some key questions for astronauts with disabilities — things like how quickly a person with mobility issues can get in and out of a flight seat in microgravity, how a blind person can use textured handholds to orient themselves and navigate the cabin without gravity, and whether sign language is understandable when one person is floating upside down.

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Year 2018 😗

State-of-the-art software tools for neuronal network simulations scale to the largest computing systems available today and enable investigations of large-scale networks of up to 10% of the human cortex at a resolution of individual neurons and synapses. Due to an upper limit on the number of incoming connections of a single neuron, network connectivity becomes extremely sparse at this scale. To manage computational costs, simulation software ultimately targeting the brain scale needs to fully exploit this sparsity. Here we present a two-tier connection infrastructure and a framework for directed communication among compute nodes accounting for the sparsity of brain-scale networks. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by implementing the technology in the NEST simulation code and we investigate its performance in different scaling scenarios of typical network simulations. Our results show that the new data structures and communication scheme prepare the simulation kernel for post-petascale high-performance computing facilities without sacrificing performance in smaller systems.

Modern neuroscience has established numerical simulation as a third pillar supporting the investigation of the dynamics and function of neuronal networks, next to experimental and theoretical approaches. Simulation software reflects the diversity of modern neuroscientific research with tools ranging from the molecular scale to investigate processes at individual synapses (Wils and De Schutter, 2009) to whole-brain simulations at the population level that can be directly related to clinical measures (Sanz Leon et al., 2013). Most neuronal network simulation software, however, is based on the hypothesis that the main processes of brain function can be captured at the level of individual nerve cells and their interactions through electrical pulses. Since these pulses show little variation in shape, it is generally believed that they convey information only through their timing or rate of occurrence.

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Researchers say they may have discovered the solution to a problem that has long hindered progress with a novel form of plasma propulsion that could one day carry humans to distant planets, and potentially launch a new era of space exploration.

The helicon double-layer thruster (HDLT) is a prototype plasma thruster propulsion system that works by injecting gas into an open-ended source tube, where radio frequency AC power produced by an antenna surrounding it electromagnetically ionizes the gas. Within this highly charged plasma, a low-frequency electromagnetic helicon wave is excited by the antenna’s electromagnetic field, further heating the plasma.

Such “magnetic nozzle” thrusters accelerate the plasma they produce to generate thrust for spacecraft, representing a form of electric propulsion with several potential applications in spacecraft design. However, while plasma flows that occur naturally within magnetic fields are often released or “detached”—like when coronal ejections erupt from the Sun—getting plasmas to behave in the same way in the laboratory is more challenging.

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Australian artists say Lensa, the app that uses artificial intelligence to generate self-portraits, is stealing their content and are calling for stricter copyright laws that keep up with AI-generated art.

But the parent company behind the app has defended its use of images, saying Lensa learns to create portraits just as a human would – by learning different artistic styles.

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