Lifeboat Foundation

The first fab at Samsung’s $17 billion Taylor campus is scheduled to begin operations by 2026.

Scientists have achieved groundbreaking brain mapping using ultrasound, detailed in a May 2024 Science Translational Medicine paper. Led by Richard Andersen and Charles Liu, they developed a non-invasive method to monitor brain activity with unprecedented clarity. This innovation, employing an ‘acoustically transparent’ skull window, allows real-time observation of neuronal and blood flow dynamics. The technique promises new insights into brain function and potential advancements in treating neurological disorders, marking a transformative milestone in neuroscience.

BYD is developing a new battery that can charge an electric car from 10 to 80% in 10 minutes, potentially revolutionizing the electric car industry Questions to inspire discussion What is BYD developing for electric cars? —BYD is developing a new battery that can charge an electric car from 10 to 80% in just 10 minutes, potentially revolutionizing the electric car industry.

The ability to communicate using only your thoughts might sound like the stuff of science fiction. But for people who don’t have the ability to speak or move due to injury or disease, there’s great hope that this may one day be possible using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that can “read” relevant brain signals and translate them into written or spoken words. A research team has made a preliminary advance in this direction by showing for the first time that a computerized brain implant can decode internal speech with minimal training.

In the new NIH-supported study, researchers implanted such a device in a brain area known to be important for representing spoken words called the supramarginal gyrus in two people with tetraplegia, a condition marked by full body paralysis from the neck down due to cervical spinal cord injury. The researchers found that the device could decode several words the participants “spoke” only in their minds. While we are far from using such a device to decode whole sentences or even phrases, and the exact mechanisms of internal speech are still under study, the findings, reported in Nature Human Behavior, are notable because it had been unclear whether the brain signals involved in thinking words could be reproducibly translated.

The findings come from a team led by Richard Andersen at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, and Sarah Wandelt, now at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in Manhasset, NY, and the study was supported by the NIH Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative Research Opportunities in Humans program. Though earlier research had shown that brain implants could decode vocalized, attempted, and mimed speech, it had yet to be seen whether internal speech could be similarly decoded.

The Quantum Insider (TQI) is the leading online resource dedicated exclusively to Quantum Computing.

Breaking news: The US chipmaker has leapfrogged Microsoft and Apple to become the most valuable company in the world, following months of explosive share price growth and an investor frenzy over AI.

Landmark moment for US chipmaker caps explosive rally fuelled by investor excitement over AI.

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The universe creates complexity out of simplicity, but despite many attempts at understanding how, scientists still have not figured it out. We do know that complexity relies on the emergence of new features and laws, but then again we don’t understand emergence either. The first step must be to clearly define what we are talking about and to measure it. A group of scientists now put forward a way to do exactly this. Let’s have a look.

Continue reading “This New Idea Could Explain Complexity” »

Decagon cofounders Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas have more in common than just their company. Each studied computer science, married young, and even founded a company before Decagon. “We started hacking on some stuff together,” said Zhang, the startup’s CEO. “And that went well, so we just kept working together.”

Founded in July 2023, Decagon uses generative AI to automate customer support for enterprise customers. The company has emerged from stealth and raised $35 million in funding for its seed and Series A rounds. Accel led the company’s $30 million Series A, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, A*, and Elad Gil. A16z led the company’s $5 million seed round. Decagon also counts Box CEO Aaron Levie and Airtable CEO Howie Liu as angel investors.

A new analysis of data collected on Venus more than 30 years ago suggests the planet may currently be volcanically active.

A research group from Italy led by David Sulcanese of the Università d’Annunzio in Pescara, Italy, has used data from a radar mapping of Venus’s surface taken in the early 1990s to search for volcanic lava flow, finding it in two regions.

The discovery suggests that volcanic activity may be currently active and more widespread than was previously thought, supporting previous indirect evidence that there is volcanic activity on Venus.