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Nov 20, 2024

This Company Wants to Help Your Boss Monitor Your Brainwaves at Work

Posted by in categories: electronics, surveillance

Critics doubt that Emotiv’s earphone-style sensors can reliably track things like stress and attention—and some worry the technology will become yet another form of workplace surveillance.

Nov 20, 2024

Neuralink transplant patient can control computer mouse ‘by just thinking,’ Elon Musk says

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, Elon Musk, neuroscience

The recipient of the world’s first Neuralink brain-chip transplant is able to control a computer mouse by thinking, the tech startup’s founder Elon Musk announced this week.

“Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Reuters reported that Musk said in an X Spaces event on Monday. “Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking.”

Musk added that Neuralink was trying to get the patient to click the mouse as much as possible, Reuters reported.

Nov 20, 2024

Ctrl-labs’ armband lets you control computer cursors with your mind

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, robotics/AI

O.o face_with_colon_three


Ctrl-labs is developing an armband that interprets electrical signals from neurons in the arm, allowing wearers to control computers, smartphones, and even robotic arms with their minds. VentureBeat got hands-on time with the technology during a recent visit to the startup’s New York City office.

Nov 20, 2024

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Cleared to Start Brain Chip Trial in Canada

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, Elon Musk, neuroscience

The billionaire’s brain device company is currently recruiting patients in the US, UK and Canada.

Nov 20, 2024

Cyborg cardiac patch offers alternative to heart transplants

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs

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An engineered cardiac patch has been created that incorporates human cells with flexible electronics and a nanocomposite structure to not only replace damaged heart tissue, but also provide remote monitoring, electrical stimulation, and the release of medication on demand. Using electroactive polymers and a combination of biological and engineered parts, the patch contracts and expands just like normal human heart tissue, but regulates those actions with the precision of a finely-tuned machine.

Invented by Professor Tal Dvir and PhD student Ron Feiner of Tel Aviv University (TAU), this new breakthrough medical device is claimed by its creators to have capabilities that surpass those of human tissue alone. As such, this patch may give new hope to people such as those 25 percent on the US national waiting list that may die before a suitable transplant heart becomes available, by effectively offering a way to fix – rather than replace – their own heart.

Continue reading “Cyborg cardiac patch offers alternative to heart transplants” »

Nov 20, 2024

Elon Musk said his AI-brain-chips company could ‘solve’ autism and schizophrenia

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, Elon Musk, robotics/AI

Musk said he thinks Neuralink will “solve a lot of brain-related diseases,” naming autism and schizophrenia as examples. Autism is not a disease.

Nov 20, 2024

Can We Harness the Body’s Electrical Currents?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Scientists say bioelectricity is the body’s master control. A few aim to use it to regrow limbs, treat cancer — even unlock immortality.

Nov 20, 2024

Local actuation of organoids by magnetic nanoparticles

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, nanotechnology, neuroscience

Tissues take shape during development through a series of morphogenetic movements guided by local cell-scale forces. While current in vitro approaches subjecting tissues to homogenous stresses, it is currently no possible to recapitulate highly local spatially varying forces. Here we develop a method for local actuation of organoids using embedded magnetic nanoparticles. Sequential aggregation of magnetically labelled human pluripotent stem cells followed by actuation by a magnetic field produces localized magnetic clusters within the organoid. These clusters impose local mechanical forces on the surrounding tissue in response to applied global magnetic fields. We show that precise, spatially defined actuation provides short-term mechanical tissue perturbations as well as long-term cytoskeleton remodeling. We demonstrate that local magnetically-driven actuation guides asymmetric growth and proliferation, leading to enhanced patterning in human neural organoids. We show that this approach is applicable to other model systems by observing polarized patterning in paraxial mesoderm organoids upon local magnetic actuation. This versatile approach allows for local, controllable mechanical actuation in multicellular constructs, and is widely applicable to interrogate the role of local mechanotransduction in developmental and disease model systems.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Nov 20, 2024

US startup’s supermagnet test brings commercial fusion energy closer

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

The magnet coil also reached a record for stored energy by 3.7 megajoules.


Commonwealth Fusion Systems has completed testing of its Central Solenoid Model Coil, a critical component in building its SPARC tokamak reactor.

Nov 20, 2024

Managing Japan’s Shrinking Labor Force With AI and Robots

Posted by in categories: employment, robotics/AI

Japan’s combination of artificial intelligence and robotics may be the answer to its rapidly shrinking labor force

Todd Schneider, Gee Hee Hong, and Anh Van Le

While automation will eliminate very few occupations entirely in the coming decades, it is likely to have an impact on portions of almost all jobs to some degree—depending on the type of work and the tasks involved. Set to move beyond routine and repetitive manufacturing activities, automation has the potential to appear in a much broader range of activities than seen until now, and to redefine human labor and work style in services and other sectors. In Japan, the rapid decline in the labor force and the limited influx of immigrants create a powerful incentive for automation, which makes the country a particularly useful laboratory for the study of the future landscape of work.

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