Lifeboat Foundation

I’ve been reading Ramez Naam’s fantastic book “Nexus,” which is set in a near-future where a powerful nano-drug allows human minds to connect together. In the story, a group of enterprising neuroscientists and engineers discover they can use the drug in a new way — to run a computer operating system inside their brains. Naam’s characters telepathically communicate with each other using a mental chat app and even manipulate other people’s bodies by gaining control of their brains’ operating systems.

Sounds far-fetched, right?

It might not be as far-fetched as you think. From connecting a human brain to a basic tablet to help a paralyzed patient communicate with the outside world to memory-boosting brain implants and a prototype computer chip that runs on live neurons — the real world progress we’re seeing today is nearly as strange as fiction.

Continue reading “5 Incredible Ways Scientists Are Merging Our Brains With Machines” »

The new BMI stentrode came from the research on sheep; nice to know for the next Trivia night at the local pub.

A group of Australian and American researchers have used sheep to develop and test a new device (original paper) – the stentrode – for recording electrical signals from inside the brain. The research was published in Nature Biotechnology. This new technology removes one of the main obstacles to developing efficient brain-computer interfaces: the need for invasive surgery.

Continue reading “Research using sheep leads to a new device to record and stimulate the brain” »

When the Holiday season kicks off next fall (2017); I have a feeling that I may end up buying a Penny Robot or a BMI controlled drone for my niece & nephews.

The post is also available in: Hebrew :הכתבה זמינה גם ב

A new research out of Arizona State University with DARPA funding.

Continue reading “Farewell Remote Controllers, Hello Brain Controlled UAV’s” »

Excellent progress.

The rapid progress that has been sweeping the field of crystal growth and related device technology is opening doors. Perhaps nowhere is the effect of this evolution being felt more than in the development of ultra-small structures whose material properties can be controlled on the nanoscale. The reason for this development: because solid-state nano–structures possess unique optical and electronic properties, they have the potential to be the launching pad of a new generation of devices.

Within the field, researchers are particularly focused on the properties of spins confined within the nano-structures – with the ultimate goal being to use spin nano-systems to develop, for example, robust quantum bits (qubits) capable of storing vast amounts of information. Here, the EU -funded S^3NANO project has successfully developed qubits in a new, innovative form. According to project researchers, these qubits could serve as the information units of the quantum computers of the future.

Continue reading “Spin Nano-Systems Result in New Type of Quantum Bits” »

Another spin on AI in how it eradicates poverty; hmmm.

Eradicating extreme poverty, measured as people living on less than $1.25 US a day, by 2030 is among the sustainable development goals adopted by United Nations member states last year.

A team of computer scientists and satellite experts created a self-updating world map to locate poverty, said Marshall Burke, assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Earth System Science.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence could help eradicate global poverty” »

Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, have created a new theoretical framework which could help physicists and device engineers design better optoelectronics, leading to less heat generation and power consumption in electronic devices which source, detect, and control light.

Speaking about the research, which enables scientists and engineers to quantify how transparent a 2D material is to an electrostatic field, Dr Elton Santos from the Atomistic Simulation Research Centre at Queen’s, said: “In our paper we have developed a theoretical framework that predicts and quantifies the degree of ‘transparency’ up to the limit of one-atom-thick, 2D materials, to an electrostatic field.

“Imagine we can change the transparency of a material just using an electric bias, e.g. get darker or brighter at will. What kind of implications would this have, for instance, in mobile phone technologies? This was the first question we asked ourselves. We realised that this would allow the microscopic control over the distribution of charged carriers in a bulk semiconductor (e.g. traditional Si microchips) in a nonlinear manner. This will help physicists and device engineers to design better quantum capacitors, an array of subatomic power storage components capable to keep high energy densities, for instance, in batteries, and vertical transistors, leading to next-generation optoelectronics with lower power consumption and dissipation of heat (cold devices), and better performance. In other words, smarter smart phones.”

How will we interact with the intelligent machines of the future? If you’re asking Bryan Johnson, founder of startup Kernel, he’ll tell you those machines should be implanted inside our brains.

His team is working with top neuroscientists to build a tiny brain chip—also known as a neuroprosthetic —to help people with disease-related brain damage. In the long term, though, Johnson sees the product applicable to anyone who wants a bit of a brain boost.

Yes, some might flag this technology as yet another invention leading us toward a future where technology just helps the privileged get further in life.

Continue reading “The Tiny Brain Chip That May Supercharge Your Mind” »

You might have heard the news: Our world could be a clever computer simulation that creates the impression of living in a real world. Elon Musk brought up this topic a few weeks ago. Truth be told — he is probably right. However, there is a very important point missing in this whole “real vs. fake” discussion: It actually makes no difference. But first…why might our world be a simulation?

Musk is nowhere near the first one to suggest our world might be fake. The idea reaches back to the ancient Greeks, though what we call a computer simulation, the ancient Greeks called a dream.

Continue reading “We Might Live in a Virtual Universe — But It Doesn’t Really Matter” »

When you never need to say a word because your AI reads your mind. Who knows; maybe we’ll end up with a new population of introverts and anti-socialists for researchers to study.

Scientists at the University of Rochester have developed a computer model that can predict sentences by looking for brain activity patterns that are associated with different words.