Lifeboat Foundation

One of the goals of biomimetics is to take inspiration from the functioning of the brain in order to design increasingly intelligent machines. This principle is already at work in information technology, in the form of the algorithms used for completing certain tasks, such as image recognition; this, for instance, is what Facebook uses to identify photos. However, the procedure consumes a lot of energy. Vincent Garcia (Unité mixte de physique CNRS/Thales) and his colleagues have just taken a step forward in this area by creating directly on a chip an artificial synapse that is capable of learning. They have also developed a physical model that explains this learning capacity. This discovery opens the way to creating a network of synapses and hence intelligent systems requiring less time and energy.

Our brain’s learning process is linked to our synapses, which serve as connections between our neurons. The more the synapse is stimulated, the more the connection is reinforced and learning improved. Researchers took inspiration from this mechanism to design an artificial synapse, called a memristor. This electronic nanocomponent consists of a thin ferroelectric layer sandwiched between two electrodes, and whose resistance can be tuned using voltage pulses similar to those in neurons. If the resistance is low the synaptic connection will be strong, and if the resistance is high the connection will be weak. This capacity to adapt its resistance enables the synapse to learn.

Although research focusing on these artificial synapses is central to the concerns of many laboratories, the functioning of these devices remained largely unknown. The researchers have succeeded, for the first time, in developing a physical model able to predict how they function. This understanding of the process will make it possible to create more complex systems, such as a series of artificial neurons interconnected by these memristors.

Continue reading “Electronic synapses that can learn: towards an artificial brain?” »

If you drop your phone and the screen shatters, you usually have two options: get it repaired or replace the phone entirely.

Chemists at the University of California, Riverside, have invented what could become a third option: a phone screen material that can heal itself.

The researchers conducted several tests on the material, including its ability to repair itself from cuts and scratches.

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RAND has opened an office in the San Francisco Bay Area to foster collaboration with the region’s leaders and researchers working to solve today’s complex problems—issues including technological change and innovation, social inequality, water resource management, and transportation.

“RAND’s research and analysis in technology, science, and economic policy intersect directly with the innovation emerging from the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Michael D. Rich, president and CEO of RAND. “RAND’s new office should help strengthen awareness within the Bay Area community of our long-standing commitment to using evidence and data to help policy and decisionmakers enhance well-being in the region and beyond.”

RAND brings a unique set of tools to address these policy concerns: big-data analytics, gaming, and methods to help people make difficult decisions in the face of uncertainty. Nidhi Kalra, a senior information scientist, is leading the new office and will be convening public- and private-sector stakeholders to discuss important issues. “We want to partner with the region’s technology and innovation communities, to link our research and their expertise to make better policies and improve people’s lives,” she said.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=p2MEaROKjaE

I do not think, at least at first, that any brain interfaces for the masses will be anything other than organic. Possibly a synthetic virus that can be inserted and removed without the invasion of instruments. Those things we might have to deal with either way are summarized here.

How closely will we live with the technology we use in the future? How will it change us? And how close is “close”? Ghost in the Shell imagines a futuristic, hi-tech but grimy and ghetto-ridden Japanese metropolis populated by people, robots, and technologically-enhanced human cyborgs.

Continue reading “Ghost in the Shell Thrills, But Ducks the Philosophical Questions Posed by a Cyborg Future” »

Interest in rejuvenation biotechnology is growing in the investment quarter.

Mainstream interest in rejuvenation biotechnology is growing.

“Investment in the development of rejuvenation therapies represents an enormous opportunity for profit; these are products for which every adult human being much over the age of 30 is a potential customer at some price point. That is larger than near every existing industry, either within or outside the field of medicine, even given that customers will only purchase such a therapy once every few years, for clearance of metabolic waste, or even just once, for treatments like the SENS approach of allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes. Among the first successful companies in this space, some will grow to become among the largest in the world: I’d wager that the Ford or Microsoft of rejuvenation will be a lot larger than the actual Ford of automobiles or Microsoft of personal computing.”

Continue reading “Investment Strategist Jim Mellon Considers the Near Future of Longevity Science” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gi0Ca50HlHA

The future of technology is full of threats and dangers we can prepare for. Here is a top list of ethical issues in medicine and healthcare.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tory Bruno and key space enterprise partners discuss the vision of a self-sustained space economy within the confines of CisLunar space.

Panel members will representatives from American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Boeing, Made in Space, Offworld, and the United States Air Force.

The key to this all working is the design of the nanostructures. If you just have a laser in free space, the particle will just oscillate back and forth, pushing it one way and then the other. It won’t ever gain in total energy. So you need some kind of structure that channels or modulates the fields in such a way that the particle will travel along mainly the peaks of the electromagnetic wave and not into the troughs so that it gets kicks but not deceleration.

In all of the experiments done so far, England explains that the particles are basically filling the whole wave, occupying and seeing both the peaks and troughs. This results in some particles being accelerated while others get decelerated.

“In the future, as one of the next experimental steps what we want is to bunch the particles to make very short little packets of particles that are spaced at exactly the right distance between the peaks so that they will ride only on the peaks,” says England. “So you can think of it as like… ocean waves, and you want your surfers to be positioned only on the peaks of the waves and not in the troughs.”

Continue reading “Nanofabrication Enables ‘Particle-Accelerator-on-a-Chip’ Technology” »

The US wants to stay in front of China with hypersonic weapons able to travel at five-times the speed of sound and destroy targets with a “kinetic energy” warhead.

Air Force weapons developers expect to operate hypersonic intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance drones by the 2040s, once scientific progress with autonomy and propulsion technology matures to a new level.

The advent of using a recoverable drone platform able to travel at high altitudes, faster than Mach 5, will follow the emergence of hypersonic weapons likely to be operational in the mid-2020s, according to the Air Force Chief Scientist Geoffrey Zacharias.

Continue reading “Hypersonic Attack Drones by 2040? Is China In Front of the US in Developing Hypersonic Weapons?” »