KurzweilAI.net Weekly Newsletter

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Friday September 2, 2011 Weekly edition   News and Blog Headlines UCSB physicists demonstrate ‘quantum von Neumann’ architecture Digital quantum simulator realized HPC startup backs into cloud How Microsoft researchers might invent a holodeck Cracking cellulose: a step into the biofuels future Faster diagnostics with cheap, ultra-portable blood testing The hunt for blood substances that slow brain aging Study matches brain scans with topics of thoughts A step toward a saliva test for cancer Ultrasensitive particles offer new way to find cancer New survival mechanism for neurons found Intel forms new supercomputing subsidiary Researchers report new understanding of role of telomeres in tumor growth Nanowire solar cells reduce cost NIST achieves record low error rate for quantum information processing with one qubit Hubble movies provide unprecedented view of supersonic jets from young stars New laser microscope sees beneath skin to diagnose melanoma Language localized in the brain Alloy and catalyst allow for low-cost generation of hydrogen from water and air-stable, reusable storage Two chatbots chat to each other — hilarious and weird Tiny bugs are controlling your mind! Uncovering the spread of deadly cancer Controlling cells’ environments: a step toward building much-needed tissues and organs Astrophysicists report first simulation to create a Milky Way-like galaxy Unexpected adhesion properties of graphene may lead to new nanotechnology devices Building crowds of humans into software A planet made of diamond A low-cost, low-power DIY cellular data network Latest News UCSB physicists demonstrate ‘quantum von Neumann’ architecture September 2, 2011 UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) physicists have demonstrated a new paradigm in quantum information processing with a quantum integrated circuit that implements a “quantum von Neumann” architecture. In this architecture, a long-lived quantum random access memory can be programmed using a quantum central processing unit, all constructed on a single chip, providing the key components for … more… Digital quantum simulator realized September 2, 2011   University of Innsbruck physicists have created a digital quantum simulator that can potentially be programmed to simulate any physical system efficiently. They used a digital approach to quantum simulation in a system of trapped ions. They encoded the desired initial state of the system in qubits and then implemented the operation sets by laser pulses. … more… HPC startup backs into cloud September 2, 2011   Source Link: HPCwire Startup Black Sky claims it can provide everything needed to simplify system management of high performance computing (HPC) and allow bursting into the cloud easily, meeting time-sensitive demands without incurring vast IT headaches. Target markets: rendering artists, bioinformatics professionals, and those in a wide range of other HPC verticals. First, the company set about building … more… How Microsoft researchers might invent a holodeck September 2, 2011 Microsoft has an innovative side dedicated to pure research and cutting-edge engineering in areas of computer science that may not have relevance to Microsoft’s bottom line for years, if ever. Wired recently toured Microsoft’s research facilities to see some of the work Microsoft scientists and engineers are doing to invent the computer interfaces of the … more… Cracking cellulose: a step into the biofuels future September 2, 2011 University of York scientists have found a method to convert cellulose efficiently into bioethanol. The researchers identified the molecular mechanism behind an enzyme found in fungi that can degrade the cellulose chains of plant cell walls to release shorter sugars for biofuels, using the copper-dependent TaGH61 enzyme to overcome the chemical inertness of cellulose. Current global … more… Faster diagnostics with cheap, ultra-portable blood testing September 2, 2011   University of Toledo researchers have developed a low-cost, portable technique that can quickly and reliably detect specific proteins in a sample of human blood. The researchers chose thrombin and thrombin-binding aptamers (short strands of nucleic acid that mimic antibodies) to latch onto free-floating proteins in the blood. Thrombin is a naturally occurring protein in humans that plays a … more… The hunt for blood substances that slow brain aging September 2, 2011 Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have found substances in the blood of old mice that make young brains act older. The researchers connected the circulatory systems of pairs of old and young mice via a surgical procedure, which produced brain changes in  areas critical to memory and learning (like the hippocampus) in both type … more… Study matches brain scans with topics of thoughts September 1, 2011   Princeton researchers have for the first time matched images of brain activity with categories of words related to the concepts a person is thinking about. The research may lead to a better understanding of how people consider meaning and context when reading or thinking. The researchers worked from fMRI images of brain activity. For those scans, … more… A step toward a saliva test for cancer September 1, 2011 A new saliva test developed by researchers at National Chung Cheng University (NCCU) in Taiwan that can measure the amount of potential carcinogens stuck to a person’s DNA was reported during the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Denver. “The test measures the amount of damaged DNA [DNA adducts] … more… Ultrasensitive particles offer new way to find cancer September 1, 2011   MIT researchers have engineered a way to detect abnormal microRNA levels in the blood of cancer patients, raising the possibility of developing a simple blood test to diagnose or monitor the disease. The technology consists of an array of tiny particles, each designed to latch onto a specific type of microRNA. By exposing blood samples to … more… New survival mechanism for neurons found September 1, 2011 Johns Hopkins researchers have clarified the workings of the microtubule network inside of axons and the mechanisms of retrograde transport of key neuronal survival signals. Using mouse neurons from ganglia that line the spinal column, the scientists figured out the signal known as nerve growth factor (NGF) travels along the axon to the command center of … more… Intel forms new supercomputing subsidiary September 1, 2011 Intel Corporation has announced the formation of a wholly owned subsidiary, Intel Federal LLC, to provide strategic focus to better address new opportunities in working with the U.S. government. “Reaching supercomputer performance levels of a hundred times more powerful than today by 2018 will require the combined efforts of both industry and government,” said Kirk … more… Researchers report new understanding of role of telomeres in tumor growth September 1, 2011 Researchers at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have reported the first observation of the presence of “alternative lengthening of telomeres” (ALT) in cancers arising from the bladder, cervix, endometrium, esophagus, gallbladder, liver, and lung. The presence of ALT in carcinomas can be used as a diagnostic marker and has implications for the development of … more… Nanowire solar cells reduce cost September 1, 2011   A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has demonstrated that solar cells can be made from inexpensive elements using low-cost, less-energy-intensive processing chemistry — increasing the possibility of efficiently and cost-competitively converting sunlight into electricity. The researchers developed a technique for fabricating core/shell nanowire solar cells using … more… NIST achieves record low error rate for quantum information processing with one qubit September 1, 2011   Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have achieved a record low probability of error in quantum information processing with a single quantum bit (qubit): 1 per 50,000 logic operations. This is the first published error rate small enough to meet theoretical requirements for building viable quantum computers. The NIST experiment with … more… Hubble movies provide unprecedented view of supersonic jets from young stars August 31, 2011   An international team of scientists led by Rice University has combined two decades of Hubble observations to make unprecedented high-resolution, time-lapse movies revealing never-before-seen details of young jets, the birth pangs of new stars. The movies reveal the motion of the speedy outflows as they tear through the interstellar environments. Never-before-seen details in the jets’ … more… New laser microscope sees beneath skin to diagnose melanoma August 31, 2011   Physicists from Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) in Rome have developed a new type of laser-scanning confocal microscope (LSCM) that holds the promise of diagnosing skin cancer. The new device is able to gather spectrographic information at a wide range of wavelengths of reflected light, from 500nm (blue) to about 2.4um (infrared), for every point … more… Language localized in the brain August 31, 2011   MIT researchers have found that there are parts of our brain dedicated only to language, a finding that marks a major advance in the search for brain regions specialized for sophisticated mental functions. Functional specificity refers to the idea that discrete parts of the brain handle distinct tasks. Scientists have long known that functional specificity … more…

Zapping the Brain to get Insights (not joking)

Flash of fresh insight by electrical brain stimulation

February 3, 2011 

by Editor

[+]

An illustration of the insight problems used (PLoS)

Richard Chi and Allan Snyder from the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney have found that participants who received electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes were three times as likely to reach the fresh insight necessary to solve a difficult, unfamiliar problem than those in the control group. 

According to the researchers, our propensity to rigidly apply strategies and insights that have had previous success is a major bottleneck to making creative leaps in solving new problems. There is normally a cognitive tradeoff between the necessity of being fast at the familiar on one hand and being receptive to novelty on the other.

Chi and Snyder argue that we can modulate this tradeoff to our advantage by applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a safe, non-invasive technique that temporarily increases or decreases excitability of populations of neurons. In particular, tDCS can be used to manipulate the competition between the left and right hemisphere by inhibiting and/or disinhibiting certain networks. Their findings are consistent with evidence that the right anterior temporal lobe is associated with insight or novel meaning and that inhibition of the left anterior temporal lobe can induce a cognitive style that is less top-down, less influenced by preconceptions.

While further studies involving brain stimulation in combination with neuroimaging are needed to elucidate the exact mechanisms leading to insight, Chi and Snyder can imagine a future when non-invasive brain stimulation is briefly employed for solving problems that have evaded traditional cognitive approaches.

Ref.: “Facilitate Insight by Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation,”PLoS ONE 6(2): e16655 (open access)

Adapted from materials provided by the University of Sydney

Topics: Biotech | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

 

 

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1. Skull electrodes give memory a boost | August 13, 2010
2. Electrical brain stimulation improves math skills | November 8, 2010

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• The Motivated Reasoning of Egnorance (theness.com)

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New graphene discovery brings practical devices closer | KurzweilAI

Graphene's band dispersion and low energy Dirac cone in a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice (credit: University of Manchester)

Interactions between electrons significantly enhance the already high velocity of electrons in graphene, researchers at The University of Manchester have found.

They anticipate their findings will accelerate building graphene-based devices such as touchscreens, ultrafast transistors, and photodetectors.

The researchers used extremely high-quality graphene devices, prepared by suspending sheets of graphene in a vacuum. This eliminated most of the unwanted scattering mechanisms for electrons in graphene, enhancing the effect of electron-on-electron interaction.

This is the first effect of its kind where the interactions between electrons in graphene could be clearly seen.

The electrons in graphene behave like massless Dirac particles that appear in the electronic band structure as gapless excitations with a linear dispersion.

“The exciting physics which we have found in this particular experiment may have an immediate implementation in practical electronic devices,” said University of Manchester professor Kostya Novoselov.

Novoselov, together with Professor Francisco Guinea from Madrid, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for “groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene.” They used Scotch tape to peel away layers of carbon from a piece of graphite, and were left with a single-atom-thick, two-dimensional film of carbon — graphene.

Ref.: D. C. Elias, et al., Dirac cones reshaped by interaction effects in suspended graphene, Nature Physics, 2011; [DOI:10.1038/nphys2049]

via kurzweilai.net

IBM develops 'instantaneous' memory, 100x faster than flash

Image via CrunchBase

Related articles

• IBM develops 'instantaneous' memory, 100x faster than flash (empressoftheglobaluniverse.wordpress.com)
• IBM's Phase Change Memory 100 times faster than flash (macworld.com)
• IBM talks data center trench warfare with Oracle, HP (zdnet.com)

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AMP HDR camera reveals reality as never before [video] - Holy Kaw!

 

 

For the first time, the public will be able to get their hands on a video camera that takes incredibly realistic footage thanks to three sensors that collect light and then create an image without having to choose between the over- and under-exposed portions of the picture. Unfortunately, only those who signed up on AMP’s waiting list will be getting the camera when it’s released later this summer, but just to whet your appetite, here’s some video showing its impressive capabilities.

 

Full story at Engadget.

So real you can almost touch it.

via holykaw.alltop.com

 

AMP Digital Video from Mike Tocci on Vimeo.

Light Field camera | Lytro

via lytro.com

CUDA

via nvidia.com

The old paradigms they are a shifting!