Sleep improves performance in skill tasks, University of Geneva scientists have found, based on fMRI measurements.
The results revealed that a period of sleep following a new experience can consolidate and improve subsequent effects of learning from the experience, they suggest.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found a way to stimulate the slow waves typical of deep sleep by the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to send a harmless magnetic signal through the skulls of sleeping volunteers.
Northwestern University scientists have connected 250 years of organic chemical knowledge into one giant computer network called Chematica — a chemical “Google” on steroids.
A decade in the making, the software optimizes syntheses of drug molecules and other important compounds, combines long (and expensive) syntheses of compounds into shorter and more economical routes, and identifies suspicious chemical recipes that could lead to chemical weapons.
The… read more
Google researchers say they have developed a new software technology intended to do for digital images on the Web what the company’s original PageRank software did for searches of Web pages.
Their VisualRank algorithm combines image-recognition software methods with techniques for weighting and ranking images that look most similar.
On a good day, Lucy can tell a banana apart from an apple. And that’s handy skill to have if you are an orangutan. Even a robotic one….
By combining the old rule-based systems with insights from new probabilistic statistical systems, MIT research scientist Noah Goodman has found a way to model thought that could have broad implications for both AI and cognitive science.
More info: MIT News
A seamless graphene/nanotube hybrid created at Rice University may be the best electrode interface material possible for many energy storage and electronics applications.
Led by Rice chemist James Tour, researchers have successfully grown forests of carbon nanotubes that rise quickly from sheets of graphene to astounding lengths of up to 120 microns. A house on an average plot with the same… read more
Investment in solar power is rising in California, the product of billions of dollars in investment and mountains of enthusiasm.
NASA’s EO-1 is a new breed of satellite with AI programming to notice things that change (like the plume of a volcano) and take appropriate action, such as monitoring that specific location.
EO-1 can re-organize its own priorities to study volcanic eruptions, flash floods, forest fires, disintegrating sea-ice, and other unexpected events. It can also use sensors on other satellites or on the ground as a “sensorweb.”
On Saturday, amateur radio operators will bounce signals off the moon, using parabolic antenna radio telescopes around the world.
Also see Echoes of Apollo
MIT Media Lab researcher Hiroshi Ishii wants people to be able to interact with their computers and other devices by moving around and by handling real physical objects: by doing what comes naturally.
About 60 people from 20 nations will descend on the MIT campus today to begin the International Development Design Summit, an intensive month-long process of creating technological solutions for the needs of people in the world’s developing nations.
The goal of the program is to develop simple, inexpensive devices that in some cases can be produced locally and make a real difference for people and communities.
Several of… read more
Computer security researchers have shown they could reprogram, shut down and deliver jolts of electricity to a combination heart defibrillator-pacemaker that would potentially be fatal.
They also showed they could glean personal patient data by eavesdropping on the device, made by Medtronic.
Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed a tiny handlike gripper that can grasp tissue or cell samples and could make it easier for doctors to perform minimally invasive surgery, such as biopsies.
The device curls its “fingers” around an object when triggered chemically, and it can be moved around remotely with a magnet.
Obesity among people who eat a high-fat diet may involve injury to neurons, researchers at the Diabetes and Obesity Center of Excellence at the University of Washington have shown.
The researchers studied the brains of rodents for the short-term and long-term effects of eating a high-fat diet. After giving groups of 6 to 10 rats and mice a high-fat diet for periods from one day… read more