Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a safer way to use focused ultrasound to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier* to allow for delivering vital drugs for treating glioma brain tumors — an alternative to invasive incision or radiation.
Focused ultrasound drug delivery to the brain uses “cavitation” — creating microbubbles — to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier. The problem with this method has been that if these bubbles… read more
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) inducted Ray Kurzweil and 11 other industry leaders into the Consumer Technology (CT) Hall of Fame at its 19th annual awards dinner, held Nov. 7, 2017 at the Rainbow Room, atop 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
CTA, formerly Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), created the Hall of Fame in 2000 to honor industry visionaries and pioneers.
A noted inventor, author, and futurist, Ray Kurzweil was… read more
Digital technology is disrupting the American workforce, but in vastly uneven ways, according to a new analysis of 545 occupations in a report published today by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.
The report, “Digitalization and the American workforce,” provides a detailed analysis of changes since 2001 in the digital content of 545 occupations that represent 90 percent of the workforce in all industries. It suggests that acquiring digital… read more
Researchers at MIT and Paris Descartes University have developed a technique for precisely mapping connections of individual neurons for the first time by triggering them with holographic laser light.
The technique is based on optogenetics (using light to stimulate or silence light-sensitive genetically modified protein molecules called “opsins” that are embedded in specific neurons). Current optogenetics techniques can’t isolate individual neurons (and their connections) because… read more
Researchers at the University of Nottingham have developed a method for rapidly 3D-printing fully functional electronic circuits such as antennas, medical devices, and solar-energy-collecting structures.
Unlike conventional 3D printers, these circuits can contain both both electrically conductive metallic inks (like the silver wires in the photo above) and insulating polymeric inks (like the yellow and orange support structure). A UV light is used rapidly solidify the inks).… read more
Researchers at the University of Cambridge, working with colleagues in Italy and China, have incorporated washable, stretchable, and breathable integrated electronic circuits into fabric for the first time — opening up new possibilities for smart textiles and wearable textile electronic devices.
The circuits were made with cheap, safe, and environmentally friendly inks, and printed using conventional inkjet-printing techniques.
The new method directly prints graphene inks and other two-dimensional… read more
In a $5.5 million international collaboration, researchers and engineers have developed powerful new “Neuropixels” brain probes that can simultaneously monitor the neural activity of hundreds of neurons at several layers of a rodent’s brain for the first time.
Described in a paper published today (November 8, 2017) in Nature, Neuropixels probes represent a significant advance in neuroscience measurement technology, and will allow for the most precise understanding yet of how large… read more
A team of scientists at the University of California San Diego led by biologist Nan Hao have combined engineering, computer science, and biology technologies to decode the molecular processes in cells that influence aging.
Protecting DNA from damage
As cells age, damage in their DNA accumulates over time, leading to decay in normal functioning — eventually resulting in death. But a natural biochemical process… read more
Researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Riverside have developed an ultrafast new method for electrically controlling magnetism in certain metals — a breakthrough that could lead to more energy-efficient computer memory and processing technologies.
“The development of a non-volatile memory that is as fast as charge-based random-access memories could dramatically improve performance and energy efficiency of computing devices,” says Berkeley electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS) professor Jeffrey Bokor,… read more
Daydreaming during meetings or class might actually be a sign that you’re smart and creative, according to a Georgia Institute of Technology study.
“People with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering,” said Eric Schumacher, an associate psychology professor who co-authored a research paper published in the journal Neuropsychologia.
Participants were instructed to focus on a stationary… read more
Researchers at Columbia and Lehigh universities have developed a method for error-checking the reasoning of the thousands or millions of neurons in unsupervised (self-taught) deep-learning neural networks, such as those used in self-driving cars.
Their tool, DeepXplore, feeds confusing, real-world inputs into the network to expose rare instances of flawed reasoning, such as the incident last year when Tesla’s autonomous car collided with a truck it mistook for… read more
Purdue Engineering researchers have developed a system that can show what people are seeing in real-world videos, decoded from their fMRI brain scans — an advanced new form of “mind-reading” technology that could lead to new insights in brain function and to advanced AI systems.
The research builds on previous pioneering research at UC Berkeley’s Gallant Lab, which created a computer program in 2011 that translated fMRI brain-wave patterns… read more
IBM Research announced Tuesday (Oct. 24, 2017) that its scientists have developed the first “in-memory computing” or “computational memory” computer system architecture, which is expected to yield 200x improvements in computer speed and energy efficiency — enabling ultra-dense, low-power, massively parallel computing systems.
Their concept is to use one device (such as phase change memory or PCM*) for both storing and processing information. That design would replace… read more
University of Michigan (U-M) scientists have developed a voice-authentication system for reducing the risk of being spoofed when you use a biometric system to log into secure services or a voice assistant (such as Amazon Echo and Google Home).
A hilarious example of spoofing a voice assistant happened during a Google commercial during the 2017 Super Bowl. When actors voiced “OK Google” commands… read more
Drawing in air, touchless control of virtual objects, and a modular mobile phone with snap-in sections (for lending to friends, family members, or even strangers) are among the innovative user-interface concepts to be introduced at the 30th ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST 2017) on October 22–25 in Quebec City, Canada.
Here are three concepts to be presented, developed by researchers at Dartmouth College’s… read more