Soon, we might interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds, suggests The New York Times.
“Some crude brain-reading products already exist, letting people play easy games or move a mouse around a screen.
“But the products commercially available today will soon look archaic. ‘To really be able to understand what is going on with the brain today you need to surgically implant… read more
Scientists have long observed that species seem to have become increasingly capable of evolving in response to changes in the environment.
But computer science researchers now say that the popular explanation of competition to survive in nature may not actually be necessary for evolvability to increase.
In a paper published this week in open-access PLOS ONE, the researchers report that evolvability… read more
Prototype mobile devices that can change shape on-demand and lead to high “shape resolution” devices of the future.were presented on Monday at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris.
In the presentation, Dr. Anne Roudaut and Professor Sriram Subramanian, from the University of Bristol‘s Department of Computer Science used shape resolution to… read more
KurzweilAI has covered a number of recent developments aimed at giving robots a better sense of touch and humans better control of devices, such as TakkTile (Robot hands gain a gentler touch), allowing a robot to pick up a balloon without popping it (see “Related” below for other examples).
Now Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have taken it to a whole new level.… read more
Is the world’s only commercial quantum computer really a quantum device, or a just regular computer in disguise? Controversy has long swirled around the computer produced by D-Wave, a company based near Vancouver, Canada.
Now a paper published on the arXiv preprint server takes a step forward in showing that it really does operate on a quantum level, Nature News Blog reports.
In… read more
Scientists from the Manchester Collaborative Center for Inflammation Research (MCCIR) have discovered why a particular cancer drug is so effective at killing cells. Their findings could be used to aid the design of future cancer treatments.
Professor Daniel Davis and his team used high quality video imaging to investigate why the drug rituximab is so effective at killing cancerous B cells. It is widely used… read more
The macroscopic effects of certain nanoparticles on human health have long been clear to the naked eye. What scientists have lacked is the ability to see the detailed movements of individual particles that give rise to those effects.
Now, scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have invented a technique for imaging nanoparticle dynamics with atomic resolution as these dynamics occur in a liquid… read more
The Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation has awarded scientists a $2.4 million (2.25 million CHF) grant to develop an affordable photovoltaic system capable of concentrating solar radiation 2,000 times and converting 80 percent of the incoming radiation into useful energy.*
The system would also provide desalinated water and cool air in sunny, remote locations where they are often in short supply.
The prototype HCPVT system… read more
In February, KurzweilAI introduced “temporary electronic tattoos,” which are foldable, stretchable electrode arrays that can non-invasively measure neural (EEG) signals. Now. researchers led by Todd Coleman at the University of California, San Diego, have now optimized the placement of the electrodes to pick up more complex brainwaves, New Scientist reports.
The researchers demonstrated this by monitoring P300 signals in the forebrain. These appear when… read more
What causes a cell to metastasize into a cancerous tumor? To find out, Corey Neu, an assistant professor in Purdue University‘s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, and colleagues have combined an atomic force microscope (AFM) and a nuclear magnetic resonance system.
An AFM uses a tiny vibrating probe called a cantilever with a tip that travels over the surface of a… read more
By using computer-aided drug discovery, an Ohio State University molecular biochemist and molecular imaging chemist are collaborating to create an imaging chemical that attaches predominantly to tau-bearing lesions in living brain.
Their hope is that the “designer” tracer will open the door for earlier diagnosis — and better treatments for Alzheimer’s, frontal temporal dementia and traumatic brain injuries like those suffered by professional athletes, all… read more
Researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have developed a gene therapy approach that may one day stop Parkinson’s disease (PD) in it tracks, preventing disease progression and reversing its symptoms.
The novelty of the approach lies in the nasal route of administration and nanoparticles containing a gene capable of rescuing dying neurons in the brain.
Parkinson’s is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder caused… read more
The first known method to permanently bypass the blood-brain barrier*, using mucosa, or the lining of the nose, has been demonstrated by researchers in the department of Otology and Laryngology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School and the Biomedical Engineering Department of Boston University.
The method opens the door to new treatment options for those with neurodegenerative and CNS disease.… read more
University of Nebraska-Lincoln materials engineers have developed a structural nanofiber that is both strong and tough, a discovery that could transform everything from airplanes and bridges to body armor and bicycles.
“Whatever is made of composites can benefit from our nanofibers,” said the team’s leader, Yuris Dzenis, McBroom Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a member of UNL’s Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience.… read more
Biologists at UC San Diego have identified eight genes never before suspected to play a role in wound healing that are called into action near the areas where wounds occur.
Their discovery, detailed this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE (open access), was made in the laboratory fruit fly Drosophila. But the biologists say many of the same genes that regulate biological processes in the… read more