New technology is bringing the power of augmented reality into clinical practice. The system, called ProjectDR, shows clinicians 3D medical images such as CT scans and MRI data, projected directly on a patient’s skin.
The technology uses motion capture, similar to how it’s done in movies. Infrared cameras track invisible (to human vision) markers on the patient’s body. That allows the system to track the orientation of… read more
HHMI Howard Hughes Medical Institute | An immune cell explores a zebrafish’s inner ear
By combining two state-of-the-art imaging technologies, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus scientists, led by 2014 chemistry Nobel laureate physicist Eric Betzig, have imaged living cells at unprecedented 3D detail and speed, the scientists report on April 19, 2018 in an open-access paper in the journal Science.
In stunning videos… read more
Researchers at Google, Harvard University, and Gladstone Institutes have developed and tested new deep-learning algorithms that can identify details in terabytes of bioimages, replacing slow, less-accurate manual labeling methods.
Deep learning is a type of machine learning that can analyze data, recognize patterns, and make predictions. A new deep-learning approach to biological images, which the researchers call “in silico labeling” (ISL), can automatically find and predict features in images of “unlabeled”… read more
University of New Hampshire researchers have discovered a combination of materials that they say would allow for smaller, safer magnetic random access memory (MRAM) storage — ultimately leading to ultraminiature computers.
Unlike conventional RAM (read-only memory) SRAM and DRAM chip technologies, with MRAM, data is stored by magnetic storage elements, instead of energy-expending electric charge or current flows. MRAM is also nonvolatile memory (the data is preserved when the power… read more
Google announced today, April 13, 2018, a new experimental publicly available technology called Talk to Books, which lets you ask questions in plain-English sentences to discover relevant information from more than 100,000 books, comprising 600 million sentences.
For example, if you ask, “Can AIs have consciousness?,” Talk to Books returns a list of books that include information on that specific question.
MIT researchers have invented a system that allows someone to communicate silently and privately with a computer or the internet by simply thinking — without requiring any facial muscle movement.
The AlterEgo system consists of a wearable device with electrodes that pick up otherwise undetectable neuromuscular subvocalizations — saying words “in your head” in natural language. The signals are fed to a neural network that is trained to identify… read more
Bloomberg reported this morning (April 4) that Apple is planning a new iPhone with touchless gesture control and displays that curve inward gradually from top to bottom. Apple’s probable use of microLED technology promises to offer “power savings and a reduced screen thickness when put beside current-generation display panels,”according to Apple Insider.
But UC Berkeley engineers have an even more radical concept for future electronics:… read more
Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering have demonstrated a neural prosthetic system that can improve a memory by “writing” information “codes” (based on a patient’s specific memory patterns) into the hippocampus of human subjects via an electrode implanted in the hippocampus (a part of the brain involved in making new memories).… read more
Printing your own bioprinter
Now you can build your own low-cost 3-D bioprinter by modifying a standard commercial desktop 3-D printer for under $500 — thanks to an open-source “LVE 3-D” design developed by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers. CMU provides detailed instructional videos.
You can print artificial human tissue scaffolds on a larger scale (entire human heart) and at higher resolution and quality, the researchers… read more
A revolutionary new theory contradicts a fundamental assumption in neuroscience about how the brain learns. According to researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel led by Prof. Ido Kanter, the theory promises to transform our understanding of brain dysfunction and may lead to advanced, faster, deep-learning algorithms.
The brain is a highly complex network containing billions of neurons. Each of these neurons communicates simultaneously with thousands of others… read more
Scientists from RMIT University in Australia and Wuhan Institute of Technology in China have developed a radical new high-capacity optical disc called “nano-optical long-data memory” that they say can record and store 10 TB (terabytes, or trillions of bytes) of data per disc securely for more than 600 years. That’s a four-times increase of storage density and 300 times increase in data lifespan over current storage… read more
Neuroscientists at the Neuronano Research Centre at Lund University in Sweden have developed and tested an ambitious new design for processing and storing the massive amounts of data expected from future implantable brain machine interfaces (BMIs) and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).
The system would simultaneously acquire data from more than 1 million neurons in real time. It would convert the spike data (using bit encoding) and send it… read more
An international team of scientists has developed an algorithm that represents a major step toward simulating neural connections in the entire human brain.
The new algorithm, described in an open-access paper published in Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, is intended to allow simulation of the human brain’s 100 billion interconnected neurons on supercomputers. The work involves researchers at the Jülich Research Centre, Norwegian University of Life… read more
MIT bioengineers have developed a new microfluidic platform technology that could be used to evaluate new drugs and detect possible side effects before the drugs are tested in humans.
The microfluidic platform can connect 3D tissues from up to 10 organs. Replacing animal testing, it can accurately replicate human-organ interactions for weeks at a time and can allow for measuring the effects of drugs on different parts of the… read more
Mathematicians at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a radical new approach to machine learning: a new type of highly efficient “deep convolutional neural network” that can automatically analyze complex experimental scientific images from limited data.*
As experimental facilities generate higher-resolution images at higher speeds, scientists struggle to manage and analyze the resulting data, which is often done painstakingly by hand.
For example, biologists record cell… read more