Category Archives: news

“New molecular transistor can control single electrons” by Dario Borghino

from gizmag.com

“Researchers from Germany, Japan and the United States have managed to create a tiny, reliable transistor assembled from a single molecule and a dozen additional atoms. The transistor reportedly operates so precisely that it can control the flow of single electrons, paving the way for the next generation of nanomaterials and miniaturized electronics.

(…)

Tiny molecular transistors much smaller than the ones inside our computers (as small as two nanometers) have already been built, but the issue that researchers now face is to find a way to control them in a reliable way. (…)

The transistors of today are built using a top-down approach where bulk silicon is gradually etched into the desired pattern. A molecular transistor, however, must be built from the bottom up, by assembling atoms one by one in a chemistry lab. (…) The device was assembled by taking a crystal of indium arsenide and placing 12 indium atoms laid out in a hexagonal shape on top of it, with a phthalocyanine molecule in the middle.

….” read more

“Ancestry Moves Further into Consumer Genetics” by Anna Nowogrodzki

article featured in MIT Tech covering new service by Ancestry.

“Ancestry entered the field of consumer DNA analysis in 2012 with the launch of AncestryDNA, a $99 spit test that will analyze your DNA – five years after 23andMe began to offer similar DNA-testing kits.

… Ancestry has an advantage over 23andMe in that it already has millions of users’ family trees. AncestryHealth capitalizes on this: the free service will import both family tree data from Ancestry and genetic data…

…family history is often the first thing doctors ask for to assess health risks, and AncestryHealth is betting that people would rather print out that history from a free website than dredge their memories for half-forgotten details in the five minutes before their doctor’s appointment.

And Ancestry is hoping to sell that data for medical research purposes. …

…“With the blessing of the FDA and regulators, we would like to communicate with that consumer, whether that is through a physician or a genetic counselor,” says Chahine.” read full article

“The Magic Box: A Whimsical Vintage Children’s Book for Grownups About Life, Death, and How To Be More Alive Every Day” by Maria Popova

excerpt from article featured in brainpickings:

“…How to have a more expansive and enlivening relationship with our mortality is what writer Joseph Pintauro and artist Norman Laliberté explore half a century after Rilke in the 1970 treasureThe Magic Box (public library) — a most unusual and wonderful children’s book for adults about life and death, the seasonality of being, and the beauty that springs from our impermanence….”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“‘You’ve Got a Hit’: How a James Taylor Album Finally Reached Number 1” by DAVID A. GRAHAM

“The collapse of the music industry has enabled first-time No. 1 records by a slew of unlikely artists—from Tom Petty to Weird Al to Tony Bennett.”

Read full article at The Atlantic

“… people who buy CDs and full-albums tend to be older, whiter, and more male than the general music-buying population. So when Tom Petty or, say, Bob Dylan (who’s had several No. 1 records in the last decade) or Bruce Springsteen (likewise) releases a new record, a small army of aging Boomers (and maybe their nostalgic children) emerges from its pop-culture cocoon and buys the new record in a shiny, shrink-wrapped jewel case.”…

“A World Without Work” by DEREK THOMPSON

featured at The Atlantic

“…Futurists and science-fiction writers have at times looked forward to machines’ workplace takeover with a kind of giddy excitement, imagining the banishment of drudgery and its replacement by expansive leisure and almost limitless personal freedom. And make no mistake: if the capabilities of computers continue to multiply while the price of computing continues to decline, that will mean a great many of life’s necessities and luxuries will become ever cheaper, and it will mean great wealth—at least when aggregated up to the level of the national economy.

But even leaving aside questions of how to distribute that wealth, the widespread disappearance of work would usher in a social transformation unlike any we’ve seen…” read more

“Growing Pains for Deep Learning” By Chris Edwards

“Advances in theory and computer hardware have allowed neural networks to become a core part of online services such as Microsoft’s Bing, driving their image-search and speech-recognition systems. The companies offering such capabilities are looking to the technology to drive more advanced services in the future, as they scale up the neural networks to deal with more sophisticated problems.

It has taken time for neural networks, initially conceived 50 years ago, to become accepted parts of information technology applications. After a flurry of interest in the 1990s, supported in part by the development of highly specialized integrated circuits designed to overcome their poor performance on conventional computers, neural networks were outperformed by other algorithms, such as support vector machines in image processing and Gaussian models in speech recognition.” read more

got a minute? “The Rise of ‘Speed-Listening’ ” by MEGAN GARBER

“…Speed reading … has long been used in the ongoing quest for the efficient absorption of information. And personalized, sped-up audio playback, for its part, has been around… In 2007, the “Getting Things Done” blog recommended “adjusting the playback speed of your audiobook or video to a maximum of 150 percent” to complete the book more quickly. In 2010, the tech blog GigaOm suggested “speed-listening to podcasts” as an overall time-saving technique. Software titled, straightforwardly, FasterAudio promises to “cut your audio learning time in half.” read more…

“Face It, Your Brain Is a Computer” by Gary Marcus. (NYT)

Article from NY Times Sunday Review

“…

If the brain is not a serial algorithm-crunching machine, though, what is it? A lot of neuroscientists are inclined to disregard the big picture, focusing instead on understanding narrow, measurable phenomena (like the mechanics of how calcium ions are trafficked through a single neuron), without addressing the larger conceptual question of what it is that the brain does.

This approach is misguided. Too many scientists have given up on the computer analogy, and far too little has been offered in its place. In my view, the analogy is due for a rethink.

To begin with, all the standard arguments about why the brain might not be a computer are pretty weak….” read more

An A.I. personal assistant

x.ai’s Amy is designed to help people arrange meetings.  In a way similar to what a personal assistant would do, Amy handles schedule and sort available time and place of meetings.

In order to this Amy inputs is your preferences and communication with meetings guest.

Could be useful, but still on beta version.  Ironically it’s not yet readily available – but there’s a waiting list…

If we see with our minds, not our eyes – so do computers…

Posted on Google research blog, researchers posted how neural networks trained to classify images interpret and re-interpret image abstractions, as some examples below.

not bad idea from a friend who immediately identified it (especially bottom examples) with this image search:

 

Left: Original photo by Zachi Evenor. Right: processed by Günther Noack, Software Engineer
Left: Original painting by Georges Seurat. Right: processed images by Matthew McNaughton, Software Engineer

 

The original image influences what kind of objects form in the processed image.

 

Neural net “dreams”— generated purely from random noise, using a network trained on places by MIT Computer Science and AI Laboratory. See our Inceptionism gallery for hi-res versions of the images above and more (Images marked “Places205-GoogLeNet” were made using this network).

 

Injectable Nanowire mesh to stimulate and study neuron activity

“Syringe-injectable electronics” a paper published in nature nanotechnology describes a new technique that allow scientists to introduce a nanoparticle mesh into the brain.

The structure could allow not only to register, transmit and record neural activity but also eventually be used to stimulate neurons with a precision beyond our current skills.   It’s low degree of invasiveness and rejection makes the possibility of applying such studies in normal, functional beings during usual activities.

“The Pentagon’s gamble on brain implants, bionic limbs and combat exoskeletons” by Sara Reardon

Article featured in Nature:

“DARPA is making a big push into biological research — but some scientists question whether its high-risk approach can work.

(…) the first biology funding office to operate within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s avant-garde research arm. The Biological Technologies Office (BTO), which opened in April 2014, aims to support extremely ambitious — some say fantastical — technologies ranging from powered exoskeletons for soldiers to brain implants that can control mental disorders.

DARPA’s plan for tackling such projects is being carried out in the same frenetic style that has defined the agency’s research in other fields. Ever since it was created in 1958, a year after the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by launching the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, the agency’s mission has been to prevent any more such surprises by getting there first. So DARPA’s programme managers at the BTO are free to pour tens of millions of dollars into ambitious projects without waiting around for niceties such as peer review. And by working closely with its contractors as they develop their technology, the agency aims to drive discoveries across the often-deadly gap between basic research and commercialization… read more.