Artificial Super-Skin Could Transform Phones, Robots and Artificial Limbs Touch sensitivity on gadgets and robots is nothing new. A few strategically placed sensors under a flexible, synthetic skin and you have pressure sensitivity. Add a capacitive, transparent screen to a device and you have touch sensitivity. The brainchild of Stanford University Associate Professor of chemical engineering Zhenan Bao, this “super skin” employs a transparent film of spray-on, single-walled carbon nanotubes that sit in a thin film of flexible silicon, which is then sandwiched between more silicon. After an initial stretch, which actually aligns the randomly sprayed-on conductive, carbon nanotubes into microscopic spring-like forms, the skin can be stretched and restretched again to twice its original size, without the springs or skin losing their resiliency. SEE ALSO: Humanoid Robot Charges Up, Takes a Load Off [VIDEOS] This unique makeup allows the malleable skin to measure force response even as it’s being stretched, or “squeezed like a sponge.”
assemble a brain It is a puzzlement: How do you assemble and wire an information processing device as complex as the mammalian brain? There are roughly 86 billion neurons in a human brain, forming about a quadrillion synapses. A rat’s brain is just one thousandth that size, but still pretty complex, with 56 million neurons and 500 billion synapses. How does the brain know to put a nest basket cell here, a small basket cell over there, a large basket cell in the middle, a Martinotti cell on the left and a bi-tufted cell on the right, all wired up to pyramidal cells? There has to be a plan, doesn’t there? I mean, the body doesn’t just throw its inventory of brain cells out there like a bunch of pick-up sticks, to fall where they may. As it turns out, that may be almost exactly what the brain does. It’s a case of, “Ready. Other studies have already established that random distribution could produce the proper number of potential neuron-neuron connections. Images: EPFL / Blue Brain Project
brain computer What's the Latest Development? Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov is courting the world's richest individuals to help him in conquering death. Itskov, a 33 year-old, can afford to wait but the billionaires he approaches have an average age of 66, meaning they may be looking for shorter-term solutions to living longer—much longer. What's the Big Idea? Preserving the brain and placing it in a host container, so that the spark of consciousness could outlive the body's organ failure, may be "just a way station to Nirvana, which would ultimately involve downloading the brain’s contents into a computer." Photo credit: Shutterstock.com
emblem example Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre. L’emblème (nom masculin) est un idéogramme, une couleur, une forme, un animal ou autre signe conventionnel de valeur symbolique, destiné à représenter une idée, un être physique ou moral. Quelques exemples d'emblèmes[modifier | modifier le code] Un drapeau est l'emblème d'une nationLa colombe est l'emblème de la paixLa couronne de laurier est l'emblème de la gloire Franglais[modifier | modifier le code] Depuis la fin de XXe siècle, la notion d'emblème est fréquemment exprimée en français courant, et spécialement dans le français médiatique de France, par le mot icône[1]. Cette impropriété de terme s'est répandue sous l'influence de mauvaises traductions mot à mot de l'anglo-américaine icon, dans des contextes où icon n'est pas effectivement employé au sens d'icône (c'est-à-dire image pieuse du rite orthodoxe), mais au sens de emblème ; puis, par analogie figurée désignant des personnes : grande figure, chef de file, vedette, idole , etc.
eVa's 3D- memory Update 12/2/15: We've now followed up on this story: The more we learn about memory, the weirder it gets. The original continues below. MIT researchers have shown, for the first time ever, that memories are stored in specific brain cells. By triggering a small cluster of neurons, the researchers were able to force the subject to recall a specific memory. By removing these neurons, the subject would lose that memory. As you can imagine, the trick here is activating individual neurons, which are incredibly small and not really the kind of thing you can attach electrodes to. Now, just to temper your excitement, we should note that MIT's subjects in this case are mice -- but it's very, very likely that the human brain functions in the same way. In the experiment, MIT gave mice an electric shock to create a fear memory in the hippocampus region of the brain (pictured above) -- and then later, using laser light, activated the neurons where the memory was stored.
I am Iron Man: Top 5 Exoskeleton Robots By David Goldstein Everyone has wished, at one point or another, that they had the strength to lift a car off of the ground, or break through a brick wall with the pound of a fist. You know, typical superhero stuff. But everyone who has tried it knows that most of the time reality, and the limits of the human body, spoil the fun. Thankfully, scientists have been developing a way around those limits, in the form of wearable exoskeleton robots capable of increasing our strength, stamina and speed. These aren't the massive, clunky brutes of old sci-fi movies, but nimble extensions of the human body with the gift of intelligence. While most of us probably won't be living out our superhero (or evil villain) fantasies, these robots have some very practical applications, both military and civilian. Here are the top five exoskeleton robots that stretch the limitations of our bodies and our imaginations. 1. 2. Want to look your best for a big night on the town?
brain trouble By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 8, 2012 UK researchers report the discovery of a neural mechanism that protects individuals from stress and trauma turning into post-traumatic stress disorder. Investigators from the University of Exeter Medical School began with the knowledge of the brain’s “plasticity,” its unique capability to adapt to changing environments. The receptors (called protease-activated receptor 1 or PAR1) act in the same way as a command center, telling neurons whether they should stop or accelerate their activity. Normally, PAR1s tell amygdala neurons to remain active and produce vivid emotions. This adaptation helps us to keep our fear under control, and not to develop exaggerated responses to mild or irrelevant fear triggers. In the study, researchers used a mouse model in which the PAR1 receptors were genetically de-activated. The study has been published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
cognition artifice In the 1950s and '60s, artificial-intelligence researchers saw themselves as trying to uncover the rules of thought. But those rules turned out to be way more complicated than anyone had imagined. Since then, artificial-intelligence (AI) research has come to rely, instead, on probabilities -- statistical patterns that computers can learn from large sets of training data. The probabilistic approach has been responsible for most of the recent progress in artificial intelligence, such as voice recognition systems, or the system that recommends movies to Netflix subscribers. Early AI researchers saw thinking as logical inference: if you know that birds can fly and are told that the waxwing is a bird, you can infer that waxwings can fly. The problem with this approach is, roughly speaking, that not all birds can fly. Embracing uncertainty “With probabilistic reasoning, you get all that structure for free,” Goodman says. Modeling minds
insects drones A conceptual insect robot If you are talking about big boys’ toys, then surely being part of the military’s hush-hush research and development team would place you squarely in the front line of being able to play with such new technology. While UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) have done their bit in wars across the world to be able to scout enemy territory without putting human lives at risk, they are large – and unwieldy at times. What happens when one wants to perform a delicate operation that has a far more covert objective? This is where miniature sized robots come in handy – and insect drones could be the answer to this question. The extremely tiny remote controlled vehicles that are based on insects will most likely have been deployed in sensitive areas to date, where these are called the micro air vehicles (MAVs), and will share similar physics as that employed by flying insects. .