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Summary: A newly designed dry sensor that can measure brain activity may someday enable mind control of robotic systems.

Source: American Chemical Society.

It sounds like something from science fiction: Don a specialized, electronic headband and control a robot using your mind. But now, recent research published in ACS Applied Nano Materials has taken a step toward making this a reality.

Ectogenesis—gestation using an artificial womb—is fast approaching reality. Yet without legislation, this innovation also has the potential to cause harm.

One day in the future, we may interact with our electronic devices not with physical input or even voice commands, but simply by thinking about what we want to do. Such brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), combined with machine learning, could allow us to turn our ideas into reality faster and with less effort than ever before — imagine being able to produce a PCB design simply by thinking about how the completed circuit would work. Of course as an assistive technology, BCIs would be nothing less than life-changing for many.

Continue reading “PiEEG Offers Affordable Brain-Computer Interface” »

Scientists have achieved a “temporal analogue” to the famous double-slit experiment that could lead to new optical technologies. ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. Scientists have discovered “unexpected physics” by opening up “slits” in time, a new study reports, achieving a longstanding dream that can help to probe the behavior of light and pioneer advanced optical technologies.

The first SPAD camera.

TOKYO, April 3, 2023—Canon Inc. announced today that the company is developing the MS-500, the world’s first¹ ultra-high-sensitivity interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) equipped with a 1.0 inch Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) sensor² featuring the world’s highest pixel count of 3.2 megapixels³. The camera leverages the special characteristics of SPAD sensors to achieve superb low-light performance while also utilizing broadcast lenses that feature high performance at telephoto-range focal lengths. Thanks to such advantages, the MS-500 is expected to be ideal for such applications as high-precision monitoring.

Fat molecules serve as energy storage for fat cells. They consist of three fatty acids attached to a backbone of glycerol. They are therefore also called triglycerides. It has long been suspected that molecules do not remain unchanged during their storage period. Instead, they are regularly broken down and reassembled—a process called “triglyceride cycling.”

But is this assumption even true, and if so: What would that be good for? “Until now, there has been no real answer to these questions,” explains Prof. Dr. Christoph Thiele of the LIMES Institute at the University of Bonn. “It’s true that there has been indirect evidence of this permanent reconstruction for the past 50 years. However, direct evidence of this has so far been lacking.”

The problem: To prove that triglycerides are broken down, and fatty acids modified and reincorporated into new molecules, one would need to track their transformation as they travel through the body. Yet there are thousands of different forms of triglycerides in each cell. Keeping track of individual fatty acids is therefore extremely difficult.

The crypto platform LunarCrush will be stowing a bounty of 62 Bitcoin on the Moon, currently worth around $1.5 million — and it’s completely up for grabs.

“Clinical cases of infections caused by C. auris almost doubled in 2021, according to research published this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine. And the number of cases resistant to echinocandins, the first-line treatment for C. auris infections, tripled. While the fungus generally isn’t a threat for healthy people, it can be dangerous for those with weakened or compromised immune systems, and people using feeding tubes or catheters—in other words, a large proportion of patients in hospitals. The fungus can cause a bloodstream infection whose symptoms include fever, chills, sweats, and low blood pressure. It’s still rare in the U.S., but roughly one in three patients with an invasive infection will die from it; the fungus poses an “urgent threat,” according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Here’s a scenario that may sound familiar to fans of the postapocalyptic TV drama ‘The Last of Us’: a hard-to-kill fungus is beginning to spread among—and infect—vulnerable populations. Only this time, it’s real.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University, Israel, have created a micro-robot the size of a single biological cell that navigates using both electricity and magnetic fields and can identify and capture a single cell, opening the door to a vast array of applications.

Inspired by biological “swimmers” such as bacteria and sperm, the researchers developed a micro-robot (about 10 microns across) with the ability to move around the body autonomously or controlled by an operator.

Continue reading “Tiny hybrid robot can identify, capture a single cell” »