More Memories, Brain Implants, Improved 3D Printing

Brain memory capacity 10 times higher

“It’s a real bombshell in the field of neuroscience,” and you’re potentially smarter than you might’ve guessed: The Salk Institute reports the human brain’s memory capacity is in the petabyte range — 10x larger than previously thought.

The institute says it’s “achieved critical insight into the size of neural connections, putting the memory capacity of the brain far higher than common estimates.”

They’ve also answered “how the brain is so energy efficient” which could help engineers “build computers that are incredibly powerful but also conserve energy… We discovered the key to unlocking the design principle for how hippocampal neurons function with low energy but high computation power.”

Here is the full announcement.

Teleport memories

Move memories? Maybe: Electromechanical oscillators and superconducting circuits could teleport the internal quantum state and center-of-mass motion state of a microorganism. (Erp.)

At least, that’s according to physicists at Purdue University and Tsinghua University, who say this version of quantum teleportation could instantly transport memory.

They propose an electromechanical membrane oscillator integrated with a superconducting circuit that could prepare a bacterium for a quantum superposition state. “With a strong magnetic field gradient, the internal states of a microorganism, such as the electron spin of a glycine radical, can be entangled with its center-of-mass motion and be teleported to a remote microorganism,” according to the report at Eureka Alert. “Since internal states of an organism contain information, this proposal provides a scheme for teleporting information or memories between two remote organisms.”

Here is the full article.

Low-cost DNA test for cancer

Most cancer can be cured if caught early enough, and now the inventor of a DNA test for Down syndrome says the technology can be used to screen for cancer as well, Technology Review reports.

The Hong Kong scientist says screening for signs of cancer from a simple blood draw could cost as little as $1,000, the Review adds.

The test works by studying DNA released into a person’s bloodstream by dying tumor cells. The new method looks for changes in methylation, as cancer cell genes widely lose their methylation marks, and so they “can be reliably spotted using less sequencing.”

Image: Sequenom licensed the Down syndrome test.

Here is the full article.

“Bridging the Bio-Electronic Divide”

That’s the stated goal for a new program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: develop an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world.

The interface would serve as a translator, DARPA adds, converting between the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the ones and zeros that constitute the language of information technology. The goal is to achieve this communications link in a biocompatible device no larger than one cubic centimeter in size, roughly the volume of two nickels stacked back to back.

The program, Neural Engineering System Design, stands to dramatically enhance research capabilities in neuro-technology and provide a foundation for new therapies. “Today’s best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem,” says the program manager. “Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.”

Neural interfaces currently approved for human use squeeze a tremendous amount of information through just 100 channels, with each channel aggregating signals from tens of thousands of neurons at a time, Darpa notes. The result is noisy and imprecise. In contrast, the NESD program aims to develop systems that can communicate clearly and individually with any of up to one million neurons in a given region of the brain.

Here's more information.

Electronic implants melt in the brain

Maybe DARPA should talk with these guys: Tiny electronic implants can monitor brain injury, then melt away, claim researchers at the University of Illinois.

The school says its new class of small, thin electronic sensors can monitor temperature and pressure within the skull – crucial health parameters after a brain injury or surgery. As they are constructed out of “bio-resorbable materials,” they “melt away when they are no longer needed, eliminating the need for additional surgery to remove the monitors and reducing the risk of infection and hemorrhage.”

“This is a new class of electronic biomedical implants,” adds one of the developers. “These kinds of systems have potential across a range of clinical practices, where therapeutic or monitoring devices are implanted or ingested, perform a sophisticated function, and then resorb harmlessly into the body after their function is no longer necessary.”

Here is the full announcement.

Radar hears heartbeats

Would you want to measure your pulse and other health signs throughout the day?

Millimeter-wave spread-spectrum radar can measure heartbeats remotely with as much accuracy as electrocardiographs, Phys Org reports. Researchers at the Kyoto University Center of Innovation and Panasonic say their unique signal analysis algorithm that identify signals from the body offers “a way to monitor their body in a casual and relaxed environment,” as opposed to electrocardiographs, with which “taking measurements with sensors on the body can be stressful and troublesome.”

Here is the full article.

Electricity as dental anesthetic

No  more needles and Novocain at the dentist: instead a small electric current could numb your nerves.

Researchers at the University of São Paulo say their work “could help improve dental procedures and bring relief to millions of people who are scared of needles,’ Alpha Galileo reports. “It would also save money and avoid contamination and infection, they say."

Actually, the iontophoresis process does not eliminate anesthetics — but it does make them more effective, and may eliminate the need for needles: topical application could suffice.

Here is the full article.

Here's more information.

Sequence DNA with Graphene

Rapid and accurate gene sequencing may be possible by pulling a DNA molecule through a tiny, chemically activated hole in graphene and detecting changes in electrical current.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology propose that the method “could identify about 66 million bases — the smallest units of genetic information — per second, with 90 percent accuracy and no false positives,” NIST reports. The method could turn out to “…ultimately be faster and cheaper than conventional DNA sequencing, meeting a critical need for applications such as forensics.”

Here's more information.

"4d" Printing blossoms

Materials science and mathematics combine to enable the printing of shapeshifting architectures that mimic the natural movements of plants, Harvard University reports. Scientists at its Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering “evolved their microscale 3D printing technology to the fourth dimension, time.”

The “4D” printed hydrogel composite structures change shape upon immersion in water. The work is “inspired by natural structures like plants, which respond and change their form over time according to environmental stimuli.” It represents “an elegant advance in programmable materials assembly.” The hydrogel composites contain cellulose fibrils that are derived from wood and are similar to the microstructures that enable shape changes in plants.

The 4D printing “enables the design of almost any arbitrary, transformable shape from a wide range of available materials with different properties and potential applications, truly establishing a new platform for printing self-assembling, dynamic microscale structures that could be applied to a broad range of industrial and medical applications.”

Here is the full announcement.

3D printer: additive manufacturing alternative

Engineers at the University of Bristol developed a new type of 3D printing that can print composite materials, which are used in products such as tennis rackets, golf clubs, and airplanes, the school reports.

The new method uses ultrasonic waves to “position millions of tiny reinforcement fibers as part of the 3D printing process,” the university adds. The fibers form a microscopic reinforcement framework that is placed using a laser beam, “which locally cures the epoxy resin and then prints the object.”

Also, the ultrasonic system can be added cheaply to an off-the-shelf 3D printer, “which then turns it into a composite printer.”

Here is the full announcement.

Affordably printing metals and alloys

Another new 3D printing process creates metallic objects: Northwestern University says its technique uses liquid inks and common furnaces, “resulting in a cheaper, faster, and more uniform process.”

The method works for an extensive variety of metals, metal mixtures, alloys, and metal oxides and compounds, the school adds. “Our method greatly expands the architectures and metals we’re able to print, which really opens the door for a lot of different applications.”

A liquid ink (made of metal or mixed metal powders, solvents, and an elastomer binder) is printed using a syringe-extrusion process. It “instantaneously solidifies and fuses with previously extruded material, enabling very large objects to be quickly created and immediately handled.” The powders are fused in a furnace.

Here is the full announcement.

Drones dodge obstacles

Creating real-time flight plans that avoid obstacles and handle surprises like wind and weather means that getting drones to fly around without hitting things is no small task, MIT reports. “Obstacle-detection and motion-planning are two of computer science’s trickiest challenges.”

Now the school’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory demonstrated software that allow drones to “stop on a dime to make hairpin movements over, under, and around” 26 distinct obstacles.

With the software, a small quadrotor can do “donuts and figure-eights through an obstacle course of strings and PVC pipes” and fly at “speeds upwards of 1 meter per second.”

The algorithms are available online.

Here is the full announcement.

Gyros, Autos, & Robots

Gyroscopes steady shaky hands

Early stage testing of a “helping hand” aimed at Parkinson’s patients “demonstrates significant reduction of tremors of over 80%,” reports Gyrogear.

The startup is using gyroscopes to make the GyroGlove, “a small, lightweight stability device that fits on the back of the hand., the company says. “It locks easily in place, and integrates intelligent functionality. With its minimal harness, we foresee hours of unobtrusive daily use, indoors and outdoors.”

Technology Review has more on the development here.

U.S. to spend $4 Billion automating autos

Will driverless cars curb fatalities and ease traffic on our roads? I sure hope so…

Now the Obama administration will propose spending nearly $4 billion over 10 years to speed adoption of driverless cars, the WS Journal reports. The proposal “aims to have federal regulators work with auto makers and others to craft policies and rules for vehicles that can move without a driver at the wheel.”

Auto makers would prefer a national “road map” for autonomous vehicles rather than a state-by-state patchwork of rules, the Journal adds.

Here is the full article.

Roving robot to repair roads

Additive manufacturing today is generally confined to a small printer housing in which plastic items are produced layer by layer. But the technology can also be freed from the printer and set out on the road — where it can fill potholes in our streets.

Robotics and 3D printing startup Addibots is based in the Hudson Valley of New York, and says it’s aimed at “Making the world a workspace.” I think it needs to work on a better slogan as that’s hardly appealing, but nonetheless can see the advantage of automating some common repair tasks. (I live in the mountains where I have to regularly dodge potholes.)

The 3D-printing robot can either steer itself or be remotely controlled.

It’s admittedly not ready for primetime yet: the inventor is still grappling with “how an Addibot would lay down tar to fix damaged asphalt,” Popular Science reports.

Here is the full article.

Cars can see better with solid-state LIDAR

80 percent of transportation accidents are avoidable with affordable LiDAR sensors, claims the developer of a new solid-state system that has no moving parts and may sell for $250 or less.

Sunnyvale, CA-based Quanergy says it’s developing sensing solutions for real-time 3D mapping and object detection, tracking, and classification that may “enable broad deployment of advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving systems.”

The laser-based time-of-flight sensors can provide passenger vehicles “robust and intelligent real-time 3D mapping solutions that work day and night, rain or shine, while performing object detection, tracking, identification, and classification.”

The sensors feature 360-degree field of view, a few-hundred-meter range, centimeter accuracy, 30 Hz scanning frequency, 0.1° angular resolution, a high dynamic range under various weather conditions, and unmatched reliability, the company claims.

Spectrum has more here.

Faster 3D: Mobiles map buildings

New software creates models of entire buildings, and “generates 3D maps in real time,” reports the ETH Zurich university.

The optical method uses triangulation to compare multiple images captured by a tablet’s camera with an added fisheye lens. “For each piece of image information, each pixel in an image, it searches for the corresponding element in the other,” the school says. “From these two points and from the camera’s known position and viewing angle, the software can determine how far each picture element is from the device and can use this information to generate a 3D model of the object.”

The software was developed for Google’s Project Tango mobile device.

Here is the full article.

Moving amorphous robots

NASA patented a new type of amorphous robot “that could one day slither and roll around other planets,” TechCrunch reports.

NASA’s patent notes that the amorphous robots are designed to move along a solid surface without the use of conventional wheels, tracks, or legs. Amorphous robots can passively change their shape. They’re less susceptible to damage from small particles as they’re all-but enclosed — amorphous robots wouldn’t have any external moving parts or a rigid shape. Some of the designs are analogous to amoebas and inchworms, and would move via circulating fluid within the structure, switching polarity of enclosed electromagnets, or inflating or deflating part of the structure.

Here is the full article.

Sensitive robot skin

Flexible touch sensors store tactile information, and may function as sensitive skin for future robots.

Developed at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the sensors work like human haptic memory, New Scientist reports, “which can store impressions of touch sensations in the brain after the stimulus has stopped.”

The sensors could store information to help robots recognize their environment and moderate their grip strength to pick up different things, and to be delicate to avoid damaging things like fruit.

Here is the full article.

Nanoparticles fight antibiotic-resistant bugs

Drug-resistant bacteria can be combatted with adaptive, light-activated nano-therapy, report researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The “new light-activated therapeutic nanoparticles” known as quantum dots are about 20,000 times smaller than a human hair, and successfully killed 92 percent of drug-resistant bacterial cells in a lab-grown culture, the Univeristy says. The quantum dots can be also tailored to particular infections thanks to their light-activated properties. The dots remain inactive in darkness, but can be activated on command by exposing them to light, allowing researchers to modify the wavelength in order to alter and kill the infected cells.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as Salmonella, E. Coli and Staphylococcus infect some 2 million people and kill at least 23,000 people in the United States each year, the school notes.

Here is the full article.

Robot arms clean up damaged nuke plant

Toshiba will use a gigantic remote-control crane device to remove fuel-rod assemblies from a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which was crippled in 2011.

Japan Times reports the crane consists of two robotic arms that can pick up and cut debris, another arm to grab the assemblies, and multiple cameras.

Tokyo Electric Power has said that although it is working to reduce the radiation level inside the reactor 3 building, it remains impossible for humans to safely monitor the removal of the fuel-rod assemblies, the Times adds.

Here is the full article.

Pills sense gas in the gut

Gas-sensing pills can send data from inside the gut, helping diagnose colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease.

RMIT University in Australia reports its smart pills “allow us to identify precisely where the gases are produced and help us understand the microbial activity in these areas. It’s the first step in demolishing the myths of food effects on our body and replacing those myths with hard facts.”

Here is the report.

Spectrum has more information here.

Solar Storage, Brain Monitoring, City Spying

 

Portable brain monitoring

With the goal of getting EEG out of the laboratory, bio-engineers and cognitive scientists at UC San Diego have developed the first portable, 64-channel wearable brain activity monitoring system.

It’s comparable to state-of-the-art equipment found in research laboratories, the school says, and provides high-density brain activity data with a dry-electrode wearable EEG headset and a sophisticated software suite for data interpretation and analysis.

The portable device “has a wide range of applications, from research, to neuro-feedback, to clinical diagnostics… This is going to take neuroimaging to the next level by deploying on a much larger scale. You will be able to work in subjects’ homes. You can put this on someone driving.”

Here is the full announcement.

City-spying camera

The Simera camera system rides on a tethered balloon and can monitor an entire city from a single vantage point, Popular Mechanics reports — and the “unblinking sentinel will watch over the Olympic Games from high above Rio de Janiero this summer.”

Logos Technologies developed the core technology for American military forces. It creates “a Google Earth view of the city and updates it every second," the company says. It houses 13 cameras and captures gigabytes of data every second. “Simera can monitor an entire city-sized area at once, detecting vehicles and moving dismounts in near real-time. In addition, Simera provides operators with a readily accessible digital video recording of the entire field of view for later analysis.” It weighs 40 pounds.

Here is the full article.

Here's more information.

Testing an artificial pancreas 

People with type 1 diabetes must use finger-pricks to check their blood-sugar levels multiple times daily, and inject insulin manually, To eliminate those tasks, an artificial pancreas will work as “an adaptable, wearable network surrounding the patient in a digital treatment ecosystem.”

Developed at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, the pancreas will automatically monitor and regulate blood-sugar levels. To prove its safety and long-term efficacy, final testing in two clinical trials begins early this year.

The artificial pancreas has a reconfigured smartphone running advanced algorithms, linked wirelessly to a blood-sugar monitor and an insulin pump, as well as a remote-monitoring site.

Here is the full announcement.

Photonic Interconnects speed up processors

Significantly speeding up computing, transistors and optics can be built on the same chip without a major overhaul of the chip-making process, reports Ayar Labs.

The start-up from engineers at MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Colorado, Boulder use the standard CMOS process to build an IC containing 70 million transistors and 850 photonic components, Spectrum reports, which together provide all the logic, memory, and interconnection functions a processor needs.

Optical interconnects using light beams rather than copper wires to move data between microprocessors would overcome the bandwidth bottleneck inherent in wires, and take full advantage of the leaps in processor speed, Spectrum notes.

Ayar Labs hopes to be able to commercialize the technology within a couple of years.

Here is the full Spectrum article.

CNEt also reports in it here.

Polymer film stores solar heat

A new transparent polymer film provides a highly efficient method for storing the sun’s energy through a chemical reaction and releasing it later as heat, MIT reports.

The work by its researchers may be “the key to enabling long-term, stable storage of solar heat,” the university says. Storing heat in the form of a chemical change can retain energy indefinitely, whereas heat inevitably dissipates over time no matter how good the insulation around it.

The molecule remains stable in either of two different configurations. When exposed to sunlight, the energy of the light kicks the molecules into their “charged” configuration, and they can stay that way for long periods. Then, when triggered by a very specific temperature or other stimulus, the molecules snap back to their original shape, giving off a burst of heat in the process.

The new approach is the first based on a solid-state material, MIT adds, and the first based on inexpensive materials and widespread manufacturing technology.

Here is the full announcement.

(How many new solar power techniques have been featured here now? I saw this story while on hold with the power company to see why my electricity bill was three times higher than ever before…)

Material manipulates itself into hundreds of shapes

A heat-reactive polymer material can fold itself into hundreds of shapes.

It is the first material that can “remember” its shape and reset its memory to new ones. It “could lead to a new generation of reusable self-folding materials” Science Mag reports, “that could be useful for everything from medical implants to shape-shifting electronics.”

Current elastic shape memory materials can only memorize two or three shapes. The new polymer “is both plastic and elastic… and can fold between two shapes using elasticity, and change into other shapes using plasticity… It could also snap between them hundreds of times with little sign of fatigue.”

Here is the full article.

“Mystery material stuns scientists”

A “mysterious material” emits ultraviolet light and has insulating, electrical conducting, semiconducting, superconducting, and ferromagnetic properties.

Researchers were studying a sample of lanthanum aluminate film on a strontinum titanate crystal, Kurzweill AI reports. “The sample mysteriously began to glow, emitting intense levels of ultraviolet light from its interior. After carefully reproducing the experimental conditions, they tracked down the unlikely switch that turns UV light on or off: surface water moisture.”

The material could be used for transistors and chemical sensors.

Here is thefull article.

Half-solid, half-liquid material

A “self-adaptive” material heals itself, reports Rice University, where scientists have mixed up a new flexible composite with reversible self-stiffening properties.

The self-adaptive composite consists of sticky micron-scale rubber balls that form a solid matrix. The porous mass of gooey spheres quickly heals when cracked, over and over. “And like a sponge, it returns to its original form after compression,” the school adds. The biomimetic material can also change its inner structure, and adapt to external stimulation.

The SAC has potential for tissue engineering or lightweight structural applications, Rice adds.

Here's more information.

Microbots and magnetic fields

Using magnets, Purdue University scientists are controlling individual microrobots.

The system is aimed at advanced manufacturing and biomedical research. The microbots are about twice the size of a pinhead, and future models may be roughly the size of a dust mite.

The electromagnetic system contains an array of sixty-four magnetic microcoils generating local magnetic fields for simultaneous independent actuation of multiple microrobots. Independent movement of each robot allows for cooperative manipulation tasks, much as ants “all work together to perform tasks such as lifting and moving things,” the school reports. “The approach works at the microscale, and it will be the first one that can give truly independent motion of multiple microrobots in the same workspace because we are able to produce localized fields as opposed to a global field.”

Here's more information.

Better bulbs: efficient incandescents

Traditional light bulbs have been phased out in favor of more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs and light-emitting diodes — but new work at MIT and Purdue University might give the old-school incandescents a reprieve.

Incandescent bulbs heat tungsten to 2,700 degrees Celsius. More than 95 percent of the energy that goes into them is wasted, most of it as heat. Now “light recycling” can capture the infrared radiation and reflect it back to the filament to be re-absorbed and re-emitted as visible light.

The luminous efficiency of conventional incandescent light is between 2–3 percent; fluorescents (including CFLs) are 7–15 percent; commercial LEDs are 5–20 percent. The new two-stage incandescents could reach efficiencies as high as 40 percent, the researchers say.

The structures are a form of photonic crystal that is made of Earth-abundant elements and can be made using conventional material-deposition technology, the schools add.

Here is the full report.