AI, Advanced Medicine, Faster Connectivity

AI: Google beats Go

It’s being touted as another milestone on the road to artificial intelligence: Google’s Deep Mind computer defeated a master of the ancient Chinese game of Go.

What’s most interesting: not only is the victory a decade ahead of prognostications, but the neural network trained itself to win. “The program’s victory marks the rise not merely of the machines but of new methods of computer programming based on self-training neural networks,” Spectrum adds. “The program conducted its own research through a trial-and-error approach that involved playing millions of games against itself. In this fashion it discovered, one by one, many of the rules of thumb that textbooks have been imparting to Go students for centuries.”

Here is the full article.

Energy-friendly Eyeriss chip to boost AI

A new chip designed specifically to implement neural networks is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, “so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing,” MIT reports.

MIT researchers believe neural networks are now “complex, and are mostly run on high-power GPUs. You can imagine that if you can bring that functionality to your cell phone or embedded devices, you could still operate even if you don’t have a WiFi connection. You might also want to process locally for privacy reasons. Processing it on your phone also avoids any transmission latency, so that you can react much faster for certain applications.”

The new chip, “Eyeriss,” has 168 cores, roughly as many as a mobile GPU. But “the key to Eyeriss’ efficiency is to minimize the frequency with which cores need to exchange data with distant memory banks, an operation that consumes a good deal of time and energy. Whereas many of the cores in a GPU share a single, large memory bank, each of the Eyeriss cores has its own memory. Moreover, the chip has a circuit that compresses data before sending it to individual cores.”

Here is the full announcement.

Neural network uses “brain-like chips”

Not just a brain-like neural network — but one built from brain-like plastic memristors rather than silicon.

That’s the work of scientists at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The chips remember previous electrical resistance, and so can “effectively work like brain synapses,” Engadget reports. “They're ideal for creating "true" neural networks where signal transfers create long-lasting effects.”

Here is the full article.

Nanowerk has more information here.

Bio-printing: Acoustic tweezers move cells safely

Carnegie Mellon University reports it researchers demonstrated acoustic tweezers that non-invasively move and manipulate single cells along three dimensions.

The tool may provide “a promising new method for 3D bio-printing.”

3D bio-printing may “recreate the complex, multicellular architecture of biological tissues,” CMU adds. “Researchers have been using a combination of approaches, but have yet to develop a single method that has the high level of precision, versatility, multiple dimensionality and single cell resolution needed to form complex multicellular structures while maintaining cell viability, integrity and function.”

Why is it needed? “Multicellular structures within living things are complex and delicate, which makes recreating these structures a daunting task,” Carnegie says. “For example, the human heart contains more than 2 billion muscle cells. Each of these cells must properly interact with one another and with their environment to ensure that the heart functions properly. If those cells aren’t placed correctly, or are damaged, it could potentially result in any of a variety of heart conditions.”

Here is the full announcement.

Flexible transparent pressure sensor

Doctors may someday detect tumors by hand using gloves with pressure sensors that wrap around and conform to the shape of the fingers while still accurately measuring pressure distribution, Kurzweil reports.

The transparent, bendable, and sensitive pressure sensor was developed at the University of Tokyo. It uses carbon nanotubes and graphene, and is about 8 micrometers thick. It can measure pressure in 144 locations at once, and “maintain its sensing accuracy even when bent over a radius of 80 micrometers, equivalent to just twice the width of a human hair.”

Here is the full article.

Smart Wearable senses sweat

Sweat contains dozens of chemical compounds that could reveal your body’s response to disease, drugs, diet, injury, and stress, Spectrum notes — and now a wearable sensor can measure levels of specific molecules in sweat and then wirelessly relay the data to a smartphone.

Developed at the University of California, Berkeley, the smart wristband combines chemical sensors with a flexible circuit board, and measures two electrolytes, potassium and sodium ions, and two metabolites, glucose and lactate. It’s the first to measure more than one analyte at a time.

Here is the full article.

Handheld microscope can spy cancer cells

With a new handheld microscope, neurosurgeons could “differentiate cancerous from normal brain tissue at cellular level in real time in the operating room and determine where to stop cutting,” Kurzweil reports.

The miniature microscope uses dual-axis confocal microscopy to illuminate and more clearly see through opaque tissue. It can capture details up to a half millimeter beneath the tissue surface, where some types of cancerous cells originate.

Even doctors in their offices could distinguish cancerous cells, using the new tech developed by engineers at the University of Washington.

Researchers expect to begin testing it as a cancer-screening tool in clinical settings next year.

Here is the full article.

Faster online connectivity via airwaves

Are you getting slow and costly connectivity through optical fiber, cable, and even copper wiring? Soon, wireless access may provide a better way: Start-up Starry claims it’s deploying the world’s first millimeter wave band active phased array technology as an alternative to fixed wireline broadband for consumer internet communications. In other words, Internet connectivity over the airwaves that is faster than broadband.

Using “underutilized high-frequency spectrum,” the company plans to offer a nationwide broadband network “capable of delivering internet speeds of up to one gigabit wirelessly to the home.” Consumers will be able to install Starry’s products themselves “and connect to the internet in minutes, without onerous contracts, data caps, or having to wait for an installer.”

The overall costs will be lower, the company adds: “Today it costs roughly $2,500 per home to deploy traditional broadband service. With Starry Internet, it will cost about 1/100th of that.”

But if you live in the country, don’t get your hopes up yet: The service reportedly requires hubs at 1-mile intervals for its line-of-sight transmission. (Popular Mechanics notes that “high-frequency waves are very, very bad at going through things, for example. They can't even penetrate a window. That means in order for this sort of thing to work, you'd need a device pipes the internet through your wall into your home and apartment.”)

Starry will launch in the Boston area this summer. Its WiFi station has a 3.8-inch capacitive touchscreen, and will sell for $350.

The promo video is here.

Nanowire may improve solar cells

Nanowire chips may be ideal for solar panels, lasers, LEDs, and other technologies— but making them isn’t easy.

Now scientists at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland developed a simple and affordable method to grow the wires by manipulating fluids with microcircuits on a nanometer scale. (That doesn’t sound too simple…)

This now-standardized method for growing nanowires from perovskites can be automated on an industrial scale to fabricate chips, the scientists report.

Here is Engadget’s article.

Here's more information.

Concrete clears itself of ice

New conductive concrete carries enough electrical current to melt ice during winter storms.

Developed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the concrete has steel shavings and carbon particles that are warm enough to melt ice but “remain safe to the touch.”

It’s being demonstrated for the Federal Aviation Administration, and in further testing may be integrated into the tarmac of a major U.S. airport.

It’s already been tested in a bridge in Lincoln: 52 conductive slabs successfully de-iced its surface during a five-year trial run.

Here is the full announcement.