Posted in computing, science | Leave a Comment on The “avatar dream,“ a culturally shared vision of a future in which, through the computer, people can become whomever or whatever we want to be, has long been intertwined with computer science
In this video, co-author D. Fox Harrell discusses “Reimagining the Avatar Dream,” a Contributed Article in the July 2017 Communications of the ACM that argues for the need to reconsider the social and cultural impacts of creating social networks based on virtual identities.
According to the report, the US Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and other special forces are looking to improve troops’ performance by looking at their bodies at a genetic level (stock)
Earlier this year the AirForce successfully tested a helmet that can monitor brain activity and tell if the pilot is feeling stressed or panicked.
One research project is using a laptop-camera lens to find out if a person’s haemoglobin is oxygenated. This can then be used to work out a person’s heart rate.
US military reveals $65m funding for ‘Matrix’ projects to plug human brains directly into a computer…
The US military has revealed $65 of funding for a programme to develop a ‘brain chip’ allowing humans to simply plug into a computer.
They say the system could give soldiers supersenses and even help treat people with blindness, paralysis and speech disorders.
The goal is ‘developing an implantable system able to provide precision communication between the brain and the digital world,’ DARPA officials said.
DARPA’s quest for high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) has a new partner in Paradromics, which will be leading one of the agency’s six BCI-development consortia. This is just one of the projects working to develop a breakthrough BCI right now.
The U.S. Department of Defense has created six consortia to develop brain-computer interface (BCIs) technologies and is backing them up with a $65 million investment. On July 10, the Department chose Paradromics Inc., and neural interface company, to lead one of the six groups.
Technology can be wonderful. But how do you keep track of yourself when technology allows you to be everywhere at once?
In this film Prof. Yair Amichai-Hamburger (director of the Research Center for Internet Psychology at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications) argues that even though technology allows us to reach out and connect more easily than ever before, if we don’t ever take a step back, we can lose track of our humanity in the process.
It should be possible to build a silicon version of the human cerebral cortex with the transistor technology that was in production in 2013. The resulting machine would take up less than a cubic meter of space and consume less than 100 watts, not too far from the human brain. This article is summarizing the work of Jennifer Hasler and Bo Marr writing in Frontiers of Neuroscience – Finding a roadmap to achieve large neuromorphic hardware systems.
Computational power efficiency for biological systems is 8–9 orders of magnitude higher (better) than the power efficiency wall for digital computation. Analog techniques at a 10 nm node can potentially reach this same level of biological computational efficiency. Figure 1 show huge potential for neuromorphic systems, showing the community has a lot of room left for improvement, as well as potential directions on how to achieve these approaches with technology already being developed; new technologies only improve the probability of this potential being reached.
Facial paralysis suffered by thousands of Britons is being treated by pioneering NHS specialists with virtual-reality computer game-style technology.
The therapy could be used to help patients who find it too traumatic to look at their own ‘changed’ reflections after the paralysis.
The virtual-reality (VR) goggles encourage sufferers to carry out the regular facial exercises needed to regain muscle function – with the wearer watching an avatar’s face doing the exercises rather than their own.
Researchers at UC San Diego have developed a temperature sensor that runs on tiny amounts of power — just 113 picowatts, around 10 billion times less power than a watt. The sensor was described in a study recently published in Scientific Reports. “We’re building systems that have such low power requirements that they could potentially run for years on just a tiny battery,” Hui Wang, an author of the study, said in a statement.
The team created the device by reducing power in two areas. The first was the current source. To do that, they made use of a phenomenon that many researchers in their field are actually trying to get rid of. Transistors often have a gate with which they can stop the flow of electrons in a circuit, but transistors keep getting tinier and tinier. The smaller they get, the thinner the gate material becomes and electrons start to leak through it — a problem called “gate leakage.” Here, the leaked electrons are what’s powering the sensor. “Many researchers are trying to get rid of leakage current, but we are exploiting it to build an ultra-low power current source,” said Hui.
The researchers also reduced power in the way the sensor converts temperature to a digital readout. The result is a temperature sensor that uses 628 times less power than the current state-of-the-art sensors.
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is keenly interested in nanotechnology – an approach that can reduce the mass and improve the performance of aerospace systems. NASA computer modeling analysis has shown that composites using carbon nanotube reinforcements could lead to a 30 percent reduction in the total mass of a launch vehicle.
“No single technology would have that much of an impact to reduce the mass of a launch vehicle by that much,” explains Michael Meador, Program Element Manager for Lightweight Materials and Manufacturing at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Tensile properties of a carbon nanotube fiber-based composite tank were tested in a May 16 test flight.
