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Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) provide bidirectional communication between the brain and output devices that translate user intent into function. Among the different brain imaging techniques used to operate BCIs, electroencephalography (EEG) constitutes the preferred method of choice, owing to its relative low cost, ease of use, high temporal resolution, and noninvasiveness. In recent years, significant progress in wearable technologies and computational intelligence has greatly enhanced the performance and capabilities of EEG-based BCIs (eBCIs) and propelled their migration out of the laboratory and into real-world environments. This rapid translation constitutes a paradigm shift in human–machine interaction that will deeply transform different industries in the near future, including healthcare and wellbeing, entertainment, security, education, and marketing. In this contribution, the state-of-the-art in wearable biosensing is reviewed, focusing on the development of novel electrode interfaces for long term and noninvasive EEG monitoring. Commercially available EEG platforms are surveyed, and a comparative analysis is presented based on the benefits and limitations they provide for eBCI development. Emerging applications in neuroscientific research and future trends related to the widespread implementation of eBCIs for medical and nonmedical uses are discussed. Finally, a commentary on the ethical, social, and legal concerns associated with this increasingly ubiquitous technology is provided, as well as general recommendations to address key issues related to mainstream consumer adoption.

RT Documentary’s new film Russia’s NICA: Big Bang questions takes you to the Russian nuclear facility in Dubna where a collider is being built as part of the NICA mega-science project. It can recreate the beginning of the world 14 billion years ago.

This research can be used to learn how the universe was formed, according to the Big Bang theory, and the data obtained in the process will be essential to many other areas of science.
The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna has been operating since Soviet times, and this is where the Synchrophasotron elementary particle accelerator was built in the 1960s. It is still functional and can be used, but it takes an excessive amount of energy. Nevertheless, it remains a monument to Soviet science and the attempts to learn about the universe.

The modern state-of-the-art collider called Nuclotron accelerates the charged particles. They fly towards each other and eventually meet. They collide at a rate of 7000 per second. This seems a lot, but drawing profound conclusions or making a discovery as big as the Higgs Boson takes months and even years of gathering statistics. The Boson was predicted by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs in 1964 and practically proved in 2012. The discovery was made on the CERN collider in Switzerland.

Besides, it is tough to observe the particles since their small size makes them indiscernible not just for the human eye but also for many devices. In this microcosm, a tiny grain of sand is equivalent to planet Earth! But once it’s done, the scientists are hoping to recreate matter formed following the Big Bang.

But the collider is not only about the past. Learning more about magnetic fields can be used in modern science and everyday life. What spectacular results the collider research yields — find out in the film!

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 — Intro.
0:33 — Institute in Dubna has been around since the Soviet era.
1:18 — The collider is built as part of an international research initiative.
2:38 — Nuclotron is the heart of this collider project.
3:04 — Collider glossary.
5:05 — More than 30 colliders have been built since the 1960s.
6:23 — How the collider works.
8:38 — Collider will replicate the process that took place 14 billion years ago.
9:30 — People behind the collider are called fine mechanics.
10:34 — CERN and NICA are both rivals and partners.
11:32 — The manufacturing facility costs millions of euros.
13:18 — Synchrophasotron is an elementary particle accelerator.
15:07 — Dubna State University.
16:09 — What are slow-control systems.
17:48 — NICA project has an investment fund of $500m.
19:27 — The results of the research can be used to study biological protection.
20:22 — Carbon ion therapy can be used in medicine to treat tumours.
21:10 — Storage of all the data is another challenge.
22:10 — The number of the collisions should be enormous.
23:28 – The Higgs Boson existence was predicted in 1964
24:09 — What happens if research brings no answers?

A New Yorker review of “Roadrunner,” a documentary about the deceased celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville, reveals that a peculiar method was used to create a voice over of an email written by Bourdain. In addition to using clips of Bourdain’s voice from various media appearances, the filmmaker says he had an “A.I. model” of Bourdain’s voice created in order to complete the effect of Bourdain ‘reading’ from his own email in the film. “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Neville told the reviewer, Helen Rosner. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”

On Twitter, some media observers decided to start the panel right away.

“This is unsettling,” tweeted Mark Berman, a reporter at the Washington Post, while ProPublica reporter and media manipulation expert Craig Silverman tweeted “this is not okay, especially if you don’t disclose to viewers when the AI is talking.” Indeed, “The ‘ethics panel’ is supposed to happen BEFORE they release the project,” tweeted David Friend, Entertainment reporter at The Canadian Press.

Health Innovation Investment For The Future Generations — Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, MD, MPH — Director of Health Programs — UNICEF.


Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, MD, MPH is the Director of Health Programs at UNICEF (UN Headquarters) where he provides strategic leadership, management support and overall direction to UNICEF’s global health program.

UNICEF, also known as the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The agency is among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories. UNICEF’s activities include providing immunizations and disease prevention, administering treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhancing childhood and maternal nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting education, and providing emergency relief in response to disasters.

With over 20 years of experience in development aid and humanitarian assistance, Dr. Kampo has worked as a physician/surgeon in hospitals and clinics in rural and urban areas in Africa and Asia and has over 14 years’ experience in senior management position as Country Director, Senior Global Health Advisor, and Chief of Health and Nutrition with International NGOs and United Nations’ Agencies.

Dr. Kampo is a Medical Doctor and Public Health Specialist, passionate about using innovations to address real life community challenges and bridge the gap between communities and stakeholders.

Dr. Kampo had his Medical degree from University of Mali, an MPH (Epidemilogy and Complex Emergency) at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and is certified in Health Economics from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U. of London.

Crazies & Co recently announced a holographic educational AI assistant dubbed the Sidekicks.ai, which adopts the latest holographic technology to offer characters. The aforesaid technology enables users to communicate with Sidekicks as they’d interact with humans.

Finding the hypothetical particle axion could mean finding out for the first time what happened in the Universe a second after the Big Bang, suggests a new study published in Physical Review D.

How far back into the Universe’s past can we look today? In the electromagnetic spectrum, observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background — commonly referred to as the CMB — allow us to see back almost 14 billion years to when the Universe cooled sufficiently for protons and electrons to combine and form neutral hydrogen. The CMB has taught us an inordinate amount about the evolution of the cosmos, but photons in the CMB were released 400000 years after the Big Bang making it extremely challenging to learn about the history of the universe prior to this epoch.

To open a new window, a trio of theoretical researchers, including Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Principal Investigator, University of California, Berkeley, MacAdams Professor of Physics and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory senior faculty scientist Hitoshi Murayama, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physics researcher and University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow Jeff Dror (now at University of California, Santa Cruz), and UC Berkeley Miller Research Fellow Nicholas Rodd, looked beyond photons, and into the realm of hypothetical particles known as axions, which may have been emitted in the first second of the Universe’s history.