Mini mass spectrometry can lead to essentially a real life tricorder #startrek
Mass Spectrometry.
Mini mass specs are still looking for an audience.
Decades in the making, miniature mass spectrometers still face technical hurdles to wider commercial adoption by.
Celia Henry Arnaud
Imagine an iPad or a Kindle for the blind, with inflatable Braille that changes shape under a user’s touch. A Cornell-led collaboration has made a crucial component for such a technology: A haptic array of densely packed actuators that cause silicone membrane “dots” to pop up when triggered by combustion.
The team’s paper, “Valveless Microliter Combustion for Densely Packed Arrays of Powerful Soft Actuators,” published Sept. 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author is doctoral student Ronald Heisser.
One of the major hurdles for designing a dynamic Braille display for electronics is figuring out how to apply the necessary amount of force for each dot. Previous attempts have usually involved motors, hydraulics or tethered pumps, all of which are cumbersome, complex and expensive, according to Rob Shepherd, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering and the paper’s senior author.
The newly developed battery-free system runs on harvested energy and can help massively reduce the growing e-waste problem.
They’re just the size of a grain of sand, but the microfliers can carry data-collecting sensors.
Bumps in detector could point to new physics.
Physicists turned on a new type of gravitational-wave sensor and saw two intriguing results, but they aren’t yet ready to claim a discovery.
[Matt] from [DIY Perks] has made a name for himself building nice custom computing machines, and his latest triple-monitor luggable PC (video after the break) is sure to give most high-performance desktop machines a run for their money.
The large central monitor folding laptop monitors mounted vertically on either size look impressive, but only just scratches the surface of this build. Hidden behind aluminum panels are Ryzen 5950X CPU and RTX 3,080 GPU with water cooling, 64 GB of RAM, and two 8 TB SSDs. A set of high-quality speaker drivers, subwoofer, and audio amps is also included. All this hardware pulls about 600 W of power from a large DC-DC converter block, which in turn receives power from either a pair of onboard AC-DC converters or a 16 V – 63 V DC source, like a battery system.
To mount everything to the back of the main monitor, [Matt] created 3D printed adaptor blocks with threaded inserts which slide under existing hooks on the back of the monitor. Aluminum angles screw to these blocks to cover the edges of the display panel, together with a large mounting plate with pre-drilled holes to mount all the components on standoffs. A set of adjustable and removable legs mount to the side of the PC. A hinged door in the back cover allows storage space for a keyboard and mouse during transport. When folded, the laptop monitors don’t fully cover the main monitor, so [Matt] created a leather cover that doubles as a cable and accessory organizer.
Kathy Patten, a grandmother from Baltimore, suffered a heart attack and spent 45 long minutes clinically dead. But some intense CPR actually managed to bring her back to life, giving her a second chance that local news stations are calling a “medical miracle.”
Patten has reportedly made an almost full recovery, something that is exceedingly rare. While TV dramas give the impression that CPR is often successful, the reality is grim. Only around 10.6 percent of those who experience cardiac arrest are later discharged from the hospital, according to a 2018 study, though those numbers fluctuate depending the severity and timing of the incident.
“I’m so grateful God gave me a second chance,” Patten told CBS affiliate WJZ-TV. “I’m just going to be the best person I can be. It’s very scary, coming back is a second chance of life.”
Forward-looking: A team of researchers have devised a new method for protecting SSDs from ransomware attacks. It can detect ransomware, stop it in its tracks, and even recover stolen data in a matter of seconds. The cost should only be a minor increase in the SSD’s latency.
The Register spoke with the researchers, who come from Inha University, the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST), the University of Central Florida (UCF), and the Cyber Security Department at Ewha Womans University (EWU). The system, called SSD-Insider, is supposedly almost 100 percent accurate and has been tested on real-world ransomware.
SSD-Insider works by recognizing certain patters in SSD activity that are known to indicate ransomware. “To recognize ransomware activity by viewing only the distribution of IO request headers, we have paid attention to a ransomware’s very unique behavior, overwriting,” reads the team’s research paper proposing SSD-Insider. It specifically points out the behavior of ransomware like WannaCry, Mole, and CryptoShield.
Circa 1991 😀
An Australian company has launched an erasable computer memory chip that retains data when its power source is switched off. The chip could revolutionise the design of computers and other electronic devices by doing away with the bulky magnetic disc memories that are currently used to store data permanently.
Current computers rely on a selection of memory devices. These include chips known as read-only memories or ROMs that store preprogrammed data without power but cannot be erased, and instantly erasable chips that require constant power, known as random-access memory or RAMs. To store more data and programs when the power is off, most computers use magnetics discs.
The new chip is known as a ferroelectric random-access memory or FRAM. If it proves as successful as its developer, Ramtron, claims, it could replace all other types of data storage.
The ultimate goal of neuroscience is to learn how the human brain gives rise to human intelligence and what it means to be intelligent. Understanding how the brain works is considered one of humanity’s greatest challenges.
Jeff Hawkins thinks that the reality we perceive is a kind of simulation, a hallucination, a confabulation. He thinks that our brains are a model reality based on thousands of information streams originating from the sensors in our body. Critically — Hawkins doesn’t think there is just one model but rather; thousands.
Jeff has just released his new book, A thousand brains: a new theory of intelligence. It’s an inspiring and well-written book and I hope after watching this show; you will be inspired to read it too.
Pod version: https://anchor.fm/machinelearningstreettalk/episodes/59—Jeff-Hawkins-Thousand-Brains-Theory-e16sb64
A Thousand Brains: A New Theory Of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
https://numenta.com/assets/pdf/research-publications/papers/Sparsity-Enables-50x-Performance-Acceleration-Deep-Learning-Networks.pdf.
Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721420917687
