The astrophysics project Space Warps offers a compelling example of why citizen science has become such a popular tool and how valuable it can be. In a roundtable discussion with the Kavli Foundation, citizen science leaders and astrophysicists Chris Lintott, Anupreeta More and Aprajita Verma discuss the tremendous impact these enthusiastic volunteers are having.
DNA is similar to a hard drive or storage device, in that contains the memory of each cell of every living, and has the instructions on how to make that cell. DNA is four molecules combined in any order to make a chain of one larger molecule. And if you can read that chain of four molecules, then you have a sequence of characters, like a digital code. Over the years the price of sequencing a human genome has dropped significantly, much to the delight of scientists. And since DNA is a sequence of four letters, and if we can manipulate DNA, we could insert a message and use DNA as the storage device.
At this point in time, we are at the height of the information age. And computers have had an enormous impact on all of our lives. Any information is able to be represented as a collection of bits. And with Moore’s law, which states that computing power doubles every 18 months, our ability to manipulate and store these bits has continued to grow and grow. Moore’s law has been driven by scientists being able to make transistors and integrated circuits continuously smaller and smaller, but there eventually comes a point we reach in which these transistors and integrated circuits cannot be made any smaller than they already are, since some are already at the size of a single atom. This inevitably leads us into the quantum world. Quantum mechanics has rules which are, in many ways, hard for us to truly comprehend, yet are nevertheless tested. Quantum computing looks to make use of these strange rules of quantum physics, and process information in a totally different way. Quantum computing looks to replace the classical bits which are either a 0 or a 1, with quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both a 0 and a 1 at the same time. This ability to be two different things at the same time is referred to as a superposition. 200 qubits hold more bits of information than there are particles in the universe. A useful quantum computer will require thousands or even millions of physical qubits. Anything such as an atom can serve as a quantum bit for making a quantum computer, then you can use a superconducting circuit to build two artificial atoms. So at this point in time we have a few working quantum transistors, but scientists are working on developing the quantum integrated circuit. Quantum error correction is the biggest problem encountered in development of the quantum computer. Quantum computer science is a field that right now is in its very early stages, since scientists have yet been able to develop any quantum hardware.
A quantum computer would be perfect for tackling quantum problems like simulating the properties of a new molecule or material or help us to create a catalyst that will remove CO2 from the atmosphere, or make pattern recognition in computers much more efficient, and also in code breaking, and privacy and security of personal information since quantum information can never be copied.
A great deal of the energy we create has to go into maintaining computations and data storage but we can reduce our energy expenditure significantly by looking to nature. Nature is much more effective at information processing. For example, in the process of photo synthesis, there is a nanowire, who’s quantum efficiency is almost 100%. DNA is also a great example of energy efficiency represented in nature, since DNA base pairing can be considered a computational process. Computers generate heat by performing computations because each computation is irreversible. Quantum mechanics can make those computations reversible, since a quantum computer can perform two functions at the same time.
Science Documentary: Large Hadron Collider, Time, Galaxy Formation a Documentary on Particle Physics.
“Clive Cookson introduces a special issue looking at the places where science and photography meet, from the intimate observation of illness to the quiet machinery of surveillance”
While the “Ice Bucket Challenge” raised millions to fuel research toward a cure for
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), there are a number of assistive technologies already at work to help those currently affected by the disease. According to Alisa Brownlee, a clinical manager for the ALS Association, more assistive technologies and brain-computer-interfaces are on the way. At present, the largest hurdle is access.
Brownlee noted that the loss of communication is often the hardest part of ALS for someone to endure. As ALS is a progressive disease, there are several forms of assistive technology that are used based on a given patient’s physical status. Each form of that technology will work for awhile, but then patients will have to move on to something else as the disease progresses, she says.
Using computer access as one way to help maintain an ALS patient’s communication skills, ALS patients can transition to a track-ball mouse and on-screen keyboard in lieu of a standard computer mouse. From there, a person can use a head-mount, eye-gaze system, and even a tablet computer with a switch scanner.
“It depends on which type of device the individual wants and their physical limitations when we are getting involved with them. They can go from the very simple to the very complex,” Brownlee said. “Technology is wonderful, but it’s not for everyone. So it’s important to involve the person, understand their personality and understand their coping mechanism dealing with the loss of communication.”
While it’s a significant improvement over what was available 10 or 20 years ago, this assistive technology has its limitations, Brownlee said. A system which requires the user to dwell over a letter to type, such as a head mouse, is pretty much limited to five to seven words a minute, which can be frustrating when the average adult speaks about 150 to 200 words a minute. Further, eye-gaze systems can’t be used in natural light by those with underlying eye issues, such as users with tri-focals, torn retinas, or pupils that are too dark; plus, they can be difficult to calibrate.
“That’s the one thing I hear from our caregivers all the time, ‘Hey we can’t get the thing to calibrate!’” she said. “It has to be 23 inches away from the user and, if your positioning is anything less than that, it gets real difficult. It’s just real frustrating.”
Looking to the future of assistive technologies, wearable technology such as Google Glass is already showing great promise in helping those with ALS and other disabilities communicate, Brownlee said. The Google Glass headset is easy to calibrate, can be used in any light, and can be accessed by its user whether they’re sitting up or laying in bed, she said.
Costing a fraction of a standard $15,000 eye-gaze system, Google Glass is more affordable option, Brownlee added. Though there are still some user interface problems that need to be addressed, new applications to make Google Glass even more accessible to those with disabilities are in the works..
“A colleague of mine is working on how to drive a powered wheelchair through Google Glass. Because ALS is a progressive disease, we have a lot of people who can not drive their wheelchairs anymore because they’ve lost the function in their hands,” Brownlee said. “If this comes to fruition, you could be able to drive your wheelchair through Glass. And this could open up a whole world for many people with disabilities. It could also make a huge financial burden much easier, so people with disabilities could afford technology, because right now, it’s unaffordable.”
Futurism presents its annual This Year in Science immersive experience! This year’s themes include robot intelligence, space exploration, drones, CRISPR (a breakthrough gene editing tool), plus a special ‘Futurist of the Year’ award.
Controlling the brain, consciousness and the unconscious through artificial means has long been a staple plot of science fiction. Yet history has a way of proving the fictional to end up as possible, and the future of brain-machine interface appears to hold greater promise than ever before.
According to Neuroscience Researcher, Yale University Fellow, and the Director of Yale’s Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center, Dr. Hal Blumenfeld, we can now therapeutically (and safely) go inside the brain. As he reflected on the recent advances in neuroscience, Blumenfeld cited the progress that’s been made in the last decade in understanding the relationship between brain activity and conscious thought as one of the biggest breakthroughs. The ability to find the switch in the brain that regulates consciousness, and turn it on and off, is a major step toward the treatment of epilepsy, brain injuries and more, and could have a profound effect on mankind, he said.
“I think the exciting advances are really looking in the network approach to understanding the brain, looking at the brain as a network, and understanding that, for something as wide reaching as consciousness to happen, you really need the whole brain network or most of the brain,” Blumenfeld said. “There’s a switch deep in the middle of the brain that can either be turned on or off. When that gets turned on, the whole rest of the brain network, including the cortex, all start to interact and create consciousness. When that switch gets flipped off, consciousness is turned down and we lose consciousness.”
While it sounds like a simple on/off operation, Blumenfeld noted that it’s not a smooth, linear process and that the different states of consciousness are subject to big jumps and rapid changes in the transition. Where researchers have made the biggest leaps, he said, is in gaining an understanding of those transitions and interactions throughout the entire network of the brain and how they regulate the level of arousal, attention and awareness.
Going forward, these breakthroughs could have a major effect in managing epileptic seizures, Blumenfeld said. While an epileptic seizure usually only affects one part of the brain, the seizure itself also flips that consciousness on/off switch to off. Avoiding that loss of consciousness during a seizure, he said, can also make the effects of the seizure milder and by extension, help improve the quality of life for those who suffer from epilepsy.
“The technology for deep brain stimulation has progressed fantastically in recent years, and it’s already being done for movement disorders, epilepsy and for chronic pain. (We have the technology to) safely implant in people’s brains a stimulator, like a pacemaker or a defibrillator, that detects when a seizure is happening and starts a stimulus,” Blumenfeld said. “Medicines and deep brain stimulation are not going to cure everyone of their seizures but, what this tells us is, there is another whole strategy we can take. Even if we can’t stop the seizures, if we can flip that switch back on so people will regain their consciousness during and after the seizure, they’ll be much better off.”
Beyond epilepsy, these new approaches in treatment can also be applied to those in a coma, those in a chronic vegetative state, and other disorders of consciousness, Blumenfeld said. These aren’t the only maladies being researched for brain stimulation. The use of optogenetics is also currently being studied for use in therapy and other brain disorders, he added. Ed Boyden and the Synthetic Neurobiology Group at MIT are hard at work in this domain of research.
“I think optogenetics is tremendously exciting and will continue to grow. There are a lot of challenges to implementing it in humans and safely carrying it out, but the promise is there,” Blumenfeld said. “It has a much more selective mode of action with individual neurons and I believe that eventually, we’ll be able to use that too (in our research). It will just take a bit more time until we get to that point.”
Looking forward, Blumenfeld noted that the potential future applications of BMI and brain stimulation could one day expand to attention disorders and even the modulation of human emotion. However, owing to the ethical questions that will certainly arise, he feels a priority should remain on developing further treatments or therapies for those who need it the most.
“First and foremost, we’ve got to look at the benefits we’re talking about, for people who are really suffering and really have tremendously impacted quality of life because of unpredictable-at-any-time-losing consciousness due to seizure, not being able to drive or, worse, people who are in a vegetative state. I think these are very promising therapies,” Blumenfeld said. “While scientists and human beings always have to consider the implications of them being used inappropriately, I think that doesn’t diminish from the importance of moving forward and developing these treatments so that they can be used for the people who need them the most.”
“The detector could help to clear up some mysteries. In 2013, the AMS announced it had seen hints of dark matter but so far it has detected too few high-energy particles to say for sure. Though DAMPE lacks the equipment to resolve the conundrum directly, it could reveal if the signal is caused by a different astrophysical source, such as pulsars, says Capell.
Although it will collect fewer incoming photons, DAMPE is better at pinpointing their energy than are existing γ-ray telescopes, such as NASA’s Fermi-LAT, says Miguel Sanchez-Conde, a physicist at the Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics in Stockholm. This capability should allow DAMPE to see sharp spikes in radiation predicted by some dark-matter models.”
