The brain is sometimes called the most complex machine in the known universe. But the thoughts that it outputs putter along at a trifling 10 bits per second, the pace of a conversation.
By Rachel Nuwer
Continue reading “The Human Brain Operates at a Stunningly Slow Pace” »
Researchers at the University of Virginia have made significant advancements in understanding how heat flows through thin metal films, critical for designing more efficient computer chips.
This study confirms Matthiessen’s rule at the nanoscale, enhancing heat management in ultra-thin copper films used in next-generation devices, thereby improving performance and sustainability.
Breakthrough in Chip Technology.
Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought: a rate of 10 bits per second. However, our bodies’ sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a trillion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. This new study raises major new avenues of exploration for neuroscientists, in particular: Why can we only think one thing at a time while our sensory systems process thousands of inputs at once?
The research was conducted in the laboratory of Markus Meister, the Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences, and it was led by graduate student Jieyu Zheng. A paper describing the study appears in the journal Neuron.
A bit is a basic unit of information in computing. A typical Wi-Fi connection, for example, can process 50 million bits per second. In the new study, Zheng applied techniques from the field of information theory to a vast amount of scientific literature on human behaviors such as reading and writing, playing video games, and solving Rubik’s Cubes, to calculate that humans think at a speed of 10 bits per second.
Leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics, quantum computers can perform calculations at lightning-fast speeds, enabling them to solve complex problems faster than conventional computers. In quantum technology applications such as quantum computing, light plays a central role in encoding and transmitting information.
NTU researchers have recently made breakthroughs in manipulating light that could potentially usher in the era of quantum computing. Details of this research have been published in Nature Photonics, Physical Review Letters, and Nature Communications.
World renowned neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist Christof Koch joins Brian Greene to discuss how decades of experimental and theoretical investigation have shaped his understanding of consciousness and the brain — and how recent psychedelic experiences have profoundly reshaped his perspective on life and death.
This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
Continue reading “Consciousness, Free Will, and Psychedelics: Exploring Mysteries of the Mind” »
Quantum computing and networking company IonQ has delivered a data center-ready trapped-ion quantum computer to the uptownBasel innovation campus in Arlesheim, Switzerland.
The IonQ Forte Enterprise quantum computer is the first of its kind to operate outside the United States and Switzerland’s first quantum computer designed for commercial use.
According to IonQ, Forte Enterprise is now online, servicing compute jobs while performing at a record algorithmic qubit count of #AQ36. The number of algorithmic qubits (#AQ) is a tool for showing how useful a quantum computer is at solving real problems for users by summarizing its ability to run benchmark quantum algorithms often used for applications.
A review of syntheticapertureradar image formation algorithms and implementations: a computational perspective.
✍️ Helena Cruz et al.
Designing synthetic-aperture radar image formation systems can be challenging due to the numerous options of algorithms and devices that can be used. There are many SAR image formation algorithms, such as backprojection, matched-filter, polar format, Range–Doppler and chirp scaling algorithms. Each algorithm presents its own advantages and disadvantages considering efficiency and image quality; thus, we aim to introduce some of the most common SAR image formation algorithms and compare them based on these two aspects. Depending on the requisites of each individual system and implementation, there are many device options to choose from, for instance, FPGAs, GPUs, CPUs, many-core CPUs, and microcontrollers. We present a review of the state of the art of SAR imaging systems implementations.
Researchers have developed a technique called “atomic spray painting” using molecular beam epitaxy to strain-tune potassium niobate, enhancing its ferroelectric properties.
This method allows precise manipulation of material properties, with potential applications in green technologies, quantum computing, and space exploration.
Material Strain Tuning
Dr. Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston hopes to pick up the movement where Jones left off, albeit with the significant twist that his version does not require freezing. A research fellow at Melbourne’s Monash University, Zeleznikow-Johnston wrote the new book, “The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death,” which makes the case that cryopreservation is possible and should be more widely available. Rejecting the popular notion that death endows life with meaning as “palliative philosophy,” Zeleznikow-Johnston’s book instead argues a human’s connectome — a high-resolution map of all their brain connections — could be theoretically recorded perfectly before they die.
Once that happens, that same internal brain activity could be recreated through high-powered computers, while a new brain is grown in a vat via stem cells or some combination of the two. As such, Zeleznikow-Johnston is proposing a spiritual descendant to the cryonics movement (which he dismisses as “unscientific” and “unsubstantiated”), one where the focus is not on preserving tissues but on the “data,” so to speak, of our distinct connectomes.
“We have very strong evidence that the static structure of the neurons is enough to hold onto someone’s memories and personality.”
