Lifeboat Foundation

With wireless optogenetic tools, neuroscientists steer mice around their cages.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ySsv5-jSqss

BMI implant leveraging AI.

You probably clicked on this article because the idea of using brain implants to allow artificial intelligence (AI) to read your brain sounds futuristic and fascinating. It is fascinating, but it’s not as futuristic as you might think. Before we start talking about brain implants and how to augment the human brain using AI, we need to put some context around human intelligence and why we might want to tinker with it.

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Summary: Researchers have discovered a link between nerve clusters in the brain and the amount of force generated by a physical action.

Source: Oxford University.

Researchers have found a link between the activity in nerve clusters in the brain and the amount of force generated in a physical action, opening the way for the development of better devices to assist paralysed patients.

Scientific Method —

Mystery of bleary-eyed astronauts may be cleared up with spinal fluid study.

Small study finds fluid that cushions the brain floods eye cavities in microgravity.

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Microsoft plans to create its own quantum computing systems; here’s how the company is doing so differently and how it can do it better.

Fun stuff

http://www.paintsquare.com/news/?fuseaction=view&id=15868&

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There has been a lot of digital ink spilled over the recent paper on the reactionless thrust device known as the EMDrive. While it’s clear that a working EM Drive would violate well established scientific theories, what isn’t clear is how such a violation might be resolved. Some have argued that the thrust could be an effect of Unruh radiation, but the authors of the new paper argue instead for a variation on quantum theory known as the pilot wave model.

One of the central features of quantum theory is its counter-intuitive behavior often called particle-wave duality. Depending on the situation, quantum objects can have characteristics of a wave or characteristics of a particle. This is due to the inherent limitations on what we can know about quanta. In the usual Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, an object is defined by its wavefunction. The wavefunction describes the probability of finding a particle in a particular location. The object is in an indefinite, probabilistic state described by the wavefunction until it is observed. When it is observed, the wavefunction collapses, and the object becomes a definite particle with a definite location.

While the Copenhagen interpretation is not the best way to visualize quantum objects it captures the basic idea that quanta are local, but can be in an indefinite state. This differs from the classical objects (such as Newtonian theory) where things are both local and definite. We can know, for example, where a baseball is and what it is doing at any given time.

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THE universe that we see and know is simply a holographic illusion like a symbol on a credit card, an astonishing theory suggests.

Time travel could be possible, says a group of physicists who’ve come up with a new interpretation of our universe, says the Sun U.K.

Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr. Michael Hall from Griffith University’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics, and Dr. Dirk-Andre Deckert from the University of California, say there are many universes, including identical ones to ours, that “influence one another through quantum mechanics.” The theory is called the “Many-Worlds Interpretation.”

What this means is that travelling through time within our universe is conceivable, says the Sun.

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