HOW BRAIN STIMULATION CAN BOOST MEMORY IF PAIRED WITH LEARNING
In 47 CE, Scribonius Largus, court physician to the Roman emperor Claudius, described in his Compositiones a method for treating chronic migraines: place torpedo fish on the scalps of patients to ease their pain with electric shocks. Largus was on the right path; our brains are comprised of electrical signals that influence how brain cells communicate with each other and in turn affect cognitive processes such as memory, emotion and attention.
Read moreSOFT ROBOTIC FISH SWIMS ALONGSIDE REAL ONES IN CORAL REEFS
In a paper out today, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) unveiled “SoFi,” a soft robotic fish that can independently swim alongside real fish in the ocean. Source: mit.edu
CHINA TESTS DRIVERLESS TANKS THAT COULD BE POWERED BY AI
China is testing driverless tanks which could be equipped with artificial intelligence, a state-run newspaper reported on Wednesday, as the country continues with its military modernisation programme. Source: scmp.com
UNDERSTANDING DEEP LEARNING THROUGH NEURON DELETION
Deep neural networks are composed of many individual neurons, which combine in complex and counterintuitive ways to solve challenging tasks, ranging from machine translation to Go. This complexity grants neural networks their power but also earns them their reputation as confusing and opaque black boxes. Understanding how deep neural networks function is critical for explaining their decisions and enabling us to build more powerful systems.
Read moreRELATIVITY SPACE REVEALS ITS AMBITIONS WITH BIG NASA DEAL
Founded in late 2015, Relativity remained in stealth mode until last year, but now it is starting to come out of the shadows. And in doing so, the California-based company is revealing some pretty outsized ambitions. One day, in fact, the company intends to 3D print a rocket on Mars for a return trip to Earth. ‘We have a pretty broad long-term vision,’ Tim Ellis, a co-founder of Relativity, admitted in an interview with Ars.
Read moreNANOFIBERS DRAMATICALLY IMPROVE WOUND HEALING AND TISSUE REGENERATION
The discovery that wounds in the fetus can heal without scarring has prompted scientists to work on designing new biomaterials based on the properties of the fetal skin as promising regenerative strategies. Source: acsh.org
THE TROUBLING CALCULUS OF HUMAN VALUE
For most of us we use only the numerical literacy necessary to stay employed. And even fewer of us think about numbers in a way where we can see their intrinsic value. We think about a million dollars, in a very loose, abstract way. Pretty much any number after a thousand becomes mostly symbolic in our heads, rarely representative of the actual value in comparison to anything we could actually measure with our hands.
Read moreWE STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY TIME ONLY FLOWS FORWARD
Every moment that passes finds us traveling from the past to the present and into the future, with time always flowing in the same direction. At no point does it ever appear to either stand still or reverse; the “arrow of time” always points forwards for us. But if we look at the laws of physics—from Newton to Einstein, from Maxwell to Bohr, from Dirac to Feynman—they appear to be time-symmetric.
Read moreSCALING IMAGE VALIDATION ACROSS MULTIPLE PLATFORMS
To achieve this goal at scale, we validate the SDK across a wide range of devices with a heavy reliance on test automation. More specifically, we leverage automated image comparison techniques to verify rendering correctness. Rendering in this context refers to the state of the device frame buffer after widgets, images, and text have been drawn. Source: medium.com
DEPTH-SENSING IMAGING SYSTEM CAN PEER THROUGH FOG
In a study that holds promise for self-driving cars, MIT researchers have developed a system that can image and gauge the distance of objects shrouded by fog so thick that human vision can’t penetrate it. Source: mit.edu