Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists may have made a significant breakthrough in restoring human sight, as a woman who had been blind for seven years has regained the ability to see shapes and colours with a bionic eye implant.

The 30-year-old woman had a wireless visual stimulator chip inserted into her brain by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) surgeons in the first human test of the product. As a result, she could see colored flashes, lines, and spots when signals were sent to her brain from a computer.

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Computronium is defined by some as a substance which approaches the theoretical limit of computational power that we can achieve through engineering of the matter around us. It would mean that every atom of a piece of matter would be put to useful work doing computation. Such a system would reside at the ultimate limits of efficiency, and the smallest amount of energy possible would be wasted through the generation of heat. Computronium crops up in science fiction a lot, usually as something that advanced civilizations have created, occasionally causing conflicts due to intensive harvesting of matter from their galaxy to further their processing power. The idea is also also linked with advanced machine intelligence: A block of matter which does nothing other than compute could presumably would be incredibly sought after by any artificial intelligence looking to get the most compact and powerful brain for its money!

Biologists at Caltech have developed a new system for visualizing connections between individual cells in fly brains. The finding may ultimately lead to “wiring diagrams” of fly and other animal brains, which would help researchers understand how neurons are connected.

“To understand how the brain works we need to know how neurons are wired to each other,” says Carlos Lois, research professor in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech and principal investigator of the new research, which appears in the November issue of the journal Development. “This is similar to understanding how a computer works by looking at how transistors are connected.”

Animals are made up of different types of specialized cells. In order for an animal to function, the cells have to be able to communicate with each other. For example, neurons directly communicate with muscle cells so that an animal can move. In diseases such as cancer, this communication process can go awry: when tumors metastasize, they no longer “listen” to neighboring cells that tell them not to grow. Instead, the cancer cells grow uncontrollably and migrate to other parts of the body.

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Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating NV-doped single-crystal nanodiamonds, only four to eight nanometers wide, which could serve as components in room-temperature quantum computing technologies. These doped nanodiamonds also hold promise for use in single-photon sensors and nontoxic, fluorescent biomarkers.

Currently, computers use binary logic, in which each binary unit — or bit — is in one of two states: 1 or 0. Quantum computing makes use of superposition and entanglement, allowing the creation of quantum bits — or qubits — which can have a vast number of possible states. Quantum computing has the potential to significantly increase computing power and speed.

A number of options have been explored for creating quantum computing systems, including the use of diamonds that have “nitrogen-vacancy” centers. That’s where this research comes in.

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2,000km network to provide foundation for secure quantum key distribution.

Engineers from Yale University have developed a new technique to control the frequency of single photons.

The ability to control the frequency of single photons is crucial to realize the potential of quantum communications and quantum computing. The current methods for changing photon frequency, however, bring with them significant drawbacks.

Researchers in the lab of Hong Tang, the Llewellyn West Jones, Jr. Professor of Electrical Engineering & Physics, have developed a technique that avoids these obstacles. The results of their work are published today in Nature Photonics. Linran Fan, a Ph.D. student in Tang’s lab, is the lead author.

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Researchers plan to bring dead to life by freezing their brains and then resurrecting them with artificial intelligence.

Bringing the dead back to life is futuristic and final frontier of science and Humai is working on just that. Humai is a technology company based in Los Angeles and is working on a project known as “Atom & Eve” that would let human consciousness be transferred to an artificial body after their death.

The artificial intelligence company has said it can resurrect human beings within the next 30 years. The “conversational styles, [behavioural]patterns, thought processes and information about how your body functions from the inside-out” would be stored on a silicon chip through AI and nanotechnology.

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Have you ever been in a situation where knowing another language would have come in handy?

I remember standing on the platform at Tokyo Station watching my train to Nagano — the last train of the day — pulling away without me on it. What ensued was a frustrating hour of gestures, confused smiles, and head-shaking as I wandered the station looking for someone who spoke English (my Japanese is unfortunately nonexistent). It would have been really helpful to have a bilingual pal along with me to translate.

Bilingual pals can be hard to find, but Google’s new translation software may be an equally useful alternative. In a paper released last week, the authors noted that Google’s Neural Machine Translation system (GNMT) reduced translation errors by an average of 60% compared to Google’s phrase-based system. GMNT uses deep learning, a technology that aims to ‘think’ in the same way as a human brain.

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Come “ask me anything” right now!!! I’m trying to answer all questions I get asked:

Hi Reddit,

Thank you for having me here. My name is Zoltan Istvan, and I’m a futurist, journalist, and science fiction writer. I’m also the 2016 Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party.

Continue reading “AMA: I’m Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist US Presidential Candidate. Ask me anything!! : Futurology” »