Lifeboat Foundation

For millions of Chinese people, the first software they download on a new laptop or smartphone is always the same: a keyboard app. Yet few of them are aware that it may make everything they type vulnerable to spying eyes.

Since dozens of Chinese characters can share the same latinized phonetic spelling, the ordinary QWERTY keyboard alone is incredibly inefficient. A smart, localized keyboard app can save a lot of time and frustration by predicting the characters and words a user wants to type. Today, over 800 million Chinese people use third-party keyboard apps on their PCs, laptops, and mobile phones.

Being able to vocalize is one of the most essential elements of the human experience, with infants expected to start babbling their first words before they’re one year old, and much of their further life revolving around interacting with others using vocalizations involving varying degrees of vocabulary and fluency. This makes the impairment or loss of this ability difficult to devastating, as is the case with locked-in syndrome (LIS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and similar conditions, where talking and vocalizing has or will become impossible.

In a number of concurrent studies, the use of a brain-computer interface (BCI) is investigated to help patients suffering from LIS (Sean L. Metzger et al., 2023) and ALS (Francis R. Willett et al., 2023) to regain their speaking voice. Using the surgically implanted microelectrode arrays (Utah arrays) electrical impulses pertaining to the patient’s muscles involved in speaking are recorded and mapped to phonemes, which are the elements that make up speech. Each of these phonemes requires a specific configuration of the muscles of the vocal tract (e.g. lips, tongue, jaw and larynx), which can be measured with a fair degree of accuracy.

In the case of the study by Sean L. Metzger et al. as recently published in Nature, the accompanying research article on the University of California San Francisco website details the story of their patient: Ann. At the age of 30, Ann suffered a brainstem stroke which rendered her essentially fully paralyzed. As an LIS patient she lacked for a long time even the ability to move her facial muscles.

A team from the University of Chicago has announced the first evidence for “quantum superchemistry” – a phenomenon where particles in the same quantum state undergo collective accelerated reactions. The effect had been predicted, but never observed in the laboratory.

The findings, published July 24 in Nature Physics, open the door to a new field. Scientists are intensely interested in what are known as “quantum-enhanced” chemical reactions, which could have applications in quantum chemistry, quantum computing, and other technologies, as well as in better understanding the laws of the universe.

Breakthrough could point way to fundamental insights, new technology.

Continue reading “UChicago scientists observe first evidence of ‘quantum superchemistry’ in the laboratory” »

A new study discusses how high-fidelity quantum information could be sent through fiber optic networks by a novel atomic device.

Did you know quantum transmissions can’t be amplified over a city or an ocean like conventional data signals? Instead, they have to be periodically repeated using specialized devices called quantum repeaters.

For the technology to be used in future communications networks, researchers have developed a novel method of connecting quantum devices over great distances.

We live in an analog world of continuous information flow that is both processed and stored by our brains at the same time, but our devices process information digitally in the form of discrete binary code, breaking the information into little bits (or bites).

Researchers at EPFL have revealed a pioneering technology that combines the potential of continuous analog processing with the precision of digital devices. By seamlessly integrating ultra-thin, two-dimensional semiconductors with ferroelectric materials, the research, published in Nature Electronics, unveils a novel way to improve energy efficiency and add new functionalities in computing. The new configuration merges traditional digital logic with brain-like analog operations.

The innovation from the Nanoelectronics Device Laboratory (Nanolab), in collaboration with Microsystems Laboratory, revolves around a unique combination of materials leading to brain-inspired functions and advanced electronic switches, including the standout negative capacitance Tunnel Field-Effect Transistor (TFET).

Michael Levin discusses his 2022 paper “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds” and his 2023 paper with Joshua Bongard, “There’s Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-scale Machines.” Links to papers flagged 🚩below.

Michael Levin is a scientist at Tufts University; his lab studies anatomical and behavioral decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems. He works at the intersection of developmental biology, artificial life, bioengineering, synthetic morphology, and cognitive science.

Continue reading “Agency, Attractors, & Observer-Dependent Computation in Biology & Beyond” »

UChicago researchers’ design makes stable, suture-free medical monitoring in body possible.

Future computers could be built smaller than ever before using the tiny biological skeletons that hold our cells together.

That’s according to one team of scientists, who have devised a way to make computer chips using cytoskeletons — protein scaffolds that give cells their shape.

Continue reading “Future computers could be built using proteins that make up cells” »

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Here it is, the bio computer. A new type of parallel computing method that could rival the infamous quantum computer at a much lower price while being more practical to boot.

Continue reading “Nano-Biological Computing — Quantum Computer Alternative!” »