Showing posts with label vis tech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vis tech. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Heavy Metal Retinas and Other Advances in Vision Tech

 

The above image is an artist's illustration of a liquid-metal pupil that opens and closes to adjust light entering, by Kun Liang for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is only one of the two different kinds of artificial eyeballs reported below.  

Creating realistic 3D scenes from everyday online photos
Dec 2025, phys.org

NVA - Novel View Synthesis - creates realistic angles of a scene from just a single existing photo.

WildCAT3D shows how computers can be trained using large collections of freely available images - tourist snapshots; photos taken in different weather, lighting and seasons; or partially obscured scenes. 

via Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science: WildCAT3D: Appearance-Aware Multi-View Diffusion in the Wild.

Also: Morris Alper et al, WildCAT3D: Appearance-Aware Multi-View Diffusion in the Wild, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2506.13030


Quantum mechanical effects help overcome a fundamental limitation of optical microscopy
Jan 2026, phys.org

Optical microscopes are unable to resolve structures much smaller than the wavelength of light.  ... They achieve this incredible resolution by bringing a sharp metal tip extraordinarily close to the surface of a material under study - separated by a gap smaller than the size of a single atom. A continuous - wave laser illuminates the system, "squeezing" infrared light into the tiny gap and concentrating it at the tip's apex. Confining light in this manner circumvents the diffraction limit and enables a spatial resolution on the order of the radius of curvature of the tip apex - typically about 10 nanometers.

via University of Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy and U of Birmingham: Felix Schiegl et al, Atomic-Scale Optical Microscopy with Continuous-Wave Mid-Infrared Radiation, Nano Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05319


Liquid-metal pupil helps an artificial eye adapt to sudden light changes
Mar 2026, phys.org

Traditional machine vision systems struggle with extreme light changes, but adaptive pupils adjust instantly. They tried to replicate this process, called closed-loop pupillary light reflex or adaptive pupil reflex.

"Our core objectives were to integrate a hemispherical artificial retina with liquid-metal (LM) shapeshifters for artificial neurons and adaptive pupils, mimic biological PLR via LM deformation, solve high-light overexposure issues in machine vision, and achieve programmable replication of multiple animal pupil shapes to boost environmental adaptability and image recognition accuracy."

Finally, the team developed an adaptive pupil made of liquid metal that changes its shape and size depending on the intensity of light. [see the thumbnail image above]

The artificial pupil developed by the researchers relies on eight liquid-metal actuators that can be controlled independently. These actuators adjust the aperture of the pupil, controlling how much light passes through it. In addition, these actuators can produce different pupil shapes, mimicking the shape of human pupils or those of cats, sheep, squids, frogs and various other animals.

via University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Westlake University: Kun Liang et al, Bioinspired adaptive pupil reflex based on liquid-metal shape-shifters for machine vision, Science Robotics (2026). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adx0715.


This artificial retina doesn't just aim to restore sight—it opens a hidden channel of vision
Apr 2026, phys.org

"Electrical stimulation of retinal neurons can recreate the action potentials associated with seeing that are generated by these cells. We report a thin artificial retina that can be adhered to the epiretinal surface and can convert near-infrared light into electrical stimuli that selectively stimulate ganglion cells."

The phototransistor array is a grid of tiny, light-sensitive devices that can detect near-infrared light (i.e., light that is just beyond visible wavelengths) and convert it into electrical signals, and the liquid metal electrodes enhance proximity to retinal ganglion cells, which are less affected by retinal degeneration than photoreceptor cells, thus still able to transmit information to the brain.

via Institute for Basic Science in Korea: Won Gi Chung et al, An implantable epiretinal device for near-infrared light perception, Nature Electronics (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-026-01601-8


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Thursday, December 11, 2025

Super Surveillance on Steroids


Every day it gets a little bit easier to make the phone call from inside the house.

AI-driven video analyzer sets new standards in human action detection
Oct 2024, phys.org

If you were one person in a sea of thousands, we can now tell you're up to something by the way you move your body, with only one camera:

Semantic and Motion-Aware Spatiotemporal Transformer Network - a multi-feature selective attention model helps the system focus on the most important parts of a scene while ignoring unnecessary details, and a motion-aware 2D positional encoding algorithm tracks how things move over time, to  accurately recognize complex actions in real time, making it more effective in high-stakes scenarios like surveillance, health care diagnostics, or autonomous driving.

via University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science: Matthew Korban et al, A Semantic and Motion-Aware Spatiotemporal Transformer Network for Action Detection, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2024). DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2024.3377192



A stapler that knows when you need it: Using AI to turn everyday objects into proactive assistants
Oct 2025, phys.org

And there you have it, the AI stapler.

via Carnegie Mellon University: Violet Yinuo Han et al, Towards Unobtrusive Physical AI: Augmenting Everyday Objects with Intelligence and Robotic Movement for Proactive Assistance, Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (2025). DOI: 10.1145/3746059.3747726


New 'hidden in plain sight' facial and eye biomarkers for tinnitus severity could unlock path to testing treatments
Apr 2025, phys.org

Researchers knew that the pupil dilation was a sign of increased arousal and that involuntary facial movements could provide a window into threat assessment; and they hypothesized that people with debilitating tinnitus are chronically in vigilance mode, reacting to everyday sounds as if they are threats.

Video recordings were made while participants listened to pleasant, neutral, or distressing and unpleasant sounds. In people with severe tinnitus, pupils dilated extra wide at all sounds, while facial movements were blunted in response to the same sounds.

via Mass General Brigham Eye and Ear: Samuel Smith et al, Objective autonomic signatures of tinnitus and sound sensitivity disorders, Science Translational Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adp1934.


Deepfakes now come with a realistic heartbeat, making them harder to unmask
Apr 2025, phys.org

Photoplethysmography - The analysis of the transmission of light through the skin and underlying blood vessels has long been indispensable in medicine, for example in pulse oximeters. Its digital cousin, so-called remote photoplethysmography (rPPP), is an emerging method in telehealthcare, which uses webcams to estimate vital signs. But rPPP can, in theory, also be used in deepfake detectors.

In recent years, such experimental rPPP-based deepfake detectors have proven good at distinguishing between real and deepfaked videos. These successes led some experts to judge that current deepfakes couldn't yet mimic a realistic heart rate. But now, it appears that this complacent view is outdated.

"Our experiments have shown that current deepfakes may show a realistic heartbeat, but do not show physiologically realistic variations in blood flow across space and time within the face."

via Humboldt University of Berlin: High-quality deepfakes have a heart!, Frontiers in Imaging (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fimag.2025.1504551

Nikon Small World - Sunflower pollen on an acupuncture needle - John-Oliver Dum - 40X - 2023

Diagnostic pen converts handwriting into electrical signals to detect Parkinson's
Jun 2025, phys.org

The pen's design integrates a silicone-based magnetoelastic tip embedded with magnetic particles, and a reservoir of ferrofluid ink containing nanomagnets. During writing, mechanical stress from hand pressure deforms the tip and causes ink movement, generating shifts in magnetic flux that induce voltage in an embedded coil.

via UCLA: Guorui Chen et al, Neural network-assisted personalized handwriting analysis for Parkinson's disease diagnostics, Nature Chemical Engineering (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44286-025-00219-5

Also: Diagnosing Parkinson's disease using a soft magnetoelastic smart pen, Nature Chemical Engineering (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44286-025-00228-4


One of a kind: Humans have unique breathing 'fingerprints' that may signal health status
Jun 2025, phys.org

Scientists can identify individuals based solely on their breathing patterns with 96.8% accuracy. 

This high-level accuracy remained consistent across multiple retests conducted over a two-year period, rivaling the precision of some voice recognition technologies. Respiratory fingerprints correlated with a person's body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, levels of depression and anxiety, and even behavioral traits. For example, participants who scored relatively higher on anxiety questionnaires had shorter inhales and more variability in the pauses between breaths during sleep.

via Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science: Humans Have Nasal Respiratory Fingerprints, Current Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.05.008. 


Banking data reveals early warning signs of cognitive decline in older adults
Jun 2025, phys.org

The results reveal that subtle but significant changes in financial behavior—such as reduced spending on travel and hobbies, increased household bills, fewer online banking logins, and more frequent requests to reset PINs — begin to appear several years before individuals are formally identified as lacking financial capacity.

"Lacking financial capacity" is another way of saying it. 

via University of Nottingham's School of Economics: Anna Trendl et al, Early Behavioral Markers of Loss of Financial Capacity, JAMA Network Open (2025). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.15894


WhoFi: New surveillance technology can track people by how they disrupt Wi-Fi signals
Jul 2025, phys.org

Total and absolute surveillance is inevitable.

WhoFi captures how Wi-Fi signals change when they encounter people and objects, interpreting unique Wi-Fi disruptions as individual "fingerprints" unique to a person.

The team acknowledges the issues and potential for misuse, but states that their re-identification (Re-ID) system does not capture a person's identity or personal data. "By leveraging non-visual biometric features embedded in Wi-Fi CSI, this study offers a privacy-preserving and robust approach for Wi-Fi-based Re-ID, and it lays the foundation for future work in wireless biometric sensing."

via Sapienza University: Danilo Avola et al, WhoFi: Deep Person Re-Identification via Wi-Fi Channel Signal Encoding, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2507.12869

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Monday, November 24, 2025

New Things in Visualization Technology


Here's some advances in vision tech.

Infrared contact lenses allow people to see in the dark, even with their eyes closed
May 2025, phys.org

They use nanoparticles that absorb infrared light and convert it into visible wavelengths combined with flexible, nontoxic polymers used in standard soft contact lenses.

Bonus - "We also found that when the subject closes their eyes, they're even better able to receive this flickering information, because near-infrared light penetrates the eyelid more effectively than visible light, so there is less interference from visible light."

via University of Science and Technology of China: Near-Infrared Spatiotemporal Color Vision in Humans Enabled by Upconversion Contact Lenses, Cell (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.04.019



Brain-inspired vision sensor enhances object outline extraction in varying lighting conditions
Jun 2025, phys.org

The research team engineered a vision sensor that emulates the dopamine-glutamate signaling pathway found in brain synapses. In the human brain, dopamine modulates glutamate signals to prioritize critical information. Mimicking this process, the newly developed sensor selectively extracts high-contrast visual features, such as object outlines, while filtering out extraneous details.

via Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology and Korea Institute of Science and Technology:  Jong Ik Kwon et al, In-sensor multilevel image adjustment for high-clarity contour extraction using adjustable synaptic phototransistors, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adt6527


Chain-of-Zoom framework enables extreme super-resolution zoom without retraining
Jun 2025, phys.org

This is the real CSI thing, or as they call it "extreme super-resolution" 
For each step, the new framework uses a super-resolution (SR) model that already exists to begin the refinement process. As such processing is taking place, a vision-language-model (VLM) generates descriptive prompts that help the SR model conduct the generation process. The result is the generation of a zoomed-in part of the first image. The framework then repeats the process, using helpful cues from VLM, repeatedly, improving the resolution of the zoomed image each time, until settling on a final version. To ensure that the prompts given by the VLM were useful, the research team applied reinforcement-learning techniques. Testing of the framework showed it is capable of besting imagery generated by standard benchmarks.

Disclaimer - The researchers state that users need to be careful. The zoomed-in image is not real. For a better idea of what this means, check out the police department who used an AI-editing software for some photos of a drug bust, and the "edited" resulting photo had hallucinated a fake police badge and fake drugs [link to spammy website sorry, and the source article is on facebook]. 

via Korea Institute of Science and Technology: Bryan Sangwoo Kim et al, Chain-of-Zoom: Extreme Super-Resolution via Scale Autoregression and Preference Alignment, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2505.18600


Imaging tech promises deepest looks yet into living brain tissue at single-cell resolution
Aug 2025, phys.org

They're using sound in addition to light, and detecting NAD(P)H not calcium. 

via Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT: Tatsuya Osaki et al, Multi-photon, label-free photoacoustic and optical imaging of NADH in brain cells, Light: Science & Applications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41377-025-01895-x


Ångström-scale optical microscopy deciphers conformational states of single membrane proteins
Aug 2025, phys.org

(Ångström is as far down as it goes btw) Scientists show that optical microscopy under cryogenic conditions can resolve specific sites within the mechanosensitive protein PIEZO1 with Ångström precision – even within native cell membranes.

"The key innovation was rapid freezing in a liquid cryogen—a process so fast that water molecules don't crystallize, thus keeping the protein's structure intact"

via Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light: Hisham Mazal et al, Cryo–light microscopy with angstrom precision deciphers structural conformations of PIEZO1 in its native state, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw4402

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Thursday, January 23, 2025

Eyeballs and Things


Get your eyeballs ready, they have competition:

Eyes of tomorrow: Smart contact lenses lead the way for human-machine interaction
May 2024, phys.org

They put RFID tags in the contact lens and that's it, like the reverse Wii remote DIY smartboard projector circa 2011.

via College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University: Hengtian Zhu et al, Frequency-encoded eye tracking smart contact lens for human–machine interaction, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-47851-y



New flexible film detects eyelash proximity in blink-tracking glasses
May 2024, phys.org

They are seeing with static electricity: "Non contact sensor" - can identify or measure an object without directly touching it, like infrared thermometers and vehicle proximity notification systems, using static electricity via fluorinated ethylene propylene which produces an external electrostatic field that can "see" objects without physical contact.

via Shanghai Key Laboratory for Intelligent Sensing and Detection Technology at East China University of Science and Technology: Facile Electret-Based Self-Powered Soft Sensor for Noncontact Positioning and Information Translation, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c02741


AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them just once
May 2024, phys.org

"Target Speech Hearing" - wear the headphones and look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to "enroll" them. The system then cancels all other sounds in the environment and plays just the enrolled speaker's voice in real time. The sound waves from the speaker's voice reach the microphones on both sides of the headset simultaneously, and that's how works.

via University of Washington: Bandhav Veluri et al, Look Once to Hear: Target Speech Hearing with Noisy Examples, Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2024). DOI: 10.1145/3613904.3642057 , dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642057


Cutting-edge vision chip brings human eye-like perception to machines
Jun 2024, phys.org

This approach decomposes visual information into primitive-based visual representations. By combining these primitives, it mimics the features of the human visual system. (The "Tianmouc chip" achieves high-speed visual information acquisition at 10,000 frames per second, 10-bit precision, and a high dynamic range of 130 dB, all while reducing bandwidth by 90% and maintaining low power consumption.) 

via Tsinghua University Center for Brain Inspired Computing Research: Zheyu Yang et al, A vision chip with complementary pathways for open-world sensing, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07358-4


You're just a stick figure to this camera - a new camera to prevent companies from collecting private information
Jul 2024, phys.org

PrivacyLens uses both a standard video camera and a heat-sensing camera to spot people in images from their body temperature. The person's likeness is then completely replaced by a generic stick figure, allowing the camera to function without revealing the identity of the person.

via University of Michigan: Yasha Iravantchi et al, PrivacyLens: On-Device PII Removal from RGB Images using Thermally-Enhanced Sensing, Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (2024). DOI: 10.56553/popets-2024-0146


Ultra-high speed camera for molecules: Attosecond spectroscopy captures electron transfer dynamics
Sep 2024, phys.org

Ultrashort ultraviolet pulses from high-order harmonic sources or free electron laser facilities stand as powerful tools for initiating and observing the response of molecules to photoionization, on timescales ranging from the femtosecond (10-15 seconds) down to the attosecond (10-18 seconds). 

via Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies in Nanoscience, Autonomous University and Complutense University of Madrid: Federico Vismarra et al. Few-femtosecond electron transfer dynamics in photoionized donor–π–acceptor molecules. Nature Chemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-024-01620-y 

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Thursday, July 4, 2024

More Advances in Vision Tech


Nanostructured flat lens uses machine learning to 'see' more clearly, while using less power
Jan 2024, phys.org

Meta Imager - a lense that processes the image on the front-end, so it can be thinner and process more efficiently.

Vanderbilt University: Hanyu Zheng et al, Multichannel meta-imagers for accelerating machine vision, Nature Nanotechnology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-023-01557-2

Image credit: AI Art - What Does Sadness Look Like - 2022


Lab-grown retinas explain why people see colors dogs can't
Jan 2024, phys.org

Just Retinal Organoids - By tweaking the cellular properties of retinal organoids, the research team found that a molecule called retinoic acid (an offshoot of vitamin A) determines whether a cone will specialize in sensing red or green light. Only humans with normal vision and closely related primates develop the red sensor.

via Johns Hopkins University: Retinoic acid signaling regulates spatiotemporal specification of human green and red cones, PLoS Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002464. 


A camera-based anti-facial recognition technique
Jan 2024, phys.org

Anti-Facial Recognition - obfuscating, synthesizing or changing images to increase the privacy of users

CamPro - whereas most techniques use post-processing to modify images after they were captured, this    technique works at the camera sensor level to produce images that can protect users' facial privacy without influencing other applications

Using a very simplified explanation - the team manipulated certain parameters at the signal processing layer of the camera, right after the sensor, to take away personal identifying information from the picture, but while leaving the other information like person detection and pose estimation. It works by adjusting the existing processing parameters, but without requiring redesigning the camera, and it's called "privacy-preserving by birth" (why not by design?).

What's more is that because the resulting image may not be "human readable", they put some code in there to make the face back into something that humans can see pretty good, yet doesn't have the data that a computer needs to see it. This is like how a stop sign with a picture of a banana on it can brick your self-driving car; it looks like a banana to you, or a mess of dots, or whatever, but to the computer it looks like something completely different and in fact makes the stop sign itself invisible.

via USSLAB at Zhejiang University: Wenjun Zhu et al, CamPro: Camera-based Anti-Facial Recognition, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.00151


Science fiction meets reality as researchers develop techniques to overcome obstructed views
Feb 2024, phys.org

Using an ordinary digital camera - "We're turning ordinary surfaces into mirrors to reveal regions, objects, and rooms that are outside our line of vision"

via University of South Florida: Robinson Czajkowski et al, Two-edge-resolved three-dimensional non-line-of-sight imaging with an ordinary camera, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45397-7

AI Art - Vase of Golden Threads in Impossible Geometries by Escher and Lalique - 2022

Using 3D printing to make artificial eyeballs more quickly and accurately
Feb 2024, phys.org

Artificial eyeballs thought you knew

via Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research at Technical University Darmstadt, NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Ophthalmology at Moorfields Eye Hospital, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology: Johann Reinhard et al, Automatic data-driven design and 3D printing of custom ocular prostheses, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45345-5


Pushing back the limits of optical imaging by processing trillions of frames per second
Mar 2024, phys.org

Femtophotography - trillions of frames per second, used for femtosecond laser ablation, shock-wave interaction with living cells, and optical chaos 

Optical Chaos - chaos generated by laser instabilities using different schemes in semiconductor and fiber lasers

via Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre at INRS Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Advanced Laser Light Source Laboratory, Institut Jean Lamour at the Université de Lorraine, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology: Jingdan Liu et al, Swept coded aperture real-time femtophotography, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45820-z

 
AI-powered 'sonar' on smartglasses tracks gaze, facial expressions
Apr 2024, phys.org

Both use speakers and microphones mounted on an eyeglass frame to bounce inaudible soundwaves off the face and pick up reflected signals caused by face and eye movements. One device, GazeTrak, is the first eye-tracking system that relies on acoustic signals. The second, EyeEcho, is the first eyeglass-based system to continuously and accurately detect facial expressions and recreate them through an avatar in real-time.

via Cornell Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions: Ke Li et al, GazeTrak: Exploring Acoustic-based Eye Tracking on a Glass Frame, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2402.14634


Advance in light-based computing shows capabilities for future smart cameras
Apr 2024, phys.org

A tiny array of transparent pixels could produce a fast, broadband, nonlinear response from low-power ambient light.

The thinness of the material makes it transparent, while it retains qualities that enable incoming photons to efficiently regulate electrical conductivity. The research team coupled the 2D semiconductor with a layer of liquid crystal and made it functional with an array of electrodes. The result is a smart filter comprising 10,000 pixels, each able to selectively and quickly darken in a nonlinear way when exposed to broadband ambient light.

"An inexpensive device measuring a couple of centimeters could make a low-powered camera work like a super-resolution camera"

via California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA: Dehui Zhang et al, Broadband nonlinear modulation of incoherent light using a transparent optoelectronic neuron array, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46387-5

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Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Vision Technologies See Way Ahead


Neuromorphic camera and machine learning aid nanoscopic imaging
Feb 2023, phys.org

Brain-inspired image sensor using machine learning can go beyond the diffraction limit of light to detect minuscule objects such as cellular components or nanoparticles smaller than 50 nanometers in size, and invisible to current microscopes.

via Indian Institute of Science: Rohit Mangalwedhekar et al, Achieving nanoscale precision using neuromorphic localization microscopy, Nature Nanotechnology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01291-1



New 'camera' with shutter speed of 1 trillionth of a second sees through dynamic disorder of atoms
Mar 2023, phys.org

Doesn't work like a conventional camera - it uses neutrons from a source at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to measure atomic positions with a shutter speed of around one picosecond, or a million million (a trillion) times faster than normal camera shutters. 

via Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science: Simon A. J. Kimber et al, Dynamic crystallography reveals spontaneous anisotropy in cubic GeTe, Nature Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01483-7


Superconducting nanowire camera will explore brain cells, space
Jul 2023, phys.org

Superconducting camera -- A pixel array 400 times greater than previous largest photon camera, this is a 400,000 pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD), for light frequencies from the visible to ultraviolet and infrared range and speed rates in the picoseconds.

via National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, University of Colorado's Department of Physics and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology: Bakhrom G. Oripov et al, A superconducting-nanowire single-photon camera with 400,000 pixels, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2306.09473

AI Art - Skeleton Reading an X-Ray - 2024

The first network of robotic telescopes present across five continents is deployed
Feb 2023, phys.org

The existence of a network of very fast pointing robotic telescopes such as BOOTES represents an ideal complement to satellite detection and, in fact, BOOTES will also work to track and monitor neutrino sources and objects that emit gravitational waves, or even objects such as comets, asteroids, variable stars or supernovae. But it will also keep an eye on the sky, both in tracking space debris and potentially dangerous objects that may pose a threat to our planet.

via Spanish National Research Council: Youdong Hu et al, The Burst Observer and Optical Transient Exploring System in the multi-messenger astronomy era, Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2023.952887.


HotSat-1: Spacecraft to map UK's heat inefficient buildings
Jun 2023, BBC News

Mass surveillance -- 

At an altitude of 500km (311 miles), infrared satellite HotSat-1, funded by the UK and European space agencies, manufactured by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in Guildford, and to be operated by the London-based start-up Satellite Vu, will identify dwellings wasting energy.

The data will also provide intelligence to the financial and insurance sectors - and even the military - by showing how temperatures in a scene change over time. It's possible, for example, to get a sense of the volume and type of output from a factory just from its heat signature.

Pollution monitoring ought to be another application. Watching for sudden changes in the temperature of river water might be an indicator that something is awry.

Update: A novel UK satellite has returned its first pictures of heat variations across the surface of the Earth. HotSat-1: UK spacecraft maps heat variations across Earth, Sep 2023, BBC News


The future of AI hardware: Scientists unveil all-analog photoelectronic chip
Oct 2023, phys.org

All-analog photoelectronic chip that combines optical and electronic computing. It's specifically for visual data processing (as expected). 

New words to me - "diffractive neural network"
Also - ACCEL: all-analog chip combining electronic and light computing

via Tsinghua University: Yitong Chen et al, All-analog photoelectronic chip for high-speed vision tasks, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06558-8

Also: Computer vision accelerated using photons and electrons, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-023-02947-1 


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Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Make Everything a Computer Again


AKA The Atoms Themselves Are Computers Part 2

Tiny device mimics human vision and memory abilities
Jun 2023, phys.org

There won't be any computers one day. Somehow things will compute by themselves because of the way they're designed. Each thing will compute differently because it will be made of different things and arranged in different ways. There won't be all-purpose computers anymore; some things will see, some will hear, some will count, maybe some will smell.

A neuromorphic vision device -- a single chip enabled by a sensing element, doped indium oxide,  thousands of times thinner than a human hair and requires no external parts to operate, captures, processes and stores visual information.

The device mimics a human eye's ability to capture light, pre-packages and transmits information like an optical nerve, and stores and classifies it in a memory system like the way our brains can.

via Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology RMIT, Deakin University and University of Melbourne: Aishani Mazumder et al, Long Duration Persistent Photocurrent in 3 nm Thin Doped Indium Oxide for Integrated Light Sensing and In‐Sensor Neuromorphic Computation, Advanced Functional Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202303641



Physicists design metamaterials with built-in frustration for mechanical memory
Jun 2023, phys.org

The future of computing where everything is a computer -- "metamaterials are materials whose responses are determined by their structure rather than their chemical composition"

But this metamaterial now has memory -- To construct a metamaterial with mechanical memory, they realized that its design needs to be "frustrated," and that this frustration corresponds to a new type of order, which they call non-orientable order. These materials naturally want to be ordered, but something in their structure forbids the order to span the whole system and forces the ordered pattern to vanish at one point or line in space. There is no way to get rid of that vanishing point without cutting the structure, so it has to be there no matter what.

(A simple example of a non-orientable object is a Möbius strip)

via University of Amsterdam: Xiaofei Guo, Non-orientable order and non-commutative response in frustrated metamate, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06022-7


New type of computer memory could greatly reduce energy use and improve performance
Jun 2023, phys.org

Processes data in a similar way as the synapses in the human brain, and based on hafnium oxide.

"In conventional computing, there's memory on one side and processing on the other, and data is shuffled back between the two, which takes both energy and time."

Conventional memory devices are capable of two states: one or zero. A functioning resistive switching memory device however, would be capable of a continuous range of states

At the atomic level, hafnium oxide has no structure, with the hafnium and oxygen atoms randomly mixed, making it challenging to use for memory applications.

However, the researchers found that by adding barium to thin films of hafnium oxide, some unusual structures started to form (and which allow electrons to pass through), perpendicular to the hafnium oxide plane, in the composite material.

via University of Cambridge: Markus Hellenbrand et al, Thin-film design of amorphous hafnium oxide nanocomposites enabling strong interfacial resistive switching uniformity, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adg1946

AI Art - Nanotechnology Activated by a Frequency in the Human Body - 2023

The catch-22s of reservoir computing: Researchers find overlooked weakness in powerful machine learning tool
Sep 2023, phys.org

Sante Fe Institute is always far out:

Reservoir computing is effective in predicting the trajectory of chaotic systems after seeing very little training data, and can even determine where the system would end up just from its initial conditions.

"In a sense, you have this kind of information sneaked in before the training begins," he says. And if they perturbed the model? "Generally, it performed really poorly," Zhang says. That suggests that the model cannot make accurate predictions unless key information about the system being predicted was already built in. For RC, the duo observed that in order to correctly predict the system, the model requires a lengthy "warm-up" time that's almost as time-consuming as the dynamic movements of the magnet itself.

via Santa Fe Institute and Toronto Metropolitan University: Yuanzhao Zhang et al, Catch-22s of reservoir computing, Physical Review Research (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.033213


New 'assembly theory' unifies physics and biology to explain evolution and complexity
Oct 2023, phys.org

Assembly Theory - developing as empirically validated approach to life detection, with implications for the search for alien life and efforts to evolve new life forms in the laboratory.

In prior work, the team assigned a complexity score to molecules called the molecular assembly index, based on the minimal number of bond-forming steps required to build a molecule. They showed how this index is experimentally measurable and how high values correlate with life-derived molecules.

The new study introduces mathematical formalism around a physical quantity called "assembly" that captures how much selection is required to produce a given set of complex objects, based on their abundance and assembly indices.

"Assembly theory provides a completely new lens for looking at physics, chemistry and biology as different perspectives of the same underlying reality," explained lead author Professor Sara Walker, a theoretical physicist and origin of life researcher from Arizona State University.

via University of Glasgow and Arizona State University: Leroy Cronin, Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06600-9. 

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Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Words, for the Corpus That Has It All


The following update to the 'list of crazy words you read when scanning science press headlines', 6 months from April 2023 to October 2023. This one is a big list, an avalanche of verbal programming; start your semantic engines.

Appropriately illustrated by artificial intelligence engine-generated images of Dental Art, starting with the above image, prompted by the words "Hyperrealistic pink tissue bloody gums slippery glistening" but I just call it Dental Art.


Researchers develop the first-ever ingestible electroceutical device to control appetite by hormone modulation
Apr 2023, phys.org

"Electroceuticals" - for the neuromodulation of the gut-brain axis 

via NYU: Khalil Ramadi et al, Bioinspired, ingestible electroceutical capsules for hunger-regulating hormone modulation, Science Robotics (2023). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.ade9676.


Meteosat-12: Europe's new weather satellite takes first photos
Apr 2023, BBC News

"Nowcasting" - (like forecasting but better) the ability to say with greater confidence that violent winds, lightning, hail or heavy downpours are about to strike a particular area; Europe's new weather satellite Meteosat-12 flies 36,000km above the Earth and takes pictures every 10 minutes

And the word nowcasting, in the wild: "The insights gained from linking lightning intensity to eruptive activity can provide better monitoring and nowcasting of aviation-related hazards during a large volcanic eruption, including ash cloud development and movement," Van Eaton said." -New study shows Tonga's Hunga eruption produced the most intense lightning ever recorded. Jun 2023. phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-tonga-hunga-eruption-intense-lightning.html ; and via American Geophysical Union: Alexa R. Van Eaton et al, Lightning Rings and Gravity Waves: Insights Into the Giant Eruption Plume From Tonga's Hunga Volcano on 15 January 2022, Geophysical Research Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2022GL102341. https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2022GL102341


'Bioprospecting' technique uncovers viruses that can kill deadly superbugs
May 2023, phys.org

"Bioprospecting" for viruses known as phages that can kill deadly superbugs; like "bioprospector" will be a word on someone's resume soon

via Monash University: Rhys A. Dunstan et al, Epitopes in the capsular polysaccharide and the porin OmpK36 receptors are required for bacteriophage infection of Klebsiella pneumoniae, Cell Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112551


DarkBERT learns language of the Dark Web
May 2023, phys.org

Fucking "DarkBERT" - A Language Model for the Dark Side of the Internet

FYI - "Surface Web content" (as opposed to "Dark Web content") I think what this is saying, without saying it, is that the internet is English, but the Dark Web is not, so they can't use the internet as their training model like we do with all the others.

via Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology: Youngjin Jin et al, DarkBERT: A Language Model for the Dark Side of the Internet, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2305.08596



Combining twistronics with spintronics could be the next giant leap in quantum electronics
Jun 2023, phys.org

I try to keep up, but -- "Twistronics", "spintronics", and "tunable moiré magnetism"

via Tohoku University: Guanghui Cheng et al, Electrically tunable moiré magnetism in twisted double bilayers of chromium triiodide, Nature Electronics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-023-00978-0


Researchers grow bio-inspired polymer brains for artificial neural networks
Jul 2023, phys.org

Neuromorphic "wetware" - based on memristive devices via electropolymerization aka growing wires

via Osaka University and Hokkaido University: Naruki Hagiwara et al, Fabrication and Training of 3D Conductive Polymer Networks for Neuromorphic Wetware, Advanced Functional Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202300903


New study reveals why defense against brain corrosion declines in people with Alzheimer's disease
Jul 2023, phys.org

"Brain corrosion" - Why yes, oxidative stress corrodes the brain, and that's called oxidative damage. Some might even call it "rust", brain rust. 

via Case Western Reserve University: Sara Cazzaro et al, Slingshot homolog-1–mediated Nrf2 sequestration tips the balance from neuroprotection to neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2217128120



Photonic time crystals could open the door to a new branch of optics
Jul 2023, phys.org

"Photonic Time Crystals" - they are the temporal version of photonic crystals, and in the optical domain could have profound implications for the science of light, enabling truly disruptive applications in the future

Just for background, and because this will all become the new computers of the next technological revolution -- "photonic crystals have a refractive index that oscillates periodically in space causing iridescence of precious minerals and insect wings for example."

via Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, and Purdue University:  Eran Lustig et al, Time-refraction optics with single cycle modulation, Nanophotonics (2023). DOI: 10.1515/nanoph-2023-0126


Researchers put a new twist on graphite
Jul 2023, phys.org

"Interdimensional" - mixed dimensional materials, like embedding 2D graphene into 3D graphite

via University of Washington, Osaka University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan: Matthew Yankowitz, Mixed-dimensional moiré systems of twisted graphitic thin films, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06290-3.


Spontaneous quasi-crystal self-assembly observed using tiny vibrating magnetic spheres
Jul 2023, phys.org

"Spontaneous Crystals" aka "Spontaneous Quasi-Crystal Self-Assembly" - discovered sort of by accident

via Université Paris-Saclay: Andrea Plati et al, Quasi-crystalline order in vibrated granular matter, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2307.01643


Zentropy and the art of creating new ferroelectric materials
Aug 2023, phys.org

"Zentropy" - The "Z" in zentropy stands for the German word Zustandssumm, meaning "sum over states" of entropy, and alternatively considered a play on the term "zen" from Buddhism, and the idea is to consider how entropy can occur over multiple scales within a system to help predict potential outcomes of the system when influenced by its surroundings. It's also a parameter-free pathway to predicting how advanced materials behave. And in other words, it can integrate top-down statistical and bottom-up quantum mechanics to predict experimental measures of the system without "fitting parameters" to closely match real-world variables.

via Penn State: Zi-Kui Liu et al, Parameter-free prediction of phase transition in PbTiO3 through combination of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, Scripta Materialia (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.scriptamat.2023.115480



Researchers use 'topological gardening' to achieve unexpected spin transport
Aug 2023, phys.org

Fastest forming word cluster in the sciences, that's all --

"Topological Gardening" - Although topological insulators conduct electricity only along their edges, and strictly in one direction, new science challenges that view by uncovering a new type of edge transport by manipulating edge states through bulk-edge interactions, similar to the pruning work done in gardening routines.

via Monash University: Yuefeng Yin et al, Extracting unconventional spin texture in two dimensional topological crystalline insulator bismuthene via tuning bulk-edge interactions, Materials Today Physics (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.mtphys.2023.101168

Also: Qile Li et al, Localized Wannier function based tight-binding models for two-dimensional allotropes of bismuth, New Journal of Physics (2021). DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/ac04c9


This fish doesn't just see with its eyes, it also sees with its skin
Aug 2023, phys.org

"Skin Vision" -- Hogfish can change color, and carry a gene for a light-sensitive protein called opsin that is activated in their skin, and that this gene is different from the opsin genes found in their eyes. Their skin is made of cells called chromatophores which contain pigment, with opsin proteins residing in a previously unknown cell type right underneath the chromatophore, which means that light striking the skin must pass through the pigment-filled chromatophores first before it reaches the light-sensitive layer, suggesting that their skin acts like internal Polaroid film, capturing changes in the light, so that they can "literally take a photo of their own skin from the inside".

via Duke University: Lorian Schweikert, Dynamic light filtering over dermal opsin as a sensory feedback system in fish color change, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40166-4.


Scientists develop finger sweat test to detect antipsychotic drugs in patients
Aug 2023, phys.org

"Finger Sweat Test" - Scientists have now discovered a way to test the levels of common antipsychotic drugs (clozapine, quetiapine, or olanzapine) in the sweat from patients' fingerprints (and because blood tests are invasive and uncomfortable).

via University of Surrey: Noninvasive drug adherence monitoring of antipsychotic patients via finger sweat testing, Frontiers in Chemistry (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fchem.2023.1245089


Researchers prep fentanyl, heroin vaccines for human trials
Aug 2023, phys.org

"Heroin Vaccine" - Just the words heroin vaccine.

via University of Montana: Bethany Crouse et al, A TLR7/8 agonist increases efficacy of anti-fentanyl vaccines in rodent and porcine models, npj Vaccines (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41541-023-00697-9


Crack vaccine research on rats could help babies of mothers who use cocaine—and reduce addiction
Oct 2023, phys.org

"Crack Vaccine" - Also. I have a feeling it doesn't end here. 

via Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil: Rachel J. Stephenson et al, Anti-cocaine Vaccine Development: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Going?, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.3c00366



Team simulates collective movement of worm blobs for future swarm robotic systems
Sep 2023, phys.org

"Swarm Ball", "Worm Ball", or "Swarm Robot Worm Ball" - systems of many individual components that must work collectively, using soft-bodied agents

(click on the article above for some high octane nightmare fuel)

via Tohoku University and Hiroshima University: Taishi Mikami et al, Elongating, entwining, and dragging: mechanism for adaptive locomotion of tubificine worm blobs in a confined environment, Frontiers in Neurorobotics (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fnbot.2023.1207374


Vulnerability to different COVID-19 mutations depends on previous infections and vaccination, study suggests
Oct 2023, phys.org

"Antigenic Cartography" - compares the similarity of different variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to measure how well human antibodies formed in response to infection with one virus respond to infection with a variant of that virus (and because they found that a person's immune response to SARS-CoV-2 depends on the variant they were previously exposed to)

via University of Cambridge's Center for Pathogen Evolution in the Department of Zoology: Samuel H. Wilks et al, Mapping SARS-CoV-2 antigenic relationships and serological responses, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adj0070.



Next-generation printing: Precise and direct, using optical vortices
Oct 2023, phys.org

An "Optical Vortex Laser" - "Using a special laser beam known as an optical vortex, we have achieved stable printing of high-viscosity liquids that allows for the fabrication of microdroplet laser arrays and the micropatterning of conductive nanoinks, as well as bioinks for cell scaffolds, leading to the establishment of next-generation printed photonic or electronic devices."

via Osaka Metropolitan University:  Ken-ichi Yuyama et al, Fabrication of an Array of Hemispherical Microlasers Using Optical Vortex Laser-Induced Forward Transfer, ACS Photonics (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.3c01005


Photonic crystals bend light as though it were under the influence of gravity
Oct 2023, phys.org

"Pseudogravity" - replicating the effects of gravity

Also, they don't say moiré but they describe it: Kitamura and her colleagues modified photonic crystals by introducing lattice distortion; gradual deformation of the regular spacing of elements, which disrupted the grid-like pattern of protonic crystals. This manipulated the photonic band structure of the crystals, resulting in a curved beam trajectory in-medium—just like a light-ray passing by a massive celestial body such as a black hole.

via Tohoku University: Kanji Nanjyo et al, Deflection of electromagnetic waves by pseudogravity in distorted photonic crystals, Physical Review A (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.108.033522


Sabotage tool takes on AI image scrapers
Oct 2023, phys.org

"Data poisoning" - the tool named Nightshade manipulates image pixels that will alter the output during training but are not visible to the naked eye prior to processing. The tool is meant to "poison" graphics appropriated by AI companies to train image-generating models. "A moderate number of Nightshade attacks can destabilize general features in a text-to-image generative model, effectively disabling its ability to generate meaningful images," Zhao said. 

via University of Chicago: Shawn Shan et al, Prompt-Specific Poisoning Attacks on Text-to-Image Generative Models, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2310.13828

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