Tuesday, March 29, 2022

I Am the Robot Now


AKA Human Skin Is a Conductible Material
Image credit: Peepo, iStock, 2021

The amount of research being done in the field of wearables and ambient energy harvesting is staggering.


A novel approach to wirelessly power wearable devices
Jun 2021, phys.org

It's like a microscope for energy -- all of the sudden, the "waste energy" from our appliances and devices, in electromagnetic form, is powering tiny ubiquitous smart particles all around us.

Their technology enables a single device, such as a mobile phone placed in the pocket, to wirelessly power other wearable devices on a user's body, using the human body as a medium for power transmission.

A user just needs to place the transmitter on a single power source, such as the smart watch on a user's wrist, while multiple receivers can be placed anywhere on the person's body. The system then harnesses energy from the source to power multiple wearables on the user's body via a process termed as body-coupled power transmission. In this way, the user will only need to charge one device, and the rest of the gadgets that are worn can simultaneously be powered up from that single source. The team's experiments showed that their system allows a single power source that is fully charged to power up to 10 wearable devices on the body, for a duration of over 10 hours.
As a complementary source of power, the NUS team also looked into harvesting energy from the environment. Their research found that typical office and home environments have parasitic electromagnetic (EM) waves that people are exposed to all the time, for instance, from a running laptop. The team's novel receiver scavenges the EM waves from the ambient environment, and through a process referred to as body-coupled powering, the human body is able to harvest this energy to power the wearable devices, regardless of their locations around the body.

via National University of Singapore: Jiamin Li et al, Body-coupled power transmission and energy harvesting, Nature Electronics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-021-00592-y


A new material made from carbon nanotubes can generate electricity by scavenging energy from its environment
Jun 2021, phys.org

Electrochemistry without wires. This is an organic solvent that generates a current via alcohol oxidation. The catch? The nanotubes are coated in "Teflon-like" material. Gonna have to fix that part (PFAS).

via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Albert Tianxiang Liu et al, Solvent-induced electrochemistry at an electrically asymmetric carbon Janus particle, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23038-7


Using starch and baking soda to harvest mechanical energy
Jun 2021, phys.org

via Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology: Sugato Hajra et al, A Green Metal–Organic Framework‐Cyclodextrin MOF: A Novel Multifunctional Material Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Highly Efficient Mechanical Energy Harvesting, Advanced Functional Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202101829


Skin in the game: Transformative approach uses the human body to recharge smartwatches
Jul 2021, phys.org

via University of Massachusetts Amherst: Noor Mohammed et al, ShaZam, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (2021). DOI: 10.1145/3463505


Conductive seams, when strategically placed in clothing, can accurately track body motion
Jul 2021, phys.org

via University of Bath: Olivia Ruston et al, More than it Seams: Garment Stitching in Wearable e-Textiles, Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (2021). DOI: 10.1145/3461778.3462103


First-ever transient pacemaker harmlessly dissolves in body
Jul 2021, phys.org

via Northwestern University: Fully implantable and bioresorbable cardiac pacemakers without leads or batteries, Nature Biotechnology (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-021-00948-x


Sweat-proof 'smart skin' takes reliable vitals, even during workouts and spicy meals
Jul 2021, phys.org

Writes itself now:

The patch is patterned with artificial sweat ducts, similar to pores in human skin, that the researchers etched through the material's ultrathin layers. The pores perforate the patch in a kirigami-like pattern, similar to that of the Japanese paper-cutting art. The design ensures that sweat can escape through the patch, preventing skin irritation and damage to embedded sensors.

via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: H. Yeon el al., "Long-term reliable physical health monitoring by sweat pore–inspired perforated electronic skins," Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg8459


Microfiber-based metafabric provides daytime radiative cooling
Jul 2021, phys.org

Sooner than we think, we will be wearing today's equivalent of a space suit in order to go outside, on Earth:

The final design added titanium dioxide powder to polymer fibers to make them reflective, and adding polylactic acid to allow the material to emit mid-infrared radiation. The researchers created a fabric using a weaving technique that allowed air to circulate. The researchers tested their material by using it to create a vest. One side of the vest was made of cotton, the other with the material they had developed. A volunteer wore the vest outside in the sun for an hour. Measurements of his skin temperature showed it to be almost 5 degrees Celsius cooler on the new material side. The researchers also note that in addition to reducing heat, clothes made of their material would be biodegradable.

via: Shaoning Zeng et al, Hierarchical-morphology metafabric for scalable passive daytime radiative cooling, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abi5484


New chemistry enables using existing technology to print stretchable, bendable circuits on artificial skin
Jul 2021, phys.org

In a new study, the group describes how they have printed stretchable-yet-durable integrated circuits on rubbery, skin-like materials, using the same equipment designed to make solid silicon chips — an accomplishment that could ease the transition to commercialization by switching foundries that today make rigid circuits to producing stretchable ones.

via Stanford University: Yu-Qing Zheng et al, Monolithic optical microlithography of high-density elastic circuits, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abh3551

Nanoscopic Schematic by Ella Maru Studio

New nanotech will enable a 'healthy' electric current production inside the human body
Jul 2021, phys.org

For example, a device made from this material may replace a battery that supplies energy to implants like pacemakers, though it should be replaced from time to time. Body movements—like heartbeats, jaw movements, bowel movements, or any other movement that occurs in the body on a regular basis—will charge the device with electricity, which will continuously activate the implant."

via Tel-Aviv University: Santu Bera et al, Molecular engineering of piezoelectricity in collagen-mimicking peptide assemblies, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22895-6


Detecting an unprecedented range of potentially harmful airborne compounds
Aug 2021, phys.org

Usually, if you want to sample for VOCs, you first have to know which VOC you're looking for. You think there's some diacetyl exposure? Then you dose your sampler with a chemical that latches onto diacetyl. But what if we don't know? You're in luck! This new approach uses nanopores of silica; they are so small that they use van der Waals forces, typically really weak forces, to capture any VOCs that float by. Then they can heat up the sensor and re-volatalize whatever got trapped there, and sniff it through a GCMS.

via American Chemical Society: Nanoporous materials for measuring environmental VOC exposures, ACS Fall 2021.


Indoor lighting creates power for rechargeable devices, sensors
Aug 2021, phys.org

Since there is usually plenty of indoor ambient light from different sources, a ceiling light in an office environment would be enough to charge any of the mini modules that were tested, making them all viable as power sources for indoor batteries and sensors.

via American Institute of Physics: https://horizons.aip.org/energystorage-conversion/


Revolutionary Self-Aware Materials Build the Foundation for Living Structures
Oct 2021, scitechdaily.com

A metamaterial system that acts as its own sensor, recording and relaying important information about the pressure and stresses on its structure, fusing advanced metamaterial and energy harvesting technologies at multiscale. With built-in triboelectric nanogenerator mechanism; a smart-stint that monitors bloodflow and restricts vessel size accordingly, or just a smart-bridge that can communicate areas of weakness by sensing pressure.

As I write this, it sounds to me like the bridge can be conscious, because it can feel. So in the distant future, we won't be able to just knock down a house, because it will have feelings. Design for Dissassembly then, maybe?

via University of Pittsburg's Intelligent Structural Monitoring and Response Testing (iSMaRT) Lab: “Multifunctional meta-tribomaterial nanogenerators for energy harvesting and active sensing” by Kaveh Barri, Pengcheng Jiao, Qianyun Zhang, Jun Chen, Zhong Lin Wang and Amir H. Alavi, 16 April 2021, Nano Energy. DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2021.106074


Engineers develop process that turns ordinary clothing into biosensors
Nov 2021, phys.org

Gold and silver nanocomposite-based biostable and biocompatible electronic textile for wearable electromyographic biosensors.

via University of Utah: Taehwan Lim et al, Gold and silver nanocomposite-based biostable and biocompatible electronic textile for wearable electromyographic biosensors, APL Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1063/5.0058617


Form fit: Device wraps around hot surfaces, turns wasted heat to electricity
Jan 2022, phys.org

via Pennsylvania State University: Wenjie Li et al, Conformal High-Power-Density Half-Heusler Thermoelectric Modules: A Pathway toward Practical Power Generators, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c16117


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Monday, March 28, 2022

Watch Words Come To Life


Turning an analysis of Asimov's Foundation into art
Oct 2021, phys.org

Just a great example of cross-disciplinary data art and network science, via Datapolis and the Central European University in Budapest: Milán Janosov, Flóra Borsi, Asimov's foundation—turning a data story into an NFT artwork. arXiv:2109.15079v1 [physics.soc-ph], arxiv.org/abs/2109.15079

See also this thing which I don't understand called an NFT platform: https://foundation.app/@milanjanosov/~/92747

Some interesting bits noted in the article:

  • We found that among the most mentioned keywords there were three different planets.
  • Different planets play different roles in the book. That's why we started to look at the emotional arcs of these planets.
  • We extracted a series of sentences about each planet, and we used a happiness scoring algorithm to create their emotional arc.
  • The arc of Trantor was going down, and that coincided with the fact that both Trantor and the galactic were also falling during the series; while on the other hand, Terminus, which is the heart of the Foundation, slowly rises.

Then they take an 8,000-word network graph and run it in the chronological order of the book, with the planets linking the words associated with them, but rising and falling throughout the arc of the narrative. So now it's a video. And they made their own soundtrack.

Post Script:
How does the brain interpret computer languages?
Mar 2021, Ars Technica

Interestingly, code-solving activated parts of the multiple-demand network that are not activated when solving math problems. So the brain doesn’t tackle it as language or logic -- it appears to be its own thing.

via MIT, Tufts: Comprehension of computer code relies primarily on domain-general executive brain regions. Anna A Ivanova et al. eLife, 2020. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58906 


Post Post Script:
In a neuroprosthetic first, ALS patient sends social media message via brain-computer interface
Jan 2022, phys.org

It's called the Stentrode Brain Computer Interface, developed by brain computer interface company Synchron.

The real news here is that it's blurred the line over what we call invasive neural implants, since it was snaked through his jugular vein. This allows us to get really good signals from your brain without having to drill a hole in your head. 

via Synchron Press Release, "First Tweet by Implanted BCI", Dec 2021



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Out To Lunch


Synthetic biology moves into the realm of the unnatural
Oct 2021, phys.org

Keeping up with the synthetic biobots.

"It's a completely new way of doing chemical synthesis. The idea of creating an organism [it's E. coli btw] that makes such an unnatural product [cyclopropanated chemicals in this case], that combines laboratory synthesis with synthetic biology within a living organism — it is just a futuristic way to make organic molecules from two separate fields of science in a way nobody's done before," said John Hartwig, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry and one of four senior authors of the study.

via University of California Berkeley: ing Huang et al, Unnatural biosynthesis by an engineered microorganism with heterologously expressed natural enzymes and an artificial metalloenzyme, Nature Chemistry (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00801-3

Designing microbe factories for sustainable chemicals
Nov 2021, phys.org

The guide for how synthbio takes over the world.

In this case, it's only for one thing, called itaconic acid, which is considered one of the "top value added chemicals from biomass" in a 2004 report by the Department of Energy.

They're using what's called the Design-Build-Test-Learn strategy, where they first use AI to assist in identifying genes that can be either removed or added from the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica. Once the genes of interest are identified, the yeast is modified, "designed" if you will. Then they run it and see what kinds of products it generates via its metabolism. Eventually there will be all kinds of chemicals, from toxic dyes for clothing, to toxic catalysts for rubberized flooring, to rare chemicals, to chemicals that destroy the planet in their creation process, that will be created instead by re-engineered bacteria.

Like, imagine if you wanted some adhesive to hang a sign on the door that said Out to Lunch, so you swallowed a capsule of some magic human engineering dust, and within a couple minutes, your spit is now sticky enough to tack a sign on your door. That's quite a stretch, but that's the idea. (Granted we are not as simple to re-engineer as a bacterium, but it's the analogy that counts.)

via Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Andrew D. McNaughton et al, Bayesian Inference for Integrating Yarrowia lipolytica Multiomics Datasets with Metabolic Modeling, ACS Synthetic Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.1c00267


Novel artificial genomic DNA can replicate and evolve outside the cell
Nov 2021, phys.org

Sorry I didn't get that, could you repeat?

To date, it has been impossible to create a reaction system in which the genes necessary for DNA replication are expressed while those genes simultaneously carry out their function.

They added the genes necessary for transcription and translation to the artificial genomic DNA, which I think means that once a yeast has been re-engineered (see above), it can then reproduce itself, instead of us re-engineering it over and over?

via Japan Science and Technology Agency: Hiroki Okauchi et al, Continuous Cell-Free Replication and Evolution of Artificial Genomic DNA in a Compartmentalized Gene Expression System, ACS Synthetic Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acssynbio.1c00430


Algorithms mimic the process of biological evolution to learn efficiently
Nov 2021, phys.org

And just another synth bio advance in synthetic biology.

They're using synaptic plasticity as a model for understanding biological information processing, i.e., computers that learn. But their model uses an algorithm based on the process of biological evolution, i.e., natural selection. It's called "evolving-to-learn" (E2L).

via European Human Brain Project, Institute of Physiology, University of Bern, the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Tokyo, and others: Jakob Jordan et al, Evolving interpretable plasticity for spiking networks, eLife (2021). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.66273


Scientists develop the 'evotype' to unlock power of evolution for better engineering biology
June 2021, phys.org

They're making sure that engineered biosystems aren't static, but evolve, like if you made a watch that kept changing itself to adapt to your lifestyle, "they design living populations that continue to mutate, grow and undergo natural selection." I think the keyword is "self-improving" biotechnologies

via University of Bristol: Simeon D. Castle et al, Towards an engineering theory of evolution, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23573-3

Image credit: It's just a close-up of an enterococcus

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Friday, March 25, 2022

Ubiquitous Intelligence


Solving the 'big problems' via algorithms enhanced by 2D materials
Jan 2022, phys.org

Imagining the future is hard; you almost never get it right. You just can't see what's not there.  But in this case, a glimpse reveals itself -- every "computer" will be designed for a specific algorithm. There won't be a "new" way of making a computer, or of making a one-size-fits-all computer that's faster or better. The very idea of a one-size-fits-all computer is what makes it hard for us to see the future. Before the electric guitar was invented, the acoustic guitar didn't exist, it was just called a guitar. (Like smartphones and dumbphones.)

Eventually, you won't have an advanced computer that can run different algorithms better, instead the computer and the algorithm will be one, and therefore there will be as many types of computers as there are algorithms. Like the Cambrian explosion, but different. 

The "combinatorial optimization problem" they're solving here is also referred to as the "traveling salesman problem", or the "design an optimal transit system based on the terrain of the region, distribution of the population, existing routes, etc.", or the "use a living slime mold computer to design an optimal transit system" problem. 

The reason it's so hard for our current algorithms to do the optimization problem is because computers as we know them today are still based on a design from the 1940's. The problem isn't so much because they're old, it's because we don't work with data the same way we used to. We have a lot more data than we used to, and integrating it all at the same time is hard for today's computers.

I like to think of it simply as a problem where your database has as many columns as it does rows. This is what happens when you try to categorize smells based on the names we call them. On one axis you have all the smellable molecules there are (veritably infinite), and on the other, you have all the attributes you can give to any one of the molecules (physical dimensions, descriptions, names, autobiographical physiodata that your body associates with the molecule, which is also veritably infinite). You would then have a database, a spreadsheet of infinite cells. It's hard to work with something that big. 

But we don't have to do things like that anymore. Instead, we can use slime mold, or we can design "new computers" that combine information storage and computing into the same thing. This sounds a lot like a neuromorphic computer, by the way.

via Pennsylvania State University: Amritanand Sebastian et al, An Annealing Accelerator for Ising Spin Systems Based on In‐Memory Complementary 2D FETs, Advanced Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202107076

Image credit: Flows of individuals across the Greater Boston area, Guangyu Du at Sante Fe Inst, 2021

Post Script:
And how they do it? A form of "in-memory computing" based on simulated annealing, where atoms reorganize themselves and then crystallize in the lowest energy state. Sounds a lot like 2-D metamaterials, BECs and quantum crystallography. Putting it all together. 

Notes:
Using a 'virtual slime mold' to design a subway network less prone to disruption
Feb 2022, phys.org

A model, no slime needed.

via University of Toronto: Raphael Kay et al, Stepwise slime mould growth as a template for urban design, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-05439-w

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Neuromimetics


Nobody uses the word neuromimetic, but that's what it is. 

Instead, we're calling these new computer chips neuromorphic, which you would think means that their design is shaped (morphed) like the brain. Except that's not what it means -- instead neuromorphic computer chips ----behave---- like the brain. I would call that mimetic. 

This post is a collection of news articles about the next generation in computing -- no, not GPUs, I know we're just getting familiar with those, but the next thing is already here. This next, next thing coming is a TPU (tensor processing unit), and it's got something to do with the memory being on the chip, so you don't need to go across the bus to an external memory. Sorry, not a computer scientist here, just trying to get the basic idea.

These new chips can create a new type of architecture that's really good at really large datasets, which we happen to have (digital content on track to equal half Earth's mass by 2245).

These chips act more like synapses, hence the term neuromorphic. I'll be drifting in and out of this topic specifically, since some of these are just regular old GPU-based neural networks, which as you would guess by their names, are a kind of neuromorphic hardware in themselves. Also, cerebral organoids. Less mimetic. They're made of actual brain tissue, but we can't talk about brain-like things without talking about those. 


New approach found for energy-efficient AI applications
Mar 2021, phys.org

Using not just spike activation and inhibition but the temporal pattern, that reduces the dimensions...

I get confused when someone talks about "artificial" neural network, because I thought the whole thing was an artificial brain to begin with. But alas --

"This low energy consumption is made possible by inter-neuronal communication by means of very simple electrical impulses, so-called spikes. The information is thereby encoded not only by the number of spikes, but also by their time-varying patterns. "You can think of it like Morse code. The pauses between the signals also transmit information," Maass explains.

via Graz University of Technology: C. Stoeckl and W. Maass. Optimized spiking neurons can classify images with high accuracy through temporal coding with two spikes. Nature Machine Intelligence. (2021) DOI: 10.1038/s42256-021-00311-4


'Edge of chaos' opens pathway to artificial intelligence discoveries
Jul 2021, phys.org

An artificial network of nanowires can be tuned to respond in a brain-like way when electrically stimulated. Keeping the network of nanowires in a brain-like state "at the edge of chaos", it performed tasks at an optimal level. Electrical signals put through this network automatically find the best route for transmitting information. And this architecture allows the network to 'remember' previous pathways through the system.

This, they say, suggests the underlying nature of neural intelligence is physical, and their discovery opens an exciting avenue for the development of artificial intelligence.

via University of Sydney and Japan's National Institute for Material Science: Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24260-z

Tiny brains grown in 3D-printed bioreactor
Apr 2021, phys.org

Exactly what it sounds like.

via American Institute of Physics, MIT and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras: "A low-cost 3D printed microfluidic bioreactor and imaging chamber for live-organoid imaging" Biomicrofluidics (2021). aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0041027


Team presents brain-inspired, highly scalable neuromorphic hardware
Aug 2021, phys.org

Good explanation in the writeup by KAIST :

Neuromorphic hardware has attracted a great deal of attention because of its artificial intelligence functions, but consuming ultra-low power of less than 20 watts by mimicking the human brain. To make neuromorphic hardware work, a neuron that generates a spike when integrating a certain signal, and a synapse remembering the connection between two neurons are necessary, just like the biological brain. However, since neurons and synapses constructed on digital or analog circuits occupy a large space, there is a limit in terms of hardware efficiency and costs. Since the human brain consists of about 1011 neurons and 1014 synapses, it is necessary to improve the hardware cost in order to apply it to mobile and IoT devices.

To solve the problem, the research team mimicked the behavior of biological neurons and synapses with a single transistor, and co-integrated them onto an 8-inch wafer. The manufactured neuromorphic transistors have the same structure as the transistors for memory and logic that are currently mass-produced. In addition, the neuromorphic transistors proved for the first time that they can be implemented with a "Janus structure' that functions as both neuron and synapse, just like coins have heads and tails.

via The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology: Joon-Kyu Han et al, Cointegration of single-transistor neurons and synapses by nanoscale CMOS fabrication for highly scalable neuromorphic hardware, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg8836


Reappraisal of Moore's law through chip density
Aug 2021, phys.org

"DRAM chips as model organisms for the study of technological evolution."

Kevin Kelly has entered the chat. When I hear people talking about computer chips as evolving organisms, I think about What Technology Wants, the 2010 book by Kevin Kelly, where he says that technology is a lifeform that evolves, and also one which manipulates us for its own evolution. 

But the real reason we're posting this article:

The next growth spurt in transistor miniaturization and computing capability is now overdue, they say.

They're saying that Moore's Law is about to jump again, and the DRAM chips, which aren't too much different from neuromorphic architectures, are about to help us make that jump. 
[Moore's Law]

"The end of silicon chip era is in view"

via Rockefeller University:  Moore's Law Revisited through Intel Chip Density. David Burg and Jessee H Ausubel. PLOS ONE (2021). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256245


Artificial brain networks simulated with new quantum materials
Sep 2021, phys.org

By combining new supercomputing materials with specialized oxides, the researchers successfully demonstrated the backbone of networks of circuits and devices that mirror the connectivity of neurons and synapses in biologically based neural networks.

"Neuromorphic computing is inspired by the emergent processes of the millions of neurons, axons and dendrites that are connected all over our body in an extremely complex nervous system." -UC president and physicist Robert Dynes

The researchers' innovation was based on joining two types of quantum substances—superconducting materials based on copper oxide and metal insulator transition materials that are based on nickel oxide. They created basic "loop devices" that could be precisely controlled at the nano-scale with helium and hydrogen, reflecting the way neurons and synapses are connected. Adding more of these devices that link and exchange information with each other, the simulations showed that eventually they would allow the creation of an array of networked devices that display emergent properties like an animal's brain.

via University of California San Diego and Purdue University: Uday S. Goteti et al, Low-temperature emergent neuromorphic networks with correlated oxide devices, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2103934118


GPUs open the potential to forecast urban weather for drones and air taxis
Oct 2022, phys.org

This paper is interesting; it talks about microscale airflow patterns in cities with high buildings. But I thought it would be a good idea to just repaste this explanation right here, for people who haven't noticed --

CPUs excel at performing multiple tasks, including control, logic, and device-management operations, but their ability to perform fast arithmetic calculations is limited. GPUs are the opposite. Originally designed to render 3D video games, GPUs are capable of fewer tasks than CPUs, but they are specially designed to perform mathematical calculations very rapidly.

And just wait, because TPUs are right on their heels.

via National Center for Atmospheric Research: Domingo Muñoz‐Esparza et al, Efficient Graphics Processing Unit Modeling of Street‐Scale Weather Effects in Support of Aerial Operations in the Urban Environment, AGU Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021AV000432


Intel launches its next-generation neuromorphic processor—so, what’s that again?
Oct 2021, Ars Technica

Unlike a normal processor, there's no external RAM. Instead, each neuron has a small cache of memory dedicated to its use. This includes the weights it assigns to the inputs from different neurons, a cache of recent activity, and a list of all the other neurons that spikes are sent to.

Also, re Intel's new chip"

Other changes are very specific to spiking neural networks. The original processor's spikes, as mentioned above, only carried a single bit of information. In Loihi 2, a spike is an integer, allowing it to carry far more information and to influence how the recipient neuron sends spikes. (This is a case where Loihi 2 might be somewhat less like the neurons it's mimicking in order to perform calculations better.)

via Intel's "Loihi 2: A New Generation of Neuromorphic Computing", 2021

Post Script:
Hiddenite: A new AI processor for reduced computational power consumption based on a cutting-edge neural network theory
Feb 2022, phys.org

Hiddenite: hidden neural network inference tensor engine.

It's an "accelerator chip" that "does neural networks better" by being better at pruned neural networks, which are also called "hidden neural networks", and by reducing memory needs, which is a big deal in the age of big data. 

And how often do we get to see RNGs in practical application in the news -- "The Hiddenite architecture (Fig. 2) offers three-fold benefits to reduce external memory access and achieve high energy efficiency. The first is that it offers the on-chip weight generation for re-generating weights by using a random number generator. This eliminates the need to access the external memory and store the weights."

They're also four-dimensional (4D) parallel processors. 

I don't see the words neuromorphic or TPU in here, but I imagine it's not too distantly related.

via Tokyo Institute of Technology: Hiddenite: 4K-PE Hidden Network Inference 4D-Tensor Engine Exploiting On-Chip Model Construction Achieving 34.8-to-16.0TOPS/W for CIFAR-100 and ImageNet, 15.4, ML Processors LIVE Q&A with demonstration, February 23 9:00AM PST, International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2022 (ISSCC 2022).

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Soul Controller

When you spend as much time as I do scrolling hundreds of science press, stuff like this is very exciting - these two images were the thumbnails for two different articles one right after the other. Mostly unrelated to the article below.

Researcher seeks to understand the regret behind social media use
Nov 2021, phys.org

Twenty-nine Android users ages 19–27 installed Finesse and let the app collect data on their phone usage for a week. After certain sessions on a social media app, Finesse would ask the users to select which features they regretted using.

The data showed that the users regretted at least some part of their social media use in 60% of sessions and regretted all their use in nearly 40% of sessions.

Features that offered recommended posts or content were most often regretted. 

In their research, people felt regret when the reward from scrolling recommended posts on social media did not match up to the alternative reward from focusing more on an assignment or lecture, spending more time with friends, or getting more sleep.

The apps are designed to suck people in and keep them scrolling. Frequently, people have to bypass addictive features to get to the content they initially sought.

The robots will control us.

via Carnegie Mellon University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the University of Maryland: Hyunsung Cho et al, Reflect, not Regret: Understanding Regretful Smartphone Use with App Feature-Level Analysis, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (2021). DOI: 10.1145/3479600

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Thursday, March 24, 2022

Collapsing the Quantum Paradigm


Does relativity lie at the source of quantum exoticism?
Apr 2020, phys.org

No way; this paper, from a theoretical physicist at University of Warsaw (and who Wired is calling a rebel physicist), makes a claim that I'm finding hard to believe. It's not the claim that's hard to digest, it's the fact that it's so simple. 

They're telling us that if we just accept the fact that Einstein is wrong, and that there are things in the universe that travel faster than the speed of light, then quantum mechanics and relativistic physics can all get along just fine. 

"Einstein considered the second postulate (constant velocity of light) to be crucial. In reality, what is crucial is the principle of relativity."

Things move at three speeds -- at subluminal velocities, at the velocity of light, and at superluminal velocities.

Today, we say that the third option is magical thinking; not a part of reality. 

But listen -- 

If in one system at point A there is generation of a superluminal particle, even completely predictable, emitted towards point B, where there is simply no information about the reasons for the emission, then from the point of view of the observer in the second system events run from point B to point A, so they start from a completely unpredictable event. 

"We noticed, incidentally, the possibility of an interesting interpretation of the role of individual dimensions. In the system that looks superluminal to the observer some space-time dimensions seem to change their physical roles. Only one dimension of superluminal light has a spatial character —- the one along which the particle moves. The other three dimensions appear to be time dimensions," says Dr. Dragan.

A characteristic feature of spatial dimensions is that a particle can move in any direction or remain at rest, while in a time dimension it always propagates in one direction (what we call aging in everyday language). So, three time dimensions of the superluminal system with one spatial dimension (1+3) would thus mean that particles inevitably age in three times simultaneously. The ageing process of a particle in a superluminal system (1+3), observed from a subluminal system (3+1), would look as if the particle was moving like a spherical wave, leading to the famous Huygens principle (every point on a wavefront can be treated itself as a source of a new spherical wave) and corpuscular-wave dualism.

"All the strangeness that appears when considering solutions relating to a system that looks superluminal turns out to be no stranger than what commonly accepted and experimentally verified quantum theory has long been saying. On the contrary, taking into account a superluminal system, it is possible -— at least theoretically —- to derive some of the postulates of quantum mechanics from the special theory of relativity, which were usually accepted as not resulting from other, more fundamental reasons," Dr. Dragan concludes.

via Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Warsaw; Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore; Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford: Andrzej Dragan and Artur Ekert, Quantum principle of relativity, New Journal of Physics (2020). DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/ab76f7

Just get over it -- things move faster than light, and you'll never be able to see them (not until you trade-in your meatbag body-capsule for an unencumbered and fully liberated constellation of semi-sentient, self-swarming photon clouds).


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