The Official Science Thread

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

Have they teleported an entire atom? Quantum superposition and teleportation are two different things. Either way, we're going to need some serious computing power to store the location of every atom in the human body, all 6.7e1027 of them.

I think he was talking about quantum entanglement. The atom itself hasn't been teleported i don't think, but information from the atom has been transferred to another. Like the article i posted above. Quantum computers, beaming internet to the moon or mars with no latency, etc... lol

Proof that real life is as cool looking as the movies.


Also this thing,

Originally Posted by k2pilot

Also this thing,

If you can press the bubbles like normal buttons, then I'm sold.

My money, take it.

Originally Posted by GRIFFIN

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v232/cookie2000ad/178918_10151126387859027_1365538705_n.jpg[IMG]

Always loved that one.



Just came across this
http://f uckyeahmolecularbiology.tumblr.com/

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI...=150805165470+

Where do I sign? Imagine a brain boosting computer powered by sugar
http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/g..******-0612.html

New energy source for future medical implants: sugar
MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose. This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again.

The fuel cell, described in the June 12 edition of the journal PLoS ONE, strips electrons from glucose molecules to create a small electric current. The researchers, led by Rahul Sarpeshkar, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, fabricated the fuel cell on a silicon chip, allowing it to be integrated with other circuits that would be needed for a brain implant.

The idea of a glucose fuel cell is not new: In the 1970s, scientists showed they could power a pacemaker with a glucose fuel cell, but the idea was abandoned in favor of lithium-ion batteries, which could provide significantly more power per unit area than glucose fuel cells. These glucose fuel cells also utilized enzymes that proved to be impractical for long-term implantation in the body, since they eventually ceased to function efficiently.

The new twist to the MIT fuel cell described in PLoS ONE is that it is fabricated from silicon, using the same technology used to make semiconductor electronic chips. The fuel cell has no biological components: It consists of a platinum catalyst that strips electrons from glucose, mimicking the activity of cellular enzymes that break down glucose to generate ATP, the cell's energy currency. (Platinum has a proven record of long-term biocompatibility within the body.) So far, the fuel cell can generate up to hundreds of microwatts - enough to power an ultra-low-power and clinically useful neural implant.

"It will be a few more years into the future before you see people with spinal-cord injuries receive such implantable systems in the context of standard medical care, but those are the sorts of devices you could envision powering from a glucose-based fuel cell," says Benjamin Rapoport, a former graduate student in the Sarpeshkar lab and the first author on the new MIT study.

Rapoport calculated that in theory, the glucose fuel cell could get all the sugar it needs from the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that bathes the brain and protects it from banging into the skull. There are very few cells in the CSF, so it's highly unlikely that an implant located there would provoke an immune response. There is also significant glucose in the CSF, which does not generally get used by the body. Since only a small fraction of the available power is utilized by the glucose fuel cell, the impact on the brain's function would likely be small.

Karim Oweiss, an associate professor of electrical engineering, computer science and neuroscience at Michigan State University, says the work is a good step toward developing implantable medical devices that don't require external power sources.

"It's a proof of concept that they can generate enough power to meet the requirements," says Oweiss, adding that the next step will be to demonstrate that it can work in a living animal.

A team of researchers at Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital and other institutions recently demonstrated that paralyzed patients could use a brain-machine interface to move a robotic arm; those implants have to be plugged into a wall outlet.

Mimicking biology with microelectronics

Sarpeshkar's group is a leader in the field of ultra-low-power electronics, having pioneered such designs for cochlear implants and brain implants. "The glucose fuel cell, when combined with such ultra-low-power electronics, can enable brain implants or other implants to be completely self-powered," says Sarpeshkar, author of the book "Ultra Low Power Bioelectronics." This book discusses how the combination of ultra-low-power and energy-harvesting design can enable self-powered devices for medical, bio-inspired and portable applications.

Sarpeshkar's group has worked on all aspects of implantable brain-machine interfaces and neural prosthetics, including recording from nerves, stimulating nerves, decoding nerve signals and communicating wirelessly with implants. One such neural prosthetic is designed to record electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in the brain's motor cortex, which is responsible for controlling movement. That data is amplified and converted into a digital signal so that computers - or in the Sarpeshkar team's work, brain-implanted microchips - can analyze it and determine which patterns of brain activity produce movement.

The fabrication of the glucose fuel cell was done in collaboration with Jakub Kedzierski at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. "This collaboration with Lincoln Lab helped make a long-term goal of mine - to create glucose-powered bioelectronics - a reality," Sarpeshkar says. Although he has just begun working on bringing ultra-low-power and medical technology to market, he cautions that glucose-powered implantable medical devices are still many years away.

International team uncovers new genes that shape brain size, intelligence
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla...ew-231989.aspx

Originally Posted by 13//

Someone needs to get that guy some Ritalin.

Originally Posted by 13//

God I hate that guy. All of his videos are a bunch of quick cuts and buzzwords; he never actually explains anything. I appreciate what he's trying to do but hate the way he does it.

Using light to control the brain.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...-a-switch.html

This is just plain ridiculous

Dr Boyden found that it was possible to use genetically engineered viruses to introduce these light sensitive algae molecules into mammalian brain cells, or neurons as they are also called.

The virus inserts a gene from the algae into the animal cells - giving them the instruction manual they need to produce the light sensitive molecules themselves - and within days the molecules begin to appear on the surface of the neurons.

When light hits these altered brain cells, they turn on or off, depending on the gene that has been inserted.

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Cassini just sent this picture back a few days ago. It was 1.6million miles away from Saturn when it took the picture, that's ~6.7x the distance from the earth to the moon and it the rings still take up more than the entire frame.

^ The Planets are too big to fit my monitor, can you make them smaller?

Such a bummer that we'll never get to see them, except as an artists rendering.

More talk of the Higgs boson:

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...tory?track=rss

Sent from my ADR6400L using Bimmer App

Originally Posted by Rif Raf

^ The Planets are too big to fit my monitor, can you make them smaller?

Such a bummer that we'll never get to see them, except as an artists rendering.

You call that artistic? Looks done by a 6 year old.
That's the biggest I've seen so far.
What if one (or all) of those dots aren't to scale?