A Cure to Long-Term Memory Loss?

Theodor Berger

One of the new technological developments of 2013 has been the idea of memory implants.  Theodor Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist, wants to create a way to restore severe memory loss.  Severe memory loss can occur form Alzheimer’s, strokes, or injuries to the brain.  After 24 years of research he developed silicon chips to repeat the signals neurons give off.  By implanting these chips in the brain, he believes that him and his team may be able to restore the ability to remember.

To Mr. Berger, memories are electrical pulses that are generated by a number of neurons. He primarily focuses on the hippocampus part of the brain and tries to create a chip to serve as the hippocampus.  He tried his theory on live rats.  He first trained these rats to push one of two levers to receive a treat.  While doing this, he recorded the pulses from their hippocampus.  He and his team then captured a code (from the pulses) they thought was the memory for receiving the treat.  The rats where then given a drug to interfere with their long-term memory.  In turn, the rats forgot which lever resulted in a treat. Once his team pulsed the code into the rat’s brain they were able to pick the correct lever again.

After this successful test, an experiment was done on monkeys in a similar fashion.  This time the task was to recognize an image.   Once the monkeys were implanted with the right code their performance improved on identifying the image.  Within the next two years, Mr. Berger and his team want to conduct studies by actually implanting memory prosthesis (an artificial part) in animals.  They hope their chips can form long-term memories in a number of settings.  One obstacle that stands in his way is if the pulse codes are not generalizable.  In this case, his chips would only be limited to producing memories for a few situations.

 

Besides this obstacle, Mr. Berger and his team are planning human studies.  He currently works at the University of Southern California. Clinicians there are testing the use of electrodes on the brain to see if they can detect and prevent seizures on patients with epilepsy.  If this project is successful, Mr. Berger and his team hope to work with them on looking at the memory codes within these patient’s brains.   With this new research, Mr. Berger hopes to one day help people who have suffered severe memory damage regain the ability to hold memories.

 By Jacob Ludwig

 

 

New Innovations: Low-level APIs for games, and GPUs with dedicated Audio

Advanced Micro Devices,  a leading innovator in CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) technology is set to unleash their next generation of graphics card sometime between this fall and this spring. Their new innovations besides the usual Direct X version refresh involves the introduction of a technology labeled AMD TrueAudio. With this generation of cards AMD is also releasing their own Graphics API namely, Mantle, to give programmers more control of their graphical applications.

AMDs new marketing model for these next generation graphics cards holds a  R followed by # to designate the card's class. R5, will be the entry level cards; R7 Gaming; lastly R9 to represent enthusiast level graphics cards. In the past each lower class would lack features, while each progressing class added additional features. This is still true, except for AMD TrueAudio, since each class will have cards that include TrueAudio and cards that do not have TrueAudio.

TrueAudio, is AMDs attempt at the first graphics card within recent years to include dedicated sound components at the hardware and software level. AMD TrueAudio will reduce the load from the Central Processing Unit, and allow the graphics card to process the audio, and even position it, improving overall performance.

AMD's other new innovation is Mantle, a low-level API. Before progressing, lets touch up on current Generation APIs. While Direct 3D and Open GL are already great APIs, they are optimized as mostly an at the upper-level. The idea behind mantle is that it is a low-level API, allowing programmer to have more control of their games and graphical programs as lower level is closer to the hardware level. 

Mantle also has potential in the game console market, as opposed to exclusively the computer market.
Both upcoming generation game consoles, such as the Playstation 4 and Xbox One are to include AMD graphics, and are also rumored to implement mantle in numerous titles to improve the overall performance in titles utilizing the new API.

Source:  AMD Unveals Next-Generation Radeon Graphics Cards, On-GPU Audio Processing, Proprietary Mantle API.
TL

Face Book removed the setting that keeps you unsearchable by name

Facebook has been very important part of our life. Popularity of this social network is increasing. More people around the world are using Facebook than any other social network.  It is one of the best social networks to communicate and socialize with families and friends.  Currently, privacy concern with this social network is increasing.

Last Thursday, Facebook announced that it is removing a private setting that allows users to hide their profile information from strangers. This setting is used by the users to decide whether they want other people to search them by name or not.  Now, Facebook eliminate this setting. Anyone can search you even if you don’t want to be found. The only option you have right now is to block the person. Otherwise any one can search you by typing your name into the search bar.

From now on, all users will be searchable on Facebook. No hiding any more. Here are some of the things you should do to protect yourself.

Revisit your private setting

Use the View As feature to see what information is visible to the public, your friends and families.

To find the View as feature, go to your profile and click the gear icon at the bottom of your cover photo. Click the “View us” then at the top of your profile, click “View as a Specific Person”.  In the searching bar, type the names of friends to view your profile as they see it.

If you find information you want to remove, visit your Activity Log. Use the timeline slider on the right and the menu on the left to find the post you want to edit, then click the pencil icon or the privacy setting drop-down list to make changes.

To hide past post, click on private setting then under the first option – “Who can see my stuff”, click “limit past posts” and enable the option.

My final advice is that don’t always rely only on Facebook private setting. I know Facebook has a very good private setting, but they are changing their private setting every time.  The reason I am saying this is that I see many people putting their personal information like address, birthday, and phone on Facebook.  I don’t think it is smart and safe to put this information on Facebook.  Don’t expect Facebook to protect your privacy. Do it by yourself. Don’t put sensitive information online.

Source InformationWeek

AW

String App

Strings Lab Limited has created a really neat app called String.  The String app uses augmented reality to make a picture come 3D and interactive.  According to Marshable.com augmented reality is “a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.”  This app is currently designed for the iPhone and iPad, and is free of charge.  Despite what the attached video says, I do not believe the app is available for android devices yet.  The app only works with pictures designed from String Labs Limited.  To get the target pictures you must go at www.poweredbystring.com and print them for free.

Augmented reality could potentially be the new advertising of the future.   Companies could utilize this to display their products in a 3D interactive image.  It would even allow customization of products, like picking shoe color, which is featured in the video.  It could potentially be everywhere, from printed catalogs to websites, and could provide methods to purchase the product (suck as a link to the website). 

Augmented reality, and apps like String, could potentially change the view of the world.  Apps like String could be connected with hi-tech glasses where images could show up everywhere in a persons life.  They could feature audio capabilities or even interact with user commands.  One could even take augmented reality to an even further level and combine it with daily tasks.  If it was combined with Google Earth, one could potentially have a real 3D interactive guide that would show its users where to go. 

The video attached features the String app.  It shows examples of how the app works.  It first shows Scrawl which lets the user draw in 3D.  The second augmented reality picture shown is Sneaker.ID.  Sneaker.ID allows users to customize the color scheme of a shoe.  The third realty picture shown is Proto.  Proto is a green, three eyed monster.  Proto has the ability to go where the user tells him.  The last picture the video shows is Dragon.  Dragon lives beyond the wall of the painting and breaks though allowing one to see into his homeland.  These are the four augmented reality pictures that String Labs Limited has so far created.   Check out the video and feel free to download the String app, because augmented realty may just be the next big thing to hit the market.

 

Source: www.poweredbystring.com
Posted by: Jacob Ludwig