Technology

Here we bring you all the latest technological news both here on Earth and in space.

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Scientists Develop a Groundbreaking Chip That Operates at Brain-Like Speed

By Akaash Babar, Peking University – SciTechDaily

A memristor chip brought complex brain modeling into millisecond-scale operation while preserving detailed cortical structure.

Reconstructing the brain’s deeply folded surface in real time requires enormous numbers of calculations. Researchers in China have now developed a chip that performs this work in less than 10 milliseconds, a speed they say is comparable to the functioning pace of the human brain.

The research was led by Yuchao Yang of Peking University in collaboration with scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The findings were published in Science under the title “A sub-10-millisecond neural dynamical system based on phase-change memristors.”

Neural dynamical systems pair neural networks with mathematical equations that track how complex systems evolve over time. They are used in physical modeling, medical imaging, and…Read more here.

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Scientists Turn Plastic Waste Into Clean Hydrogen Fuel

By University of California Los Angeles – SciTechDaily

The advance could provide a scalable route to clean energy while making plastic recycling more effective.

A discarded bottle, shopping bag or car part can remain in the waste stream long after its useful life ends. Although plastic is everywhere in modern society, recycling it remains difficult because most systems require different types to be separated first, an expensive and labor-intensive step.

As a result, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled, while 79% goes to landfills and 12% is burned, releasing carbon dioxide.

Mixed plastics become clean hydrogen: Researchers co-led by the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and Ewha Womans University in South Korea have demonstrated a chemical process that converts a mixture of three widely used plastics into high-purity hydrogen fuel. The method operates at substantially lower temperatures than conventional gasification and stores the carbon as a solid mineral instead of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Read more here.

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Scientists Discover AI Models May Not Think Like the Brain After All

By Sandra McLean, York University – SciTechDaily

A reverse prediction test suggests that supposedly brainlike AI models may rely on visual strategies the primate brain does not use.

Artificial intelligence can sometimes predict how the brain responds when people recognize objects. But that resemblance may hide an important weakness: the internal workings of today’s vision models do not necessarily match the processes used by a primate brain.

Over the past decade, artificial neural networks (ANNs), computer models designed for visual tasks, have become some of the leading tools for explaining how the brain processes sight. York University researchers wanted to determine whether these systems truly operate like biological vision.

“Artificial intelligence systems are often described as ‘brain-like’ because they can predict activity in parts of the brain that help us recognize objects,” says York University Assistant…Read more here.

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The PocketMage is an E Ink digital assistant that’s absolutely obsessed with wizards

Lawrence Bonk / Engadget

It’s been a while since people regularly used personal digital assistants (PDAs). They were fairly ubiquitous throughout the 1990s and well into the 2000s, but then smartphones came along and put an end to that. However, some companies are still fighting the good PDA fight, including Talisman Design. It just revealed its upcoming PocketMage E Ink PDA and it looks pretty nifty.

Read More: https://www.engadget.com/2211733/pocketmage-e-ink-digital-assistant-that-absolutely-obsessed-with-wizards/

As previously stated, this is an E Ink device, so it’ll be easy on the old eyeballs. Otherwise, it features an old-school clamshell case and a tactile QWERTY keyboard. It also has two screens, which are used in a fairly novel way. There’s a 3.1-inch 320 x 240 E Ink panel for reading and writing, but there’s also a much thinner OLED strip above the keyboard. This offers a fast-refresh rate for menus.

The most unique thing here, however, is the aesthetic. It’s called the PocketMage for a reason. This thing is obsessed with wizards. The proprietary operating system is all…Read more, and see video here.

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