A decade ago, the artificial-intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton transformed the field with a major breakthrough. Now he’s chasing the next big advance—with an “imaginary system” named GLOM, outlined in a recent paper titled, “How to represent part-whole hierarchies in a neural network.”
A new generation of miniature recording probes can track the same neurons inside tiny mouse brains over weeks—and even months.
The new tools build on the success of the original Neuropixels probes released in 2017 and currently used in more than 400 labs. Neuropixels 2.0 are much smaller—about a third the size of their predecessors. They’re designed to record the electrical activity from more individual neurons and have the unique ability to track this activity over extended time periods. That makes them especially useful for studying long-term phenomena like learning and memory in small animals such as mice, says Tim Harris, a senior fellow at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus who led the project. Harris and his colleagues describe the advance in a paper published online April 15 in the journal Science.
Neuropixels 2.0’s advances come from several key innovations, Harris says. Janelia scientists and engineers developed new ways to process the data. Strategic changes to the layout of the probes helped make them better suited to certain tasks. And engineers at imec, the non-profit nanoelectronics center that manufactures the probes, used imec’s proprietary technology to design, develop, and fabricate the probe.
Donna butts — executive director, generations united — focusing on the psycho-social aspects of healthy aging and wellness.
Donna Butts is the Executive Director of Generations United, an organization with a mission to improve the lives of children, youth, and older people through intergenerational collaboration, public policies, and programs for the enduring benefit of all, a position she has held since 1997. For more than 30 years, Ms. Butts has worked tirelessly to promote the well-being of children, youth and older adults through nonprofit organizations across the country and around the world. She began her career in her home state of Oregon as a youth worker with the YWCA, where she worked one-on-one with teens and saw the positive effects of intergenerational programs firsthand.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Z_jkWzgfSk
Future Breakthroughs in Technology and in the Search for Life: Take Aways from the last two days at the Breakthrough Discuss Meeting.
Takeaways from this week’s Breakthrough Discuss meeting.
Shorthand, the Australian startup behind a no-code platform that allows publishers and brands to create multimedia stories, has raised $10 million Australian (just under $8 million U.S.) from Fortitude Investment Partners.
CEO Ricky Robinson told me via email that this is Shorthand’s first institutional round of funding, and that the company has been profitable for the past two years.
“We’ve been lucky enough to grow to where we are today through an entirely inbound, organic model that leverages the beautiful content that our customers create in Shorthand to generate leads,” Robinson wrote. “But we’ve been testing other channels with some success and the time is right to ramp up those other marketing initiatives. That’s where we’ll be spending this funding, while also investing heavily in our product to keep Shorthand at the cutting edge of storytelling innovation for the web.”
The New York Times Apr 09, 2021 17:29:04 IST
Evidence is mounting that a tiny subatomic particle seems to be disobeying the known laws of physics, scientists announced Wednesday, a finding that would open a vast and tantalizing hole in our understanding of the universe. The result, physicists say, suggests that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science.
“This is our Mars rover landing moment,” said Chris Polly, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, who has been working toward this finding for most of his career.
Physicists have seen signs that a mystery force is interacting with other particles in a manner never witnessed before. It may explain some of the deepest physics puzzles.
China has a good chance of becoming the dominant space power in the 21st century, and it’s not just looking to copy NASA on the way to the top. Instead, it’s paying close attention to innovative US companies like SpaceX, writes Eric Berger.
“If you don’t do both, you’re not going to get very far,” he says. He wants to bring “carbon drawdown” technologies into the conversation with genetically modified trees.
Last year, DeLisi organized a workshop with a team of heavy hitters — Sir Richard Roberts (biochemist, Nobel laureate, and staunch advocate for GMOs), Val Giddings (a geneticist at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), and researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory — to create solutions, like genetically modifying carbon-hungry trees.
And they are close.
Necessity truly can be the mother of invention. A new university president explains how the pandemic forced massive changes at his institution — and why smart use of technology was invaluable.
