Transumanismul, viitoarea etapa a civilizatiei umane

For decades, neuroscientists have been trying to design computer networks that can mimic visual skills such as recognizing objects, which the human brain does very accurately and quickly. Until now, no computer model has been able to match the primate brain at visual object recognition during a brief glance. Now neuroscientists have found that one of the latest generation of 'deep neural networks' matches the primate brain.

In one aspect of vision, computers catch up to primate brain

Woaaa... catamai smecheria. Ce sa zica si ei sa isi justifice locurile de munca ? Ca altfel ar fi dati afara daca nu baga anunturi dastea pompoase.

Pala used optogenetics to stimulate single neurons of anesthetized mice and see if this approach could be used to record synaptic transmissions. The neurons she targeted were located in a part of the mouse's brain called the barrel cortex, which processes sensory information from the mouse's whiskers.
When Pala shone blue light on the neurons that contained the light-sensitive protein, the neurons activated and fired signals. At the same time, she measured electrical signals in neighboring neurons using microelectrodes that can record small voltage changes across a neuron's membrane.
Using these approaches, the researchers looked at how the light-sensitive neurons connected to some of their neighbors: small, connector neurons called "interneurons". In the brain, interneurons are usually inhibitory: when they receive a signal, they make the next neuron down the line less likely to continue the transmission.
The researchers recorded and analyzed synaptic transmissions from light-sensitive neurons to interneurons. In addition, they used an advanced imaging technique (two-photon microscopy) that allowed them to look deep into the brain of the live mouse and identify the type of each interneuron they were studying. The data showed that the neuronal transmissions from the light-sensitive neurons differed depending on the type of interneuron on the receiving end.

At the British Friends of Bar-Ilan University's event in Otto Uomo October 2014 Professor Ido Bachelet announced the beginning of the human treatment with nanomedicine. He indicates DNA nanobots can currently identify cells in humans with 12 different types of cancer tumors.
A human patient with late stage leukemia will be given DNA nanobot treatment. Without the DNA nanobot treatment the patient would be expected to die in the summer of 2015. Based upon animal trials they expect to remove the cancer within one month.
Within 1 or 2 years they hope to have spinal cord repair working in animals and then shortly thereafter in humans. This is working in tissue cultures.

UAlberta researchers solve heads-up limit Texas hold ‘em poker
The possible situations in this poker version are fewer than in checkers—which U of A computing science researchers solved in 2007, led by now dean of science Jonathan Schaeffer—but the imperfect-information nature of heads-up limit hold ‘em makes it a far more challenging game for computers to play or solve.
Cepheus, created by Bowling, PhD students Neil Burch and Michael Johanson and Finnish software developer Oskari Tammelin, is the first computer program to play an essentially perfect game of poker. Cepheus accomplished this goal with no human expert help, only being given the rules of the game.
“It was trained against itself, playing the equivalent of more than a billion billion hands of poker,” says Bowling. “With each hand it improved its play, refining itself closer and closer to the perfect solution. The program was trained for two months using more than 4,000 CPUs each considering over six billion hands every second. This is more poker than has been played by the entire human race."
Cepheus marks a milestone for artificial intelligence and game theory. Though many perfect-information games (in which all players are aware of everything that has occurred in the game before they make a decision) have been solved, no nontrivial imperfect-information game played competitively by humans has previously been solved. And although perfect information may be a common property of parlour games, it is far less common in real-world decision-making situations.
“The breakthroughs behind this result are general algorithmic advances that make game-theoretic reasoning in large-scale models of any sort more tractable,” says Bowling.
Fun and games aside, Bowling notes that game theory has always been envisioned to have serious implications, including a surge in game-theoretic applications involving security, such as systems for airport checkpoints, air marshall scheduling and coast guard patrolling.
“With real-life decision-making settings almost always involving uncertainty and missing information, algorithmic advances—such as those needed to solve poker—are needed to drive future applications.”

Ido Bachelet announces 2015 human trial of DNA nanobots to fight cancer and soon to repair spinal cords

Pentru cine are bani. Iti recomand sa vizionezi filmul Soilent Green. Asa va fi viitorul.

Princeton University researchers have built a rice grain-sized laser powered by single electrons tunneling through artificial atoms known as quantum dots. The tiny microwave laser, or "maser," is a demonstration of the fundamental interactions between light and moving electrons.
The researchers built the device — which uses about one-billionth the electric current needed to power a hair dryer — while exploring how to use quantum dots, which are bits of semiconductor material that act like single atoms, as components for quantum computers.

A wireless transmitter could give paralyzed people a practical way to control TVs, computers, or wheelchairs with their thoughts.
After more than a decade of engineering work, researchers at Brown University and a Utah company, Blackrock Microsystems, have commercialized a wireless device that can be attached to a person’s skull and transmit via radio thought commands collected from a brain implant. Blackrock says it will seek clearance for the system from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, so that the mental remote control can be tested in volunteers, possibly as soon as this year.
The device was developed by a consortium, called BrainGate, which is based at Brown and was among the first to place implants in the brains of paralyzed people and show that electrical signals emitted by neurons inside the cortex could be recorded, then used to steer a wheelchair or direct a robotic arm.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego, however, recently made it a reality by successfully administering acid-powered, zinc-based, self-destructing micromotors inside living mice. The ultra-tiny 'bots measured in at 20 micrometers long, roughly a human hair's width, and are tough enough to survive the harsh gastrointestinal environment autonomously. What's more, they destroy themselves without leaving any traces of harmful chemicals behind and being self-propelled apparently was a factor in "greatly improved" tissue penetration and drug retention.

What HAPTIX is trying to do is make the operation of arms like this as transparent to the user as possible. At this point, the arms themselves are mechanically pretty good. What’s missing is the interface. Specifically, a two-way interface, where the user can leverage their brain and nervous system to control the arm intuitively, while receiving force and touch feedback from sensors on the arm along those same channels. The robot arm should behave like a biological arm, be controlled like a biological arm, and feel like a biological arm.

Medical researchers are breaking sound barriers for children born without a hearing nerve. Hearing loss manifests in various forms, most of which can be partially restored through hearing aids and cochlear implants. Those devices cannot help a small population of individuals who do not have a cochlear, or hearing, nerve -- these people are unable to perceive sound, no matter how loud, outside of feeling vibration. The ABI is considered revolutionary because it stimulates neurons directly at the human brainstem, bypassing the inner ear entirely.

  Research was carried out by a team from Michigan State University
    They used genetic algorithms to model a large population of robot brains
    These were asked to perform tasks, such as finding the exit to a maze
    Those that performed the task best had simulated 'offspring' and multiplied
    In so doing they could learn to perform tasks better and better
    It simulates Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection

Este suficient sa privim la ce isi imaginau oamenii numai acum cateva decenii in urma despre ce avea sa fie in anul 2000.

Suntem la ani lumina distanta numai de a intelege ce exact este constiinta, ce sa mai pomenesc de downloadarea ei intr-un cip. Copilarii, naivitati.