Points to anyone who recognized the Cher reference and, for those who don’t, (from the Believe [Cher song] Wikipedia entry), “Believe” is a song recorded by American singer Cher for her twenty-second album, Believe (1998), …“Believe” departed from Cher’s pop rock style of the time for an upbeat dance-pop style. It featured a pioneering use of the audio processing software Auto-Tune to create a deliberate vocal distortion, which became known as the “Cher effect”. The…

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The line between life and death may not be what we thought it was according to some research that was reported in April 2019. Ed Wong’s April 17, 2019 article (behind a paywall) for The Atlantic was my first inkling about the life-death questions raised by some research performed at Yale University, (Note: Links have been removed) The brain, supposedly, cannot long survive without blood. Within seconds, oxygen supplies deplete, electrical activity fades, and unconsciousness…

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This is a scattering of events, which I’m sure will be augmented as we properly start the month of October 2019. October 2, 2019 in Waterloo, Canada (Perimeter Institute) If you want to be close enough to press the sacred flesh (Sir Martin Rees), you’re out of luck. However, there are still options ranging from watching a live webcast from the comfort of your home to watching the lecture via closed circuit television with other…

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Scientists in Europe have just cured a plant disease Esca (fungi that destroy grapevines) for the first time ever. A May 22, 2019 news item on Nanowerk announces the research success, Plant diseases, though a normal part of nature, can have disastrous effects in agriculture. They reduce food for people and revenues in rural areas. In the worst cases they result in hunger and starvation, as many famines in history show. About 16% of all…

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There’s been more than one artificial intelligence (AI) story featured here on this blog but the ones featured in this posting are the first I’ve stumbled across that suggest the hype is even more exaggerated than even the most cynical might have thought. (BTW, the 2019 material is later as I have taken a chronological approach to this posting.) It seems a lot of companies touting their AI algorithms and capabilities are relying on human…

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Every once in a while I stumble across a hummingbird robot story (my August 12, 2011 posting and my August 1, 2014 posting). Here’s what the hummingbird robot looks like now (hint: there’s a significant reduction in size), Caption: Purdue University researchers are building robotic hummingbirds that learn from computer simulations how to fly like a real hummingbird does. The robot is encased in a decorative shell. Credit: Purdue University photo/Jared Pike I think this…

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In amidst all the hyperbole about CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), the gene editing technology, you will sometimes find a mild cautionary note. It seems that CRISPR is not as precise as you might think. Some months ago there was a story about research into detecting possible unanticipated (off target) effects from using CRISPR, from an April 19, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily, Since the CRISPR genome editing technology was invented in 2012,…

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Gold, at the nanoscale, has different properties than it has at the macroscale and research at the University of Cambridge has found a new way to exploit gold’s unique properties at the nanoscale according to a May 13, 2019 news item item on ScienceDaily, The smallest pixels yet created — a million times smaller than those in smartphones, made by trapping particles of light under tiny rocks of gold — could be used for new…

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At this point, it’s possible I’m wrong but I think this is the first ‘memristor’ type device (also called a neuromorphic chip) based on light rather than electronics that I’ve featured here on this blog. In other words, it’s not, technically speaking, a memristor but it does have the same properties so it is a neuromorphic chip. Caption: The optical microchips that the researchers are working on developing are about the size of a one-cent…

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A May 4, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily announces the latest advance made by Stanford University and Sandia National Laboratories in the field of neuromorphic (brainlike) computing, The brain’s capacity for simultaneously learning and memorizing large amounts of information while requiring little energy has inspired an entire field to pursue brain-like — or neuromorphic — computers. Researchers at Stanford University and Sandia National Laboratories previously developed one portion of such a computer: a device that…

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