Neuroprosthetic devices translate brain activity into speech
A collaboration between the University of San Francisco resulted in staggering progress in the field of neuroprosthetics with a device (nicknamed “Neural decoder”) which is capable of reconstructing brain activity into speeches which are fairly understandable by humans. The brain produces electric signals which tell the mouth and other organs what to say the “Neural decoder” can read those signals and produce those words, it’s as simple as just thinking h=what you want to say and the device will say it for you. Researchers hope with further enhancements and testing the device will eventually be used to give paralyzed and patients with vocal tract issue another chance to speak orally. The ability of the “Neural decoder” to translate a person’s thoughts directly to a computer opens up an entirely new branch on how computers interact and communicate with our brains.
“Quantum trapping” now possible based on the Casimir effect
The Casimir effect is the mutual attraction of two closely spaced, parallel and uncharged conducting planes, essentially when two objects are placed close enough to each other they will produce an attractive force without any energy input(no external forces), this resulted in several technical problems in Nanomechanics as the particles would attract to surrounding particles causing a state of stiction, where the friction prevents the object to be set in motion. Due to the recent discovery of “Quantum trapping” researchers discovered that if the objects are placed at a specific distance with one object being coated with a special liquid it can produce attractive and repulsive forces without the use of external energy (no external forces) thus speaking if a tiny object such as a tiny gold paper flake could levitate and stay in one place. This helps reduce stiction and can cause staggering growth in the field of Nanomechanics.
Google’s Quantum computer
Before we understand what a quantum computer is and how will it aid us, let us understand what a supercomputer is. A supercomputer is a computer that can process high levels of data in a matter of seconds. The data is stored in binary values of either ‘1’ or ‘0’. A quantum computer uses Superposition(the ability for the quantum matter to be in different states at the same time) which allows each bit to be either a ‘1’ or ‘0’ and not a fixed value. This allows a quantum computer to process data at an unprecedented speed. Two bits can hold one of four values at any time: “00,” “10.” “01,” and “11.” At 2 billion positions per second, a standard 64-bit computer would take around 400 years to cycle through all its possible values. While a quantum computer with a specific arrangement of arrays can process all 2^64 values at once. Quantum computers can be used to solve complex equations in mere seconds such as nuclear fission or other quantum algorithms which would be too complex for supercomputers.
Acoustic tractor beam
An acoustic tractor beam can levitate objects and manipulate their position. The tractor beam is created when rapidly fluctuating acoustic vortices (is a rotating region of fluid such as, for example, a tornado or a whirlpool) are produced using ultrasonic soundwaves at 40 KHZ which is the frequency at which bats communicate. Previously this was only thought possible using frequencies audible to humans which is a major risk as it causes permanent ear damage. Up until recently, we could only manipulate the position of tine objects as the vortices would transfer its rotational force onto the object causing it to rotate at an uncontrollable rate increasing the velocity and momentum until the object was hurled across the room, but with the advancement in technology, we can manipulate the direction of the vortices at rapid rates to control and stabilize the velocity of the object.
Writer: Atif Agboatwala
19/06/2020
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