What is Artificial Intelligence?

a diagram illustrating how the photovoltaic retinal prosthesis works

A Pro-forming photovoltaic artificial retina has just been launched after several years of research and development.

The good news is, this retinal prosthesis works by feeding the embedded solar cells with a beam of light. Unlike other types of retinal prosthesis which uses RF signals to power the nano-circuits, this new retinal prosthesis uses light to activate both power and data cells.

Researchers from Standford University have uniquely designed this photovoltaic retinal prosthesis with miniature solar cells. The 3mm thick subretinal device works together with a video camera that captures images, a pocket PC that processes the video feed, and a bright near-infrared LCD display built into video goggles, which beams invisible light to the chip.

This Stanford device is implanted in the back of the retina. The chip is also configured in three layers such that together are 30 micrometers thick. The layer is a series of pixels, each formed from a three photovoltaic cells of three different sizes. The purpose of which is to boost the amount of current each pixel sends to the still functional intermediate layers of the retina that perform the eye’s natural image processing and data compression.

According to Daniel Palanker, a Stanford professor of ophthalmology who worked on the chip, "a photovoltaic prosthesis is limited to a pixel size of about 50 µm, corresponding to visual acuity of 20/100." Which is already sufficient for face recognition and for reading large fonts.

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artist's rendring of brain activities

Natural brain activities have been measured to show changes in the learning curves of the brain connection during particular activities.

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Chieti, Italy, have recently reported in their study that the brain's spontaneous activity is but organized in patterns of correlated activity. Furthermore, this study have shown that the learning behaviors have caused considerable changes in the spontaneous brain patterns.

The researchers performed an experiment on 14 volunteers who were brain-scanned through fMRI as they rested. Then, they were scanned again as they went through the activities involving watching displays of MRI patterns with an inverted 'T' in an area of the screen. The activities lasted for five to seven days.

After the experiment, the subjects were scanned for the third time while they did nothing.

fMRI scan results have shown that at the start of the experiment, while the subjects rested, the spontaneous brain activities in the two parts of the brain were weakly correlated with the two regions involved in the activities.

Also, scans showed that either of these two is active during the tests, meaning they do not work simultaneously which lead to the conclusion that "disruption of spontaneous correlated activity may be a common mechanism through which brain function abnormalities manifest in a number of neurological, psychiatric or developmental conditions," Corbetta says.

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The new contact lenses that are designed to monitor glucose levels for diabetics

Contact lenses have been a great help for many people with defective or poor vision, and are even used to improve or create an enhanced look of your eyes. Contact lenses are also becoming a fashion statement.

But contact lenses for diabetics? Wow, that's awesome! Who would not want a lightweight and very easy to use product that will monitor your glucose levels at any time?

Researchers from The University of Western Ontario, recently received a grant of $200,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to develop a non-invasive technology to aid diabetics monitor their sugar levels.

Professor Jin Zhang of the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at The University of Western Ontario, takes advantage of tiny nano-particles embedded into the hydrogel lenses. These nano-particles were engineered to react with glucose molecules found in tears, causing the contact lenses to change their colors.

Professor Zhang was also given a grant to further develop on multifunctional nanocomposite technologies for applications beyond biomedical devices, including for food packaging.

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Epoc Headset Brainwave Controller by Emotiv Systems

A new technology has been launched lately to make gaming experience a 'more real' adventure and fun. Imagine playing a video game and seeing all your reactions and expressions being mimicked by characters in the game, in real time! How cool is that?

Emotiv Systems have developed the revolutionary Epoc Headset Brainwave Controller that is especially created to augment virtual gaming experience. Emotiv EPOC is a high resolution, neuro-signal acquisition and processing wireless neuroheadset. It uses a set of sensors to capture the brains electric signals to detect thoughts, emotions and expressions of the player and connects wirelessly to most PCs via Bluetooth.

The Emotive Systems call it the "revolutionary new personal interface for human computer interaction".

The Epoc Headset takes advantage of three detection suites which are included in the package. The Affectiv™ Suite monitors emotional states of the player in real-time. It provides an extra dimension in game interaction by allowing the characters in the game to respond to the player's emotions. Characters can transform in response to the player's feeling.

Cognitiv™ Suite reads and interprets a player's conscious thoughts and intent. Gamers can take full control over virtual objects using only thoughts! While Expressiv™ Suite uses the signals measured by the neuroheadset to interpret player facial expressions in real-time. The Epoc Headset only costs $299.

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captcha technology is continually evolving to outstmart robot hackers

"Humans have a very special skill that computer bots have not yet been able to master," says Prof. Cohen-Or leader of a research project of the Tel Aviv University's Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences.

CAPTCHAs were first developed to prevent bots from adding URLs to the search engine. The idea was contextualized in 1997 by Andrei Broder, Martin Abadi, Krishna Bharat, and Mark Lillibridge, who used images resistant to OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

CAPTCHAs are specifically designed as tasks that only humans can perform. Several researchers attempted to create a reliable 'captcha' application. A few of these applications like computer character recognition, voice or sound and image recognition are still widely used today.

Adding to the list is another 'emergence technology' which is being developed at Tel Aviv University's Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences to better outsmart computer bots.

The team demonstrated how a video captcha code may be harder to outsmart. Using a technology called an 'emergence image', an object is only recognizable when it's moving, and a person can identify this image in a matter of seconds.

In a recent research paper, Dr. Cohen-Or, co-authored by colleagues in Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and India, described a "synthesis technique" that involves generating images of 3-D objects, like a running man or a flying airplane that will enable security developers to generate an infinite number of moving "emergence" images that will be virtually impossible for any computer algorithm to decode.

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