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Wireless brain-to-brain communication steps closer to human trials
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently issued $8 million in follow-up funding to a team of neuroengineers developing brain-to-brain and brain-to-machine technology.
January 27, 2021
Rice University
Technology & Innovation
- Brain-to-machine interfaces have existed for years, but wireless and non-invasive interfaces aren't yet precise enough to be useful in real-world applications.
- In experiments on insects, a team at Rice University has successfully used light and magnetic fields to both read and write brain activity.
- The team hopes to use the technology to restore vision to the blind, while DARPA hopes to use brain-machine interfaces on the battlefield.
<p>Imagine putting on a helmet that enables you to communicate with another person, or control a machine, with only your thoughts.</p>
<p>That's what a team of neuroengineers at Rice University is working to develop. The team just received $8 million in follow-funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), having already conducted successful experiments on insects. Working alongside more than a dozen other research groups, the team plans to use the funds to conduct further tests on rodents and, potentially within two years, humans.</p>
<p>Of course, brain-machine interfaces aren't new. For decades, researchers have been working to develop technologies that connect brains to machines, and brains to other brains. People are already benefiting from surgically implanted brain-machine interfaces, such as amputees who use <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200430110321.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mind-controlled arm prostheses</a>.</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="13354fed78752057305ef4a4c54f411a"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cL3e8tC8TwE?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>But non-invasive brain-machine interfaces are more complex, and they're currently not precise enough to be useful. That's why the MOANA Project, which stands for "magnetic, optical and acoustic neural access," aims to create an effective and noninvasive interface. To read and write brain activity, the interfaces uses light and magnetic fields, both of which can penetrate the skull.</p><p>In previous experiments, the researchers injected flies with nanoparticles and used ultrasound to guide the particles to specific neurons in the insects' brains. This allowed the researchers to control the flies' behavior. In more recent experiments, the team tested whether MOANA technology could transmit signals from brain to brain.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU0MzA5OS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NjQ3ODM4Nn0.CaK4n3hCgeasnCZtW2ui5lg3pHa_y1JfMRDH9a9sPNI/img.png?width=980" id="edc8c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f2a89ed403d6331f4a13bf16edfe247d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="990" data-height="532" />
Insects that have been injected with nanoparticles
Rice University
<p><br></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We spent the last year trying to see if the physics works, if we could actually transmit enough information through a skull to detect and stimulate activity in brain cells grown in a dish," Jacob Robinson, lead investigator on the MOANA Project at Rice University, <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/In-4-years-humans-could-don-magnetic-helmets-14432577.php" target="_blank">told</a> the university's Office of Public Affairs.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"What we've shown is that there is promise. With the little bit of light that we are able to collect through the skull, we were able to reconstruct the activity of cells that were grown in the lab. Similarly, we showed we could stimulate lab-grown cells in a very precise way with magnetic fields and magnetic nanoparticles."</p><p>If rodent experiments prove successful, the team plans to conduct trials on blind patients, who would be injected with nanoparticles. Using ultrasound waves, the researchers would guide the nanoparticles to the brain's visual cortex. </p><p>There, the nanoparticles would be stimulated to activate specific neurons, which could potentially restore partial vision to the patients. For example, blind people may someday wear a camera that transmits visual data through the interface and enables them to see what the camera is looking at. </p>Brain-machine interfaces in the battlefield
<p>But while restoring vision to the blind is the near-term goal, DARPA has additional applications in mind. The MOANA Project is part of the agency's Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program, <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-03-16" target="_blank">first announced in March 2018</a>. The Rice University team and others have been working with DARPA to develop noninvasive brain-machine interfaces that soldiers could use to, say, control drones in the battlefield.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"If N3 is successful, we'll end up with wearable neural interface systems that can communicate with the brain from a range of just a few millimeters, moving neurotechnology beyond the clinic and into practical use for national security," Al Emondi, the N3 program manager, said in a <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-05-20" target="_blank">statement</a>.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Just as service members put on protective and tactical gear in preparation for a mission, in the future they might put on a headset containing a neural interface, use the technology however it's needed, then put the tool aside when the mission is complete."</p><p>If the human trials prove successful, it could greatly accelerate the development and adoption of brain-machine and brain-to-brain interfaces. After all, even if other types of brain-machine interfaces are effective, it's likely that many people won't want to have a device implanted into their skull.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"That's the big idea, this non-surgical interface," Robinson said. </p>
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Twitter turns to the hive mind for moderation
The platform experiments with letting users decide what content needs flagging.
January 27, 2021
Credit: Twitter/Big Think
Politics & Current Affairs
- Birdwatch is a new effort by Twitter to crowdsource content moderation.
- Still in testing, volunteers can comment on tweets they find problematic.
- Reactions to the new experiment are predictably colorful and bird-brained.
<p>Twitter is experimenting with a new community-moderation system that puts users in the position of keeping other users honest. It's a system that's not completely different from the surprisingly successful manner in which Wikipedia vets posted content, and functions similarly to Reddit's rating system as well.</p><p>Like everything else on Twitter, of course, the response to the announcement of what the platform calls "<a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-birdwatch-a-community-based-approach-to-misinformation.html" target="_blank">Birdwatch</a>" (get it?) has been over-the-top and riddled with untruths and conspiratorial paranoia. Also, some people think it's an idea worth exploring. Sounds about right.</p>
Test flight
<p><span></span>For now, Birdwatch is being tested from <a href="https://twitter.com/i/birdwatch" target="_blank">its own site</a> — it's not something Twitter users can currently see unless they volunteer to contribute to it. When someone signs up to test Birdwatch, a new option appears among the actions available for responding to a tweet on Twitter proper. Eventually, if it works out, Birdwatch labels and comments would appear publicly affixed to tweets.</p><p>Here's now Birdwatch works once you sign up:</p><ol><li>When you click on the three-dot menu to the right of a questionable tweet, a new option appears at the bottom of the actions presented: "Contribute to Birdwatch."</li><li>If you choose this option, you're brought to a list of reasons you might have for feeling the tweet should be tagged as iffy — you check the box that reflects your opinion.</li><li>Next, you tell Twitter the damage the tweet could potentially cause if it's left unflagged.</li><li>You're asked for a comment about your objection to the tweet.</li><li>Finally, you're asked to assess the current Birdwatch consensus regarding the tweet.</li></ol><p>Twitter intends to develop an algorithmic approach to collating Birdwatch responses, and is also planning review sessions with subject-matter experts, since, as one Twitter user <a href="https://twitter.com/MaceMoneta/status/1353769684718522368" target="_blank">posted</a>, "The plural of anecdote is not fact."</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">🐦 Today we’re introducing <a href="https://twitter.com/birdwatch?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Birdwatch</a>, a community-driven approach to addressing misleading information. And we want your help. (1/3) <a href="https://t.co/aYJILZ7iKB">pic.twitter.com/aYJILZ7iKB</a></p>— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1353766523664531459?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 25, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Birdwatch reactions
<p>So far, the Twitter community's response to Birdwatch covers the whole spectrum, with some people hopeful and many more, this being the internet, skeptical. (We'll talk about politicians' response to Birdwatch below.)</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU0MjU5My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1Njc1NDM1MX0.kOou0PkKLJSpS8-OEq8Y_y9NkQbrnj0ANoCePDpyTZ0/img.jpg?width=980" id="801d7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="05da8dc53a1d945ab11befee102b661e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1193" data-height="1343" />How Donald Trump gave Twitter its wings
<p>Birdwatch, um, flies in the face of what's made Twitter so central to the U.S. politics since, oh, about 2015. Prior to the entry of tweet-happy Donald Trump into the 2016 presidential race, Twitters seemed to many to be on its way out, yet another discarded novelty of the internet age.</p><p>Candidate Trump changed all that and continued to use his Twitter account as his primary platform throughout his presidency. In terms of the day-to-day drama that accompanied his time in office, the president's expulsion from Twitter felt more like the end of his term than did the official transfer of power on January 20.</p><p>That expulsion itself was apparently the end result of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/16/how-twitter-banned-trump/" target="_blank">considerable turmoil and discord</a> internally within Twitter. That's because Donald Trump's artful deployment of Twitter has been the primary driver behind its resurgence and the reason it continues to play a significant role in U.S. politics.</p><p>What @realDonaldTrump understood was that a deliberately outrageous tweet is an easy way to immediately grab the public's attention, either for sheer publicity value or as a means of distraction. Truth and accuracy matter far less than what social media calls "<a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-social-media-engagement/" target="_blank">engagement</a>." Post-Trump, other publicity-hungry politicians continue to follow the ex-president's playbook. Some of them are even doing so as they attack Birdwatch.</p><p>And herein lies Twitter's dilemma. When provocative content draws attention to a poster, it also draws attention to Twitter, and that benefits the platform by increasing the size of the audience it can sell to advertisers. At the same time, there's growing political pressure on the company to control the dissemination of content that's harmful to the public and American political process.</p><p>Birdwatch may let Twitter off the hook: Truth would be crowdsourced and enforced without Twitter, or its advertisers, having to get its hands dirty with endless controversies.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU0MjYxNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODQwMDEyMX0.x77ubxMRqLiHDKj3DAG74-21GrLCR9Ghf5UQMmcsRto/img.jpg?width=980" id="c8651" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f2970b9e1d7a791c685d04e0a8db880a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="660" data-height="367" />The tweet that probably did it.
Politics and politicians
Politics and politicians
<p>The pressure to do better largely comes in the form of threats to repeal <a href="https://observer.com/2020/10/tech-ceo-testify-senate-social-media-content-moderation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Section 230</a> of the Communications Decency Act. This is the regulation that absolves a social media platform from legal liability for content its users post. Though the rule's purpose is to promote the use of unfettered expression on social media, there's an inherent problem — this kind of content tends to go viral and that increases audience size, which increases a platform's advertising sales and that means more profit.</p><p>Some of the loudest voices, ironically, are politicians who themselves use Twitter for spreading this very type of content. The former president, in fact, vetoed a defense bill because it didn't contain a repeal of Section 230 — it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that his own inflammatory tweets and posts wouldn't be published if platforms were concerned about being held responsible.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">Note: If you're outraged at some politician's disingenuous behavior and tweet or retweet about their hypocrisy, that's perfectly fine with them since you'd only be helping them get more attention.</p><p>It may not surprise you that some politicians who want social media to step up are up in arms over Birdwatch, accusing Silicon Valley of making a power grab that will place Truth under their control and of violating their own First Amendment right to free speech. This last charge is a Constitutional canard, even though some of these folks have a law degree — <a href="https://www.talksonlaw.com/briefs/does-the-first-amendment-require-social-media-platforms-to-grant-access-to-all-users" target="_blank">legal experts agree</a> that Free Speech is about public speech and not about the ability to say whatever you want through a private company's platform.</p><p>No one knows if Birdwatch will work in the end, but if it does, let's hope that unscrupulous politicians find it more difficult to post outrageous tweets that draw them eyeballs and campaign contributions, the country's well-being be damned. Truth is always slippery worm. Let's hope Birdwatch bites down.</p>
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Virus made inequality much worse across the world, says report
Inequality in wealth, gender, and race grew to unprecedented levels across the world, according to OxFam report.
January 27, 2021
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Politics & Current Affairs
- A new report by global poverty nonprofit OxFam finds inequality has increased in every country in the world.
- The alarming trend is made worse by the coronavirus pandemic, which strained most systems and governments.
- The gap in wealth, race and gender treatment will increase until governments step in with changes.
<p>The coronavirus has not only brought suffering and death to millions of people around the world, it has worsened inequality in nearly every country at once, finds a new report. This has never happened since records began. The virus added to existing discrepancies in wealth, gender and race.</p><p>The charity Oxfam's "The Inequality Virus" report says that hundreds of millions are facing poverty as a result of the virus, while the world's richest people and corporations are increasing their wealth exponentially. To illustrate this point, the authors point out that the <strong>$540 billion </strong>increase in the riches of the 10 of the world's wealthiest men that took place since the pandemic started is more than what would be necessary to make sure that no one on earth falls into poverty as a result of the virus and would also pay for a COVID-19 vaccine for everyone. </p><p>Of course, one could argue about the extent of responsibility of the top ten billionaires to fight Covid for us (<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55793575" target="_blank">and some of them do</a>) but the growing wealth gap is tremendous and can lead to societal instability– a view supported by 295 leading economists from 79 countries surveyed by Oxfam.</p>
<p>Forbes magazine <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2020/12/16/the-worlds-billionaires-have-gotten-19-trillion-richer-in-2020/?sh=34b138b67386" target="_blank">estimates</a> that the 2,200+ billionaires in the world became <strong>$1.9 trillion richer </strong>in 2020. Conversely, it would take over a decade for the poorest billions in the world to recover economically from the pandemic.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The crisis has exposed our collective frailty and the inability of our deeply unequal economy to work for all," states the Oxfam <a href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/inequality-virus/" target="_blank">brief</a>. </p><p>The report further explains while established power structures in many countries have helped add to the bottom lines of the small group of the wealthiest, "people in poverty, many women, Black people, Afro-descendants, Indigenous Peoples, and historically marginalized and oppressed communities around the world, struggle to survive."</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU0MTYzMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNjkyMzMxNn0.-qJLjhZthmBaX3mKQjZDxhvCOJeZ-qSyiRuX7oNbru8/img.jpg?width=980" id="a53c7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c9074b19d8e2124153f8096dc0362c06" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="4757" data-height="3171" />
People wait in line to receive food at a food bank on April 28, 2020 in Brooklyn.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Structural features that perpetuate inequality can be found in many countries around the world. </span><span style="background-color: initial;">In the U.S. alone, the difference in medical care received by communities is such that about 22,000 Latinx and black people would be alive (by end of 2020) if they had similar mortality rates to white people's, found OxFam.</span></p><p>The inequality between how men and women are treated has also become stronger, according to the researchers. Women are much more likely than men to be working in the sectors worst hit by the virus. 112 million fewer women would be facing the risk of losing incomes and jobs if they had the same representation as men in these professions.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"In every country that we looked at, inequality has gotten worse during the pandemic," <a href="https://twitter.com/dpaulobrien" target="_blank">said</a> Paul O'Brien, Vice President of Oxfam America. "All around the world now, we are seeing folks struggling on the wrong end of inequality while those who have been the beneficiaries of our broken economic system have done quite well."</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU0MTY0Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTAzNzk2NH0.pCakjOaqpE0EPndWSXQCsYZO92_k5yWSdb4GqTL-J08/img.jpg?width=980" id="c0bed" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9fb8c4bde957cb9855b3065a9ad7c23e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="953" data-height="548" />
Credit: Oxfam International
<p>On the flip side, the important role the government should play in our lives has also been demonstrated as clearly as ever. Strong government action can protect both public health and the economy.</p><p>In another conclusion, the paper from the global organization, whose <a href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/about/" target="_blank">mission</a> is "to end the injustice of poverty," thinks that now is also the time for change. <strong>"</strong>Transformative policies that seemed unthinkable before the crisis have suddenly been shown to be possible," write the authors. While inequality is getting worse, it does not have to be inevitable. How badly it increases and how fast is "the choice of governments across the world," concludes the report. One of the measures the organization advocates is increasing taxes on the ultra-rich.</p><p><a href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/inequality-virus/" target="_blank">Read the report in full here. </a></p>
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