Emerging Technologies....They Might Have Cured Cancer

[China]

Newly-Developed Solar Cell Earns Two World Records for Its ‘Extraordinary’ Efficiency

 

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have fabricated a solar cell with an efficiency of nearly 50%.

 

For perspective, the average solar cell has an efficiency rate of 15% to 20%, meaning it’s capable of converting just a small fraction of absorbed sunlight into electricity.

 

The newly-developed six-junction solar cell, however, now holds the world record for the highest solar conversion efficiency at 47.1%, which was measured under concentrated illumination. A variation of the same cell also set the efficiency record under one-sun illumination at 39.2%.

 

“This device really demonstrates the extraordinary potential of multijunction solar cells,” said John Geisz, a principal scientist in the High-Efficiency Crystalline Photovoltaics Group at NREL and lead author of a new paper on the record-setting cell.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

New Contact Lenses May Soon Allow Diabetics to Monitor Glucose Levels With Just the Blinks of Their Eyes

 

An innovative new smart contact lens is being developed to allow diabetics to monitor glucose levels through liquid in their eyes.

 

The invention, which is wireless and remotely operated, means glucose levels could soon be monitored in the blink of an eye—and even be treated with medicine dispensed directly into the membrane.

 

Scientists say that the new tech represents the first potential use of contact lenses to monitor and treat symptoms of diabetes with a remote control drug dispenser.

 

It comes after Google’s failed attempts to develop the Google Contact Lens for diagnosing diabetic patients, which was discontinued in 2018.

 

Researchers say the eyewear could provide an alternative to invasive blood tests for diabetics while simultaneously paving the way toward on-demand treatment for certain eye diseases.

 

The device uses chip technology to monitor sugar levels through the blood vessels behind the eyelids and warn the user of potential health emergencies. It could also dispense medicine through the eye to treat diabetic retinopathy, a diabetes-related condition caused by damage to the ocular blood vessels.

 

When tested in rabbits, the lens offered noninvasive glucose monitoring and controlled drug delivery for the condition.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

On 5/26/2019 at 12:58 PM, PleaseBlitz said:

WTF happened to Elon Musk?  He’s about six months away from halting all human contact and storing his urine. 

 

'Bon voyage': Elon Musk tells Twitter followers to get lost following meltdown

 

Elon Musk is having a rough 24 hours, and if his Twitter followers don't like it, then they can just get bent. 

 

The Tesla CEO made waves late last night for a bizarre rant about "freedom," only to completely melt down during a Wednesday Tesla earnings call when asked about Bay Area shelter-in-place orders. 

 

 

 

 

Click on the link for more

[Mr. Sinister]

Yeeeaaaaaah. 

 

Good luck in all future endeavors

[Skinned Aussie]

If the use of modern technology means getting what you paid for, I'm all for it!

 

I'm sick of going to places like McDonald's, paying for an order, only to find they have left something out!  Everyone does it, so McDonald's are just an example.

[Fergasun]

I just thought good guy McDonalds liked giving me free food.  

[The Evil Genius]

 

[Renegade7]

Get the Mars base done and all sins will be forgiven, Elon...

On 5/1/2020 at 2:43 AM, Mr. Sinister said:

Yeeeaaaaaah. 

 

Good luck in all future endeavors

 

He's getting worse, not sure what to make of it because I've been rooting for him for years.  He talks like someone who really doesn't care what people think of him, but in ways that effect more then jus him.  

[Mr. Sinister]

7 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

Get the Mars base done and all sins will be forgiven, Elon...

 

He's getting worse, not sure what to make of it because I've been rooting for him for years.  He talks like someone who really doesn't care what people think of him, but in ways that effect more then jus him.  

 

 

For me, it's much easier to just readily assume that cats like him would not hesitate to shiv you and dump you in a vat of acid as soon as as it becomes convenient/affects their bottom line. 

 

[Renegade7]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

 

 

For me, it's much easier to just readily assume that cats like him would not hesitate to shiv you and dump you in a vat of acid as soon as as it becomes convenient/affects their bottom line. 

 

 

If Musk was on Mars and felt you might stop him from doing something, he might take you on a walk and unplug your oxygen tube. For the good of humanity?

[Mr. Sinister]

On 5/13/2020 at 9:43 AM, Renegade7 said:

 

If Musk was on Mars and felt you might stop him from doing something, he might take you on a walk and unplug your oxygen tube. For the good of humanity?

 

For the good of his insanity

[Corcaigh]

Certainly not an emerging technology, but I thought this story was pretty damn cool.

 

https://www.thedrive.com/news/33645/the-incredible-story-of-the-us-armys-earth-shaking-off-road-land-trains

[China]

This Scientist Says He’s Built a Jet Engine That Turns Electricity Directly Into Thrust

 

If this plasma propulsion tech is real, it could change everything.

 

This past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true.

 

The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust — no fossil fuels required — by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet. Tang suggested, without a hint of self-aggrandizement, that it could likely be scaled up enough to fly large commercial passenger planes. Eventually, he says, it might even power spaceships.

 

Needless to say, these are grandiose claims. A thruster that doesn’t require tanks of fuel sounds suspiciously like science fiction — like the jets on Iron Man’s suit in the Marvel movies, for instance, or the thrusters that allow Doc Brown’s DeLorean to fly in “Back to the Future.”

 

But in Tang’s telling, his invention — let’s just call it a Tang Jet, which he worked on with Wuhan University collaborators Dan Ye and Jun Li — could have civilization-shifting potential here in the non-fictional world.

 

“Essentially, the goal of this technology is to try and use electricity and air to replace gasoline,” he said. “Global warming is a major threat to human civilization. Fossil fuel-free technology using microwave air plasma could be a solution.”

 

He anticipates this happening fast. In two years, he says, he thinks Tang Jets could power drones. In a decade, he’d like to see them fly a whole airplane.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Ever have a song that you can't get out of your head?

 

Elon Musk's Neuralink 'developing chip that can stream music directly into brain'

 

SpaceX boss Elon Musk has hinted his other company Neuralink could develop microchips that would stream music directly into the users brain – ditching the need for headphones.

 

It is understood Mr Musk is keen on linking up an app to a wireless implant that would allow users to a wireless connection in the form of an implant.

 

The user would then be able to control mobile devices, mouses, keyboards and computers using the brain chip.

 

Neuralink said last year it already successfully tested the technology on mice and even apes.

 

But, in the near future, it was hinted that people might be able to listen to Spotify without the need for headphones thanks to the chip.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Hersh]

8 minutes ago, China said:

Ever have a song that you can't get out of your head?

 

Elon Musk's Neuralink 'developing chip that can stream music directly into brain'

 

SpaceX boss Elon Musk has hinted his other company Neuralink could develop microchips that would stream music directly into the users brain – ditching the need for headphones.

 

It is understood Mr Musk is keen on linking up an app to a wireless implant that would allow users to a wireless connection in the form of an implant.

 

The user would then be able to control mobile devices, mouses, keyboards and computers using the brain chip.

 

Neuralink said last year it already successfully tested the technology on mice and even apes.

 

But, in the near future, it was hinted that people might be able to listen to Spotify without the need for headphones thanks to the chip.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

I mean, how many people would really go for that?

[China]

Just now, Hersh said:

 

I mean, how many people would really go for that?

 

That's what the COVID-19 Vaccine will be for.  They implant a chip with the vaccine, and it is designed to migrate to the brain; then you're under their control.

[Hersh]

4 minutes ago, China said:

 

That's what the COVID-19 Vaccine will be for.  They implant a chip with the vaccine, and it is designed to migrate to the brain; then you're under their control.

 

I was typing out something about it being enough to turn me into a conspiracy brain control nut but hit delete. Seriously, I would probably start wearing a tin foil hat. 

Edited July 29, 2020 by Hersh

[LD0506]

Just sciency-tech geek interesting, but there are a lot of smart people out there doing cool ****

 

Quote

In a breakthrough new study, scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota have electrically transformed the abundant and low-cost non-magnetic material iron sulfide, also known as "fool's gold" or pyrite, into a magnetic material.

This is the first time scientists have ever electrically transformed an entirely non-magnetic material into a magnetic one, and it could be the first step in creating valuable new magnetic materials for more energy-efficient computer memory devices.

 

 

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-gold-valuable.html?fbclid=IwAR1DUmAIq9savV3fUUvCHSm8qApQPGpojlzYpb8whfHf8LiKyaPCx2dL7ik

[No Excuses]

Brain computer interfaces will be the successors to smart phones. Even if you are skeptical now, at some point people who use them will have such a superior technological advantage over non-users, that you would be socially disadvantaged if you didn't have one yourself.

[mistertim]

1 hour ago, No Excuses said:

Brain computer interfaces will be the successors to smart phones. Even if you are skeptical now, at some point people who use them will have such a superior technological advantage over non-users, that you would be socially disadvantaged if you didn't have one yourself.

 

This 100%

 

It will happen and, like other "cray cray" technologies before it that were dismissed as too fantastical and that nobody would ever accept, but that eventually became ubiquitous, it will simply become more and more standard over time.

 

As far as Musk, I've never really liked him and always thought he was more of a great marketer than science genius. 

 

I also think we're going about super complicated questions and future technologies wrong. IMO it won't be us that directly invents interstellar travel, hyper-advanced green tech, or ways to quickly get to and colonize other planets. It will be AIs with General Intelligence. Once that happens, it is going to get wild and we'll just be along for the ride. 

 

And that too will happen. 

[Renegade7]

5 hours ago, No Excuses said:

Brain computer interfaces will be the successors to smart phones. Even if you are skeptical now, at some point people who use them will have such a superior technological advantage over non-users, that you would be socially disadvantaged if you didn't have one yourself.

 

As long as they are computer interfaces, they can be hacked like any other.  No thanks.

 

Someone needs to get ahead of this from a regulations standpoint, maybe someone who knows what twitch is?

 

@PleaseBlitz love the thread title change.  I love Elon, but disagree wholeheartedly with his "if we can't beat them, join them" approach to dealing with AI.  

 

There will always be folks that refuse to do this and folks that can't wait to pull up cat videos just by thinking about it.  Is this really our future?

[Captain Wiggles]

Pfft egg heads. I can already listen to Spotify without headphones Elon. Thanks to Kellog n Rice. 🔊

[LD0506]

Quote

In that 2011 research MacDonald and Bistritzer predicted that electrons' kinetic energy can vanish in a graphene bilayer misaligned by the so-called "magic angle" of 1.1 degrees. In 2018, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proved this theory, finding that offsetting two graphene layers by 1.1 degrees produced a two-dimensional superconductor, a material that conducts electrical current with no resistance and no energy loss.

 

 

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-physicists-misaligned-carbon-sheets-yield.html?fbclid=IwAR0FqYdwwfjQVXWv0TVsPAhp9V9LCYUawWWdAL_mDsK-XgfI86cWQZq9s4Q

[Mr. Sinister]

Yay China, and ancient aliens , all in the span of a few days. Poor guy must be barely holding it all together

[DCSaints_fan]

On 7/28/2020 at 6:00 PM, Hersh said:

I mean, how many people would really go for that?

 

Cochlear Implant user here, which is basically what  Elon seems to be trying to accomplish.   

 

In order to bypass the ear and "beam" auditory signals into the brain, you have to stimulate the right region of the brain.  The best place to do this is whats called the "spiral ganglion" nerves in the cochlea, which is sea-shell like organ connected to the middle ear bones, which in turn are connected to the ear drum and your ear canal/outer ear.  When they insert electrodes into your cochlea, it destroys whatever hearing is remaining in that ear (which for me, wasn't much).  Also, since the cochlea "spirals" upwards, they can only get so far.  I think maybe about a "turn" or so (think a circular path spiraling upwards, like a sea shell).  In principal, you can go higher up in the auditory brainstem, but there is a problem with doing that, which I will attempt to explain. 

 

Now the cochlea itself has a in interesting function, in performs it a mechanical frequency separation, somewhat like a spectrum analyzer.  What that means is that high frequencies stimulate the lower region of the cochlea (called the base), while lower frequencies stimulate the upper region (the apex).    Von Bekesy figured this out and won the Nobel Prize in 1960.  Now, its a little more complicated than that, because there is something called the "active process" where low intensity sounds are selectively amplified.  This amplification is actually non-linear, unlike a stereo amplifier which is linear across most of its operating range (up until you overdrive it or blow out the speakers of course).   The effect is to  "compress" the sound so people can simulataneously here very quite sounds, but also hear across a broad dynamic range (loudness) without saturing the ears until loud sounds occur.

 

The cochlear is connected to the spiral ganglion nerves.  There are certain cells called hair cells which perform  a function similar to a microphone - taking the mechanical auditory signal, and transducing it into an electrical signal. 

 

The effect is that the ear is able to discriminate between a broad range of frequencies and intensities.   This allows people with normal hearing, to do things which are very hard for hearing impaired users, especially when it comes to being able to comprehend speech in non-ideal situations (noisy, soft talker, etc.), which cannot be corrected by simple amplification. 

 

So back to why stimulating the auditory brainstem doesn't work well.   Since the neurons are all tightly bundled up, it is very hard to get any type of frequency discrimination, since you have bypassed the cochlea completely.  Auditory Brainstem Implants (ABIs) outcomes are generally poor compared to Cochlear Implants (CIs) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6361749/

 

For years implant companies have been trying to reproduce whats going on in the cochlear, so that cochlear implants could be improved.  The problem now, aside from the fact they cannot access the full range of the cochlea, is that it cannot reproduce what the cochlea is doing especially in terms of frequency selectivity.  Cochlear implants use around 16 electrodes, which are trying to replicate of thousands of neurons.  They could add more electrodes, but its not of much help since the electrical stimulation of a single electrode stimulates many neurons.   

 

For someone with normal hearing or even only slight hearing loss, a cochlear implant is a massive step down.  Which is why its only recommended when you get to severe/profound (aside from the fact that its major surgery - they cut your head open, not to mention very expensive)

 

The current is that cochlear implants are not going to improve much (and they haven't, at least not much, for the last 25 years or so), so the research focus has been on biological repair of the cochlear,  One common cause of hearing loss is the damage/death of the hair cells.  So if you could get those hair cells to regrow, potentially you can restore function.   One other method is called optogenetics, which is stimulating the neuron with light as opposed to electrodes.  In some rare cases, the auditory nerve itself needs to be repaired.  

 

TLDR Elon is talking out of his rear end.

 

 

Edited August 3, 2020 by DCSaints_fan