Brain Cramps

D-Wave quantum computer matches the tenth ranked supercomputer for speed

There have been years of controversy about whether the superconducting quantum annealing computers manufactured by D-Wave are a) quantum computers; and b) fast enough for a) to matter. Now a test of the 512-qubit Vesuvius chip establishes at least that computing based on quantum annealing is, in the words of a computer science professor at Amherst College, “in some cases, really, really fast.”

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Almost since the beginning of their existence, robots have taken inspiration from one of nature’s wonders: insects. Technological limitations typically prevents robots from matching the size of their many-legged muses, resulting in larger-than-life examples like Festo’s BionicOpter dragonfly. In stark contrast is Harvard’s RoboBee, which is the first in the world to demonstrate controlled flight by an insect-sized winged robot.

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When we looked at the RoboBee last year, it was only able to fly for a few seconds before crashing. Now, the robot can hover and move along a preset flight path. “This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years,” says Robert J. Wood, Professor at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and team leader on the RoboBee project.

In a nutshell, it has taken more than a decade because “size matters.” The robot’s body measures just 2 centimeters (0.8 inch) in length and weighs 80 milligrams, so even minor changes in air flow can knock the robot off balance.

Additionally, manufacturing dozens of prototypes at this scale was only made possible through a novel technique developed by Wood’s team at SEAS. Flat layers of laser-cut carbon fiber, hinged together with embedded plastic, are folded into three-dimensional frames rather than piecing it together by hand. In practice it works much like the pages of a pop-up book, reducing the complexity and time required in the build process.

Motorization presented another problem. With a wingspan of 3 cm, typical motors were simply too cumbersome. “Large robots can run on electromagnetic motors, but at this small scale you have to come up with an alternative, and there wasn’t one,” says co-lead author Kevin Y. Ma, a graduate student at SEAS.

The team adopted piezoelectric actuators (thin strips of ceramic that expand and contract under an electric field) to serve as the wing muscles, which beat independently 120 times per second. This allowed the team to control the robot’s rotation mid-flight. “Now that we’ve got this unique platform, there are dozens of tests that we’re starting to do, including more aggressive control maneuvers and landing,” says Wood.

Watch the flight of the RoboBee:

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Would you wear a shirt for 100 days without washing it?

A good wool shirt is awesome, but would you wear one for 100 days straight without washing it? Kickstarter startup Wool & Prince claims that you can do exactly that with its buttondown shirts, which it handed out to 15 “wear testers” who wore them while engaging in such activities as backpacking in the Andes and dancing in “Tropical” NYC clubs. According to the makers, the shirts not only proved durable, but still looked – and smelled – fresh after over three months of straight wear.

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AFP - Scientists said Wednesday they had found a brain region that controls physical ageing, and could target it to manipulate the lifespan of lab mice.

The findings may be a step towards finding the holy grail of slowing human ageing, but have yet to be tested in human subjects.

The research, published in the journal Nature, implicates the hypothalamus — a brain region that regulates growth, reproduction and metabolism, in the gradual and coordinated bodily deterioration we call ageing.

Though the brain has long been suspected of orchestrating the process, this is the first evidence to that effect.

The team said they could speed up or slow down ageing in mice by activating or inhibiting the brain signalling molecule NF-kB in the hypothalamus, which in turn affects levels of a hormone called GnRH that plays a role in the generation of neurons — the data processing cells of the brain.

By stimulating NF-kB, they caused a decline in GnRH which led to impaired neurogenesis and ageing symptoms like muscle weakening, skin atrophy, bone loss and memory impairment.

NF-kB is generally responsible for regulating the body’s response to inflammation, the New York-based team wrote.

The researchers could also slow ageing in mice by giving them the GnRH hormone.

“Our study provided interventional strategies to slow down ageing through targeting the hypothalamus,” the study’s senior author Dongsheng Cai, professor of molecular pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told AFP by email.

“It can help to slow down ageing, which is already a big breakthrough, as it can counteract against many ageing-related diseases,” he said, while stipulating: “I don’t think ageing could be completely stopped.”

Cai said he believed the mouse results would translate into humans, “though it will need future efforts to develop safe and applicable approaches to humans.”

Commenting on the research, Harvard Medical School experts Dana Gabuzda and Bruce Yankner said the results, if validated, may have important implications for treatment of age-related diseases — particularly those linked to inflammation.

“The idea also raises the intriguing possibility that hypothalamic regulation could be therapeutically manipulated to have broad effects on the ageing process,” they wrote in Nature.

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