The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

UK Scientists Use Laser To Give False Memories to Flies

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by Aaron Saenz on October 20th, 2009
UK researchers have found the 12 neurons in a fly brain responsible for creating negative memories.

UK researchers have found the 12 neurons in a fly brain responsible for creating negative memories.

It’s not enough that we swat flies or lure them to get stuck on glued paper, now we are also writing false memories into their brains. A team of neuroscientists at the University of Oxford have discovered a way to trigger behavior in flies by selectively modifying neurons in their brain and stimulating them with a laser in order to simulate a learning experience. As published in the science journal Cell, flies were made to prefer one smell over another even though they had no real world experience associated with either smell. The experiment has important implications for the eventual development of a technology to create false human memories. We could one day “learn” by having experiences directly inputed into our brains.

Our brains are massive systems of interlocking neurons. In the organization of connections between cells are encoded all the memories of our lifetime. The possibility exists that if we can control these connections, and/or the behavior of the neurons, we could alter our memories; erasing some and creating others. While the brains of flies and humans have vast differences in scale, the structures in one often have an analogous partner in the other. If neuroscientists are able to control the memories of flies, the techniques used could conceivably be adapted into mammals and even humans. Like the fly, we could be made to prefer one stimuli over another based on neuron manipulation, not real world experience.
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Video of Airplane Laser Hitting Truck!

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by Aaron Saenz on October 6th, 2009
That little white nub under the plane shoots truck-killing lasers.

The little white nub under the plane fires truck-killing lasers.


For those of us living in fear of a deadly truck uprising, Maximum Overdrive must have scared someone, we can finally rest easy knowing that Boeing [NYSE: BA] recently used a laser attached to a C130H aircraft to kill a pickup. Melting the hood of the truck was a significant step for the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL), proving it could defeat ground based targets with high precision. The test took place on August 30th at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Military lasers, besides looking really cool for science fiction junkies, also demonstrate that the rapid development of technology could have repercussions in international power politics. Check out the short but sweet video Boeing just released after the break.

While it seems inefficient at this stage, putting a hole in a truck with a laser is just a precursor to a different kind of warfare. We’ve discussed how advancements in robotic weaponry and drones are changing war, and a similar level of change may come from ultra-precise mid to long range weapons. An identified target could be hit from flight without the target being aware of the danger and with little to no collateral damage. Considering the recent record of conventional ordinance, that precision could mean sparing the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

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The National Ignition Facility Aims to Create a Mini Star

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by Drew Halley on May 29th, 2009

World, meet the National Ignition Facility: a massive and incredible research device to study (and create) controlled nuclear fusion. Containing the world’s largest and highest-energy laser, the facility hopes to create the first controlled thermonuclear reaction ever. If they succeed, they will have achieved a dream of physics that many claimed impossible: man-made fusion as a source of energy. A mini star. Happy Friday.

Inside the target chamber. Courtesy of NIF

Inside the target chamber. Courtesy of NIF

Today marks the opening ceremony, with big names like Energy Secretary Steven Chu, laser pioneer Charles Hunt Townes, and even the Governator in attendance. Housed at the infamous Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the NIF was 12 years and 3.5 billion dollars in the making.  The facility covers three football fields, ten stories, and contains sixty miles of mirrors, fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers. Funded by the Department of Energy, the NIF hopes to begin experiments next year.

So how does one go about creating a mini star? The NIF uses 192 high powered lasers, capable of delivering a two million joules of ultraviolet energy. From their source, the lasers travel over 1,000 feet through a series of amplifiers, exponentially increasing their power before they reach their destination: the spherical “target chamber.” Here, each laser in the room is pointed at a single drop of hydrogen fuel about the size of a BB pellet. By blasting the hydrogen with extreme heat simultaneously from all sides, the lasers will fuse the hydrogen together to form helium, a reaction that releases a whole lot of energy.

If a fusion reaction can produce enough energy to fuel itself (i.e. start a chain reaction), it has reached the point of ignition. The only man-made fusion reactions that have ever achieved ignition were anything but controlled; they were hydrogen bombs. For over fifty years, physicists have argued about whether or not fusion energy could ever be harnessed without blowing up in your face.  The NIF is built to solve that question.

Check out a video about the new facility:

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Laser Surgery Probe Precise Enough to Target Individual Cancer Cells

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by Keith Kleiner on July 28th, 2008

The University of Texis at Austin reports that Professor Adela Ben-Yakar and colleagues have developed a femtosecond laser “microscalpel” that is so precise that it can destroy a single cell while leaving nearby cells intact.  According to the article:

“Within a few years, Ben-Yakar expects to shrink the probe’s 15-millimeter diameter three-fold, so it would match endoscopes used today for laparoscopic surgery. The probe tip she has developed alsocould be made disposable — for use operating on people who have infectious diseases or destroying deadly viruses and other biomaterials.”

“Femtosecond lasers produce extremely brief, high-energy light pulses
that sear a targeted cell so quickly and accurately the lasers’ heat
has no time to escape and damage nearby healthy cells. As a result, the
medical community envisions the lasers’ use for more accurate
destruction of many types of unhealthy material. These include small
tumors of the vocal cords, cancer cells left behind after the removal
of solid tumors, individual cancer cells scattered throughout brain or
other tissue and plaque in arteries.”

“A commercially available femtosecond laser system and microscope was
developed recently for LASIK and other eye surgeries, but the system’s
bulk limits its usefulness. Ben-Yakar’s laboratory has overcome
technological challenges to create a microscope system that can deliver
femtosecond laser pulses up to 250 microns deep inside tissue. The
system includes a tiny, flexible probe that focuses light pulses to a
spot size smaller than human cells.”

Adela Ben-Yakar has had success using similar laser devices to cut the connections (the axons) between individual nerve cells in a hunt for genes that control nerve regrowth after injury.

Stimulating Nerves With Light Instead of Electricity Opens New Doors for Science

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by Keith Kleiner on July 24th, 2008

The Short:
For decades now the standard approach to stimulating human nerve cells has been to use the method used by the human body itself – electrical current. Electrical stimulation of nerves is quite effective, but also comes with significant drawbacks including damage caused by the physical contact from the electrodes and the inability to stimulate at a small enough granularity, thereby causing undesired stimulation of nearby cells.

Recently researchers have devised an alternative solution to nerve stimulation: zapping them with a laser beam. Laser based nerve stimulation overcomes many of the problems associated with electrical stimulation: it requires no physical contact with the nerve cells and the laser can be tuned to precisely hit only the nerve cells that are desired. Laser based nerve stimulation could unleash a revolution in our ability to interface with nerve cells. For example, the precision offered by laser interfacing with human nerves may aid efforts to develop prosthetic limbs that are as dexterous as real human limbs.

The Long:

This breakthrough in laser based nerve stimulation has created a flurry of press in recent months. In addition to the ieee article referenced above, another excellent article came from the researchers published by spie here. Interestingly, the exact mechanism by which laser light is able to cause neuron stimulation is unknown, as quoted here by the spie article:

“A conceptual understanding of how laser light stimulates neural tissues
is crucial for the further optimization of the technique, allowing it
to reach its full potential. The current hypothesis—based on a number
of mechanistic experiments—is that the laser activates nerves by a
transient, thermally induced mechanism. At the stimulation threshold,
experiments suggest that the maximum nerve-surface temperature increase
is less than 9°C, well below the 45–50°C tissue temperatures required
for the onset of tissue damage. Future experiments will reveal if
stimulation arises through a direct membrane interaction or an indirect
effect leading to membrane depolarization.”

The article offers a fantastic picture that demonstrates the superior nature of laser based stimulation over electrical stimulation in its ability to target only the desired nerve cells without accidentally stimulated nearby neurons. In the picture below we see that the electrical stimulation caused the target nerve to stimulate but also caused unwanted stimulation of nearby nerves. The laser based stimulation avoided this unwanted stimulation.

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