Superconductors: Scientists Discover an Invisible Phenomenon

ACM NEWS

Superconductors: Scientists Discover an Invisible Phenomenon

By Bar-Ilan University

September 21, 2022

Superconductors offer enormous technical and economic promise for applications such as high-speed hovertrains, MRI machines, efficient power lines, quantum computing, and other technologies. However, their usefulness is limited since superconductivity requires extremely low temperatures. It is highly challenging to integrate them with modern technology because of this demanding and costly requirement.

The electrical resistance of a superconductor has a specific critical temperature beyond which it drops suddenly to zero, unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance declines gradually as temperature is reduced, even down to near absolute zero.

The search for superconductors that do not require such low temperatures is the primary objective of current superconductivity research. The mechanism by which these superconductors function is the biggest mystery in this field, to which no one has an answer. Understanding the process that creates superconductivity at high temperatures would allow for more practical applications.

A recent study conducted by scientists at Bar-Ilan University and published in the journal Nature makes progress in resolving this ongoing mystery.

Using a scanning SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) magnetic microscope, the researchers photographed a phenomenon that had previously been invisible to other techniques.

From Bar-Ilan University

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Brain Activity Turned into Images

 AI, Images, MRI

‘Mind-Reading’ Technology Can Turn Brain Activity Into Images   By Adrianna Nine on August 26, 2022 at 8:37 am

Researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands have developed technology that can “read minds” by turning a person’s neurological activity into stunningly accurate pictures.

The system, devised by neurologists, AI researchers, and cognitive scientists at Radboud University, combines AI with medical imaging techniques. It begins with a more sophisticated version of the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner called a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. While a conventional MRI machine facilitates imaging of a person’s anatomy to diagnose trauma or disease, an fMRI machine detects tiny changes in metabolic function. This includes neuron activity and the minuscule changes in blood flow within the brain.  ... ' 

Predicting Eye Movement

 From Max Planck, worth a follow.

AI Predicts Eye Movements

Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Germany), November 8, 2021

Scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and Norway's Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience have developed software to predict eye movements from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, via artificial intelligence. The open source DeepMReye software can track individual viewing behavior without cameras by detecting patterns of eye movement during an MRI scan. The researchers have trained a neural network with their own and publicly available data from participants so DeepMReye can track eye movements even in data on which it has not been trained. The software can forecast when eyes are open or closed, and tracks eye movements even when the eyes stay closed.  .... '

Dopamine and Motivation Scan

We spend much time trying to understand how fmri scans could be used to judge potential engagement with product. Could this new Dopamine 'scan' be used to understand this more effectively?

 How dopamine drives brain activity
A specialized MRI sensor reveals the neurotransmitter’s influence on neural activity throughout the brain.

By Anne Trafton | MIT News Office

Using a specialized magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sensor, MIT neuroscientists have discovered how dopamine released deep within the brain influences both nearby and distant brain regions.

Dopamine plays many roles in the brain, most notably related to movement, motivation, and reinforcement of behavior. However, until now it has been difficult to study precisely how a flood of dopamine affects neural activity throughout the brain. Using their new technique, the MIT team found that dopamine appears to exert significant effects in two regions of the brain’s cortex, including the motor cortex.

“There has been a lot of work on the immediate cellular consequences of dopamine release, but here what we’re looking at are the consequences of what dopamine is doing on a more brain-wide level,” says Alan Jasanoff, an MIT professor of biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, and nuclear science and engineering. Jasanoff is also an associate member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the senior author of the study.

The MIT team found that in addition to the motor cortex, the remote brain area most affected by dopamine is the insular cortex. This region is critical for many cognitive functions related to perception of the body’s internal states, including physical and emotional states.

MIT postdoc Nan Li is the lead author of the study, which appears today in Nature.   ... "

Brain Scans Will Identify You

Not unexpected, with that much data.   But can it be done externally?  Methods are evolving in many kinds of biometrics.

Someday a Computer May Use Brain Scans to Identify You
The New York Times   By Gina Kolata

Mayo Clinic investigators said facial recognition software could be used to match photos of people to facial reconstructions derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of their heads. The University of Pennsylvania's Aaron Roth warned this technique eventually will be used to compromise stored medical data. The University of California, San Francisco's Michael Weiner said the Mayo Clinic's findings represent a threat to privacy, citing the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative as a potential target. The Initiative has MRI brain scans that include participants' faces, with identifying data removed; Weiner suggested attackers could match those MRIs to images of study subjects elsewhere .... "

First Brain MRI, 30 Years Ago

Heady Times: This Scientist Took The First Brain Selfie And Helped Revolutionize Medical Imaging
Early one October morning 30 years ago, GE scientist John Schenck was lying on a makeshift platform inside a GE lab in upstate New York. The itself lab was put together with special non-magnetic nails because surrounding his body was a large magnet, 30,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. Standing at his side were a handful of colleagues and a nurse. They were there to peer inside Schenck’s head and take the first magnetic resonance scan (MRI) of the brain.

Schenck is one of the GE scientists whose work is featured in Breakthrough, the new six-part science TV series developed by GE and National Geographic Channel. The episode, titled Decoding the Brain and directed by Brett Rattner, aired last Sunday. ... " 

Includes more details and Video link of program

More on the MRI tag from GE.

Big Oil Embraces Big Data

Last year discussed analytics with an energy services company.

Big Data and Big Oil: GE’s Systems and Sensors Drive Efficiencies for BP

With energy demands rising and reserves of oil and gas becoming more challenging to access, the productivity revolution promoted by the Industrial Internet is of vital importance to the oil and gas sector. By combining decades of manufacturing expertise with its rapidly expanding software engineering capability, GE is leading the big data revolution so that its customers can operate both more effectively and efficiently.

The Industrial Internet drives improved business outcomes for customers by harvesting the vast quantities of data produced by the GE machines they have installed, such as jet engines and MRI scanners, and feeding this into advanced analytical systems. By analyzing the data it is possible to pursue the ‘power of one percent’, a GE term which states that efficiencies of only one percent can make a dramatic impact across the $32.3 trillion of relevant sectors.  ... " 

Neuromarketing Practical Advances

A little late, but a good podcast on the topic:

Roger Dooley writes, introducting their podcast:

" ... In the past, Elissa Moses was Chief Research Officer with the early neuromarketing pioneer Emsense and has held several key positions with firms like Phillips and the ad agency Grey. Today, Elissa stresses the need for multiple technologies in market research studies. Listen in to learn how you too can learn how to use low-cost technology like surveys, implicit testing, and web-based facial coding, not just expensive fMRI brain scans, to your advantage. ... " 

Content Engineering and AI

Short piece by Omri Astel made me think about how ad content can be engineered based upon the audience.  Early steps have been taken in this direction.  For example, with Watson User Modeling. See this Description/Documentation.    And also some demonstrations.   We experimented with similar methods in the late 80s, managing the interactions of our brand equity.  Based on those early experiences, considerable progress has been made, but not yet to the level of what we would call intelligence.

Brain Marketing

In the HBR:  Using the activity of the brain to understand purchasing and marketing decisions.   We called this neuromarketing, but that term is never used in the article.   " ... Brain Marketing: Is the Product Worth the Price?  Are consumers more likely to buy if they see the price before the product, or vice versa? Uma Karmarkar and colleagues scan the brains of shoppers to find out. ... " .  

The approaches described uses fMRI, while today most experimentation by retailers and manufacturers use very different electroencephalogram methods.

" ... By the time you decided to buy a product, you knew both what you were buying and how much it cost. But was your decision affected by whether you saw the price or the product first? That's the question at the heart of new experimental research that uses neuroscience tools to shed light on how our brains make purchasing decisions. ... " 

Hypothalamus as Brain Operating System?

In Technology Review:
Coordinating sensory inputs, making sense of them, and coordinating response.  Have seen this mentioned before, but we should be cautious about using computer inspired models.  The article points to come recent models we reacted to in recent years.  Much work is still being done based on those models.  But how simplistic is that?  I like some metaphorical thoughts from the article: 

" .... In the same vein, Caltech’s Anderson points out that the public and scientific infatuation with functional MRI studies over the last two decades has created the impression that certain regions of the brain act as “centers” of neural activity—that the amygdala is the “center” of fear, for example, or the hypothalamus is the “center” of aggression. But he likens fMRI to looking down on a nighttime landscape from an airplane at 30,000 feet and “trying to figure out what is going on in a single town.” Optogenetics, by contrast, has provided a much more detailed view of that tiny subdivision of cells in the hypothalamus, and thus a much more complex and nuanced picture of aggression. Activating specific neurons in that little town can tip an organism to make war, but activating the neurons next door can nudge it to make love. ... " 

Neuromarketing and Consumer Behavior

Had not seen this site before.  Here it is looks at a number of neuromarketing tests and associated data.  Useful thoughts, in particular about the limitations of such work:

" ... The claim that electroencephalograms (EEG) and functional MRIs provide access into the "truth" — that is, the real motivation behind a consumer's behavior — is a tantalizing prospect. It could also be unsubstantiated and misleading if generalized. Inexpensive brain scanning technology has unleashed a flood of new data, but few marketers are equipped with the tools and expertise to analyze it.

When there's hype, it often pays to be skeptical. However, it would be shortsighted to dismiss neuromarketing's potential power. Brain scans can be a source of useful information, provided that you know how to analyze and apply the data. ... " 

Kinect Launching a Surgical Revolution

Manipulating virtual images in no touch environments:

 " .... virtual images can be difficult to retrieve and manipulate. A surgeon can't use a mouse or keyboard, because they are unsterile and pose a risk of infection. A surgeon can give instructions to someone else, who then can operate a mouse or keyboard, but the surgeon must break concentration to say, "Right ... right ... up a little ... OK."

" ... Now, a team at Microsoft Research Cambridge consisting of social scientists, computer scientists, and designers has used the Kinect for Windows hardware and SDK to simplify this process. It enables doctors to use simple hand gestures to change, move, or zoom in on CT scans, MRIs, and other medical images. In initial development, the Kinect for Windows-based system has thrilled surgeons who have seen it and who believe it could help make surgery faster and more accurate. 

The hope is that these systems will deliver better outcomes to patients when fully field-tested and approved.  The project, called Touchless Interaction in Medical Imaging, to bring Kinect for Windows into surgical suites has been guided by Helena Mentis, a Philadelphia native and a postdoctoral researcher with the Socio-Digital Systems group at the Cambridge lab. ... " 

Emotions Based on Brain Activity

Out of Carnegie Mellon, new research about how brain activities link to emotions.    Further research into nonconscious activity of the brain.   Depends strongly on how emotions are defined, and how the activity in areas of the brain are measured.   The machine learning aspects are novel.   " ... The method combines functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and machine learning to measure brain signals to accurately read emotions in individuals.  "This research introduces a new method with potential to identify emotions without relying on people's ability to self-report," says CMU professor Karim Kassam.  ... " 

Brainwashed, the Overreach of Neuroscience

Just received, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience  by  Sally Satel  and Scott O. Lilienfeld  I was interviewed for this book and read an early version.  Will read and remark on in full soon.   Their description:  " ... In recent years, the advent of MRI technology seems to have unlocked the secrets of the human mind, revealing the sources of our deepest desires, intentions, and fears. As renowned psychiatrist and scholar Sally Satel and psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld demonstrate in Brainwashed, however, the explanatory power of brain scans in particular and neuroscience more generally has been vastly overestimated. Although acknowledging its tremendous potential, the authors argue that the overzealous application of the burgeoning field of brain science has put innocent people in jail, prevented addicts from healing themselves, and undermined notions of free will and responsibility.  A provocative challenge to the use and abuse of a seductive science, Brainwashed offers an essential corrective to determinist explanations of human behavior.... " 

Updated: See also a balanced WSJ review.

Predicting Images in Dreams

In the Smithsonian Magazine.  Apparently we can now predict to some degree what people are seeing with a combination of fMRI and EEG sensors.  I observed a number of fMRI sessions that sought to determine consumer reactions to commercials.  Now can we reverse adapt the dreaming idea to load people with dreams of our products?  Hopefully not.  " ... Although it’s only capable of relatively crude predictions, the system demonstrates something surprising: Our dreams might seem like subjective, private experiences, but they produce objective, consistent pieces of data that can be analyzed by others. The researchers say this work could be an initial foray into scientific dream analysis, eventually allowing more sophisticated dream interpretation during deeper stages of sleep.... " 

True Impact Neuromarketing

Recently connected with Diana Lucaci of True Impact Marketing in Toronto. A Canadian firm that does neuromarketing studies.   I was impressed with their list of clients and analytical perception of the problem.

See also, their blog for examples.

" ... Our company is a leading Neuromarketing firm in Canada, with two main businesses segments: Strategy and Research. Neuromarketing Strategy involves alignment with your marketing and corporate objectives, identifying the gap in customer understanding, and delivering actionable insights of customer emotional engagement.   Neuromarketing Research is conducted with a specific, target audience and studies communications that appeal to any of the 5 senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Research grade equipment and protocols are used to ensure the highest level of ethical standards. Our technologies of choice include functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Eye-Tracking.... " 

Up again, Learning Again.

I have many close watchers who have noticed this blog has been dark for several days.  This is the first time this happened for years.   A number of people noticed and expressed concern. It turns out I was attending the Recordedfuture conference and a consulting meeting with a US Inspector General. I was struck seriously ill and due to heroism by several people  I came through this .  I remain for now at John Hopkins /NIH  where i have learned new things about health data and MRI images. plan to continue to provide information in this place.  More too about my perilous experience and it's place in mobile health delivery  to come. Every life experience is a learning experience.

Brain Responses and Neuroeconomics

In Science Daily:     Neuroeconomics: Studying Brain Responses Gives Marketers Increased Ability to Predict How People Make Decisions

ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is typically used by medical professionals to visualize the internal structures of the human body. By using MRI to study the brain, Ming Hsu, assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, found a method to characterize how the different regions of the brain function in concert to enable people to anticipate and respond to competitors' behavior .... " 

Twenty Year Look at fMRI

A view of the only twenty year history of fMIRI scanning of the brain.