Bits: Brain-computer interface update; Insane new electric motor; Poll data about the indictments

Wired reports about artificial intelligence-powered brain reading technology that is returning the power of speech to paralyzed two different patients. Wired writes:

PARALYSIS HAD ROBBED the two women of their ability to speak. For one, the cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a disease that affects the motor neurons. The other had suffered a stroke in her brain stem. Though they can’t enunciate clearly, they remember how to formulate words.

Now, after volunteering to receive brain implants, both are able to communicate through a computer at a speed approaching the tempo of normal conversation. By parsing the neural activity associated with the facial movements involved in talking, the devices decode their intended speech at a rate of 62 and 78 words per minute, respectively—several times faster than the previous record. 

While slower than the roughly 160-word-per-minute rate of natural conversation among English speakers, scientists say it’s an exciting step toward restoring real-time speech using a brain-computer interface, or BCI. “It is getting close to being used in everyday life,” says Marc Slutzky, a neurologist at Northwestern University who wasn’t involved in the new studies.  

In the Stanford study, researchers developed a BCI that uses the Utah array, a tiny square sensor that looks like a hairbrush with 64 needle-like bristles. Each is tipped with an electrode, and together they collect the activity of individual neurons. Researchers then trained an artificial neural network to decode brain activity and translate it into words displayed on a screen.

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The first electric motor was made and used in 1832. So by now one would think that it has been refined about as much as possible. One would be wrong. Using quantum mechanics stuff, quarks, physics stuff and both radial and axial magnetic fields, a car nut in Sweden has invented a pipsqueak size electric motor that puts out an insane amount of power and torque. 

Smashing down on the accelerator in a car with three or four of these runts built in will tear a person's head clean off, unless of course (safety tip) your head rest keeps it from detaching. This video gives a general audience description of the little bugger.

 

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Politico writes:

A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll provides some bad news for Trump: Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, the cascading indictments are likely to take a toll on his general election prospects.

He looks as bad as he actually is