Mediaboss Marketing

Founded in 2008 by entrepreneur brothers Chintan and Harit Soni at IIM Ahmedabad's Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship in India, Ecolibrium provides expert advisory as well as technology-driven sustainability solutions to enable businesses in commercial and industrial real estate to reduce energy consumption and ultimately achieve their net zero carbon ambitions.

Relocating its global headquarters to London, Ecolibrium has raised $5m in a pre-Series A funding round as it looks to expand its international footprint to the UK. The round was co-led by Amit Bhatia's Swordfish Investments and Shravin Bharti Mittal's Unbound venture capital firm, alongside several strategic investors.

Ecolibrium launches in the UK today having already signed its first commercial contract with Integral, JLL's UK engineering and facilities service business.

The fundraising and UK expansion builds on Ecolibrium's considerable success in Asia Pacific, where its technology is being used across 50 million sq ft by more than 150 companies including Amazon, Fiat, Honeywell, Thomson Reuters, Tata Power, and the Delhi Metro. An annual reduction of 5-15% in carbon footprint has been achieved to date by companies which have deployed Ecolibrium's technology.

Ecolibrium has also strengthened its senior UK management team, as it prepares to roll-out its green platform across the UK, by hiring facilities and asset management veteran Yash Kapila as its new head of commercial real estate. Kapila previously held senior leadership positions with JLL across APAC and EMEA regions.

Introducing SmartSense

At the heart of Ecolibrium's offer is its sustainability-led technology product SmartSense, which assimilates thousands of internet of things (IoT) data points from across a facility's entire energy infrastructure.

This information is then channelled through Ecolibrium's proprietary machine learning algorithms, which have been developed over 10 years by their in-house subject matter experts. Customers can visualise the data through a bespoke user interface that provides actionable insights and a blueprint for achieving operational excellence, sustainability targets, and healthy buildings.

This connected infrastructure generates a granular view of an asset's carbon footprint, unlocking inefficiencies and empowering smart decision-making, while driving a programme of continuous improvement to deliver empirical and tangible sustainability and productivity gains.

Preparing for future regulation

Quality environmental data and proof points are also providing a distinct business advantage at this time of increasing regulatory requirements that require corporates to disclose ESG and sustainability performance. Ecolibrium will work closely with customers to lead the way in shaping their ESG governance.

According to Deloitte, with a minimum Grade B Energy Performance Certification (EPC) requirement anticipated by 2030, 80% of London office stock will need to be upgraded an equivalent of 15 million sq ft per annum.

Research from the World Economic Forumhas found that the built environment is responsible for 40% of global energy consumption and 33% of greenhouse gas emissions, with one-fifth of the world's largest 2,000 companies adopting net zero strategies by 2050 or earlier. Technology holds the key to meeting this challenge, with Ecolibrium and other sustainability-focused changemakers leading the decarbonisation drive.

Chintan Soni, Chief Executive Officer at Ecolibrium, said:"Our mission is to create a balance between people, planet and profit and our technology addresses each of these objectives, leading businesses to sustainable prosperity. There is no doubt the world is facing a climate emergency, and we must act now to decarbonise and protect our planet for future generations.

"By using our proprietary machine learning-led technology and deep in-house expertise, Ecolibrium can help commercial and industrial real estate owners to deliver against ESG objectives, as companies awaken to the fact that urgent action must be taken to reduce emissions and achieve net zero carbon targets in the built environment.

"Our goal is to partner with companies and coach them to work smarter, make critical decisions more quickly and consume less. And, by doing this at scale, Ecolibrium will make a significant impact on the carbon footprint of commercial and industrial assets, globally."

The UK expansion has been supported by the Department for International Trade's Global Entrepreneur Programme. The programme has provided invaluable assistance in setting up Ecolibrium's London headquarters and scaling in the UK market.

In turn, Ecolibrium is supporting the growth of UK innovation, promoting green job creation, and providing tangible economic benefits, as part of the country's wider transition to a more sustainable future.

Minister for Investment Lord Grimstone said: "Tackling climate change is crucial in our quest for a cleaner and green future, something investment will play an important part in.

"That's why I'm pleased to see Ecolibrium's expansion to the UK. Not only will the investment provide a revolutionary sustainability solution to reduce carbon emissions across various sectors, it is a continued sign of the UK as a leading inward investment destination, with innovation and expertise in our arsenal".

About Ecolibrium

Ecolibrium is a machine learning-led decarbonisation platform balancing people, planet and profit to deliver sustainable prosperity for businesses.

Founded in 2008 by entrepreneur brothers Chintan and Harit Soni, Ecolibrium provides expert advisory as well as technology-driven sustainability solutions to enable commercial and industrial real estate owners to reduce energy consumption and ultimately achieve their net zero carbon ambitions.

Ecolibrium's flagship technology product SmartSense is currently being used across 50 million sq ft by more than 150 companies including JLL, Amazon, Fiat, Honeywell, Thomson Reuters, Tata Power, and the Delhi Metro. SmartSense collects real-time information on assets, operational data and critical metrics using internet of things (IoT) technology. This intelligence is then channelled through Ecolibrium's proprietary machine learning algorithms to visualise data and provide actionable insights to help companies make transformative changes to their sustainability goals.

For more information, visit: http://www.ecolibrium.io

For press enquiries, contact: FTI Consulting: [emailprotected], +44 (0) 2037271000

Photo -https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1837227/Ecolibrium_Yash_Kapila_and_Chintan_Soni.jpg

SOURCE Ecolibrium

See the original post:
Machine learning-led decarbonisation platform Ecolibrium launches in the UK - PR Newswire

Raman, A. P., Anoma, M. A., Zhu, L., Rephaeli, E. & Fan, S. Passive radiative cooling below ambient air temperature under direct sunlight. Nature 515, 540544 (2014).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Zhai, Y. et al. Scalable-manufactured randomized glass-polymer hybrid metamaterial for daytime radiative cooling. Science 355, 10621066 (2017).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Li, P. et al. Large-scale nanophotonic solar selective absorbers for high-efficiency solar thermal energy conversion. Adv. Mater. 27, 45854591 (2015).

CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Kumar, R. & Rosen, M. A. Thermal performance of integrated collector storage solar water heater with corrugated absorber surface. Appl. Therm. Eng. 30, 17641768 (2010).

Article Google Scholar

Planck, M. The Theory of Heat Radiation (P. Blakinstons Son & Co., 1914).

MATH Google Scholar

Zhu, J., Hsu, C. M., Yu, Z., Fan, S. & Cui, Y. Nanodome solar cells with efficient light management and self-cleaning. Nano Lett. 10, 19791984 (2010).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Zhou, L., Yu, X. & Zhu, J. Metal-core/semiconductor-shell nanocones for broadband solar absorption enhancement. Nano Lett. 14, 10931098 (2014).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Lee, B. J., Chen, Y. B., Han, S., Chiu, F. C. & Lee, H. J. Wavelength-selective solar thermal absorber with two-dimensional nickel gratings. J. Heat Transfer 136, 17 (2014).

Google Scholar

Yin, X., Yang, R., Tan, G. & Fan, S. Terrestrial radiative cooling: Using the cold universe as a renewable and sustainable energy source. Science 370, 786791 (2020).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Nie, X. et al. Cool white polymer coatings based on glass bubbles for buildings. Sci. Rep. 10, 110 (2020).

ADS Article CAS Google Scholar

Mandal, J. et al. Hierarchically porous polymer coatings for highly efficient passive daytime radiative cooling. Science 362, 315319 (2018).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Zhang, H. et al. Biologically inspired flexible photonic films for efficient passive radiative cooling. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 117, 202001802 (2020).

Google Scholar

Krishna, A. et al. Ultraviolet to mid-infrared emissivity control by mechanically reconfigurable graphene. Nano Lett. 19, 50865092 (2019).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Sala-Casanovas, M., Krishna, A., Yu, Z. & Lee, J. Bio-inspired stretchable selective emitters based on corrugated nickel for personal thermal management. Nanoscale Microscale Thermophys. Eng. 23, 173187 (2019).

ADS CAS Article Google Scholar

Sullivan, J., Yu, Z. & Lee, J. Optical analysis and optimization of micropyramid texture for thermal radiation control. Nanoscale Microscale Thermophys. Eng. https://doi.org/10.1080/15567265.2021.1958960 (2021).

Article Google Scholar

Campbell, P. & Green, M. A. Light trapping properties of pyramidally textured surfaces. J. Appl. Phys. 62, 243249 (1987).

ADS Article Google Scholar

Leon, J. J. D., Hiszpanski, A. M., Bond, T. C. & Kuntz, J. D. Design rules for tailoring antireflection properties of hierarchical optical structures. Adv. Opt. Mater. 5, 18 (2017).

Google Scholar

Zhang, T. et al. Black silicon with self-cleaning surface prepared by wetting processes. Nanoscale Res. Lett. 8, 15 (2013).

ADS CAS Article Google Scholar

Liu, Y. et al. Hierarchical robust textured structures for large scale self-cleaning black silicon solar cells. Nano Energy 3, 127133 (2014).

CAS Article Google Scholar

Dimitrov, D. Z. & Du, C. H. Crystalline silicon solar cells with micro/nano texture. Appl. Surf. Sci. 266, 14 (2013).

ADS CAS Article Google Scholar

Peter Amalathas, A. & Alkaisi, M. M. Efficient light trapping nanopyramid structures for solar cells patterned using UV nanoimprint lithography. Mater. Sci. Semicond. Process. 57, 5458 (2017).

Article CAS Google Scholar

Mavrokefalos, A., Han, S. E., Yerci, S., Branham, M. S. & Chen, G. Efficient light trapping in inverted nanopyramid thin crystalline silicon membranes for solar cell applications. Nano Lett. 12, 27922796 (2012).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Rahman, T., Navarro-Ca, M. & Fobelets, K. High density micro-pyramids with silicon nanowire array for photovoltaic applications. Nanotechnology 25, 485202 (2014).

PubMed Article CAS Google Scholar

Singh, P. et al. Fabrication of vertical silicon nanowire arrays on three-dimensional micro-pyramid-based silicon substrate. J. Mater. Sci. 50, 66316641 (2015).

ADS CAS Article Google Scholar

Zhu, J. et al. Optical absorption enhancement in amorphous silicon nanowire and nanocone arrays. Nano Lett. 9, 279282 (2009).

ADS PubMed Article CAS Google Scholar

Wei, W. R. et al. Above-11%-efficiency organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells with omnidirectional harvesting characteristics by employing hierarchical photon-trapping structures. Nano Lett. 13, 36583663 (2013).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Peng, Y. J., Huang, H. X. & Xie, H. Rapid fabrication of antireflective pyramid structure on polystyrene film used as protective layer of solar cell. Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 171, 98105 (2017).

CAS Article Google Scholar

Sai, H., Yugami, H., Kanamori, Y. & Hane, K. Solar selective absorbers based on two-dimensional W surface gratings with submicron periods for high-temperature photothermal conversion. Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 79, 3549 (2003).

CAS Article Google Scholar

Deinega, A., Valuev, I., Potapkin, B. & Lozovik, Y. Minimizing light reflection from dielectric textured surfaces. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 28, 770 (2011).

ADS Article Google Scholar

Shore, K. A. Numerical methods in photonics, by Andrei V. Lavrinenko, Jesper Laegsgaard, Niles Gregersen, Frank Schmidt, and Thomas Sondergaard. Contemporary Physics vol. 57 (2016).

Malkiel, I. et al. Plasmonic nanostructure design and characterization via deep learning. Light Sci. Appl. 7, 18 (2018).

CAS Article Google Scholar

Bojarski, M. et al. End to End Learning for Self-Driving Cars. 19 (2016).

Hinton, G. et al. Deep neural networks for acoustic modeling in speech recognition: The shared views of four research groups. IEEE Signal Process. Mag. 29, 1617 (2012).

Article Google Scholar

Spantideas, S. T., Giannopoulos, A. E., Kapsalis, N. C. & Capsalis, C. N. A deep learning method for modeling the magnetic signature of spacecraft equipment using multiple magnetic dipoles. IEEE Magn. Lett. 12, 15 (2021).

Article Google Scholar

Xiong, Y., Guo, L., Tian, D., Zhang, Y. & Liu, C. Intelligent optimization strategy based on statistical machine learning for spacecraft thermal design. IEEE Access 8, 204268204282 (2020).

Article Google Scholar

Zhang, C. A Statistical Machine Learning Based Modeling and Exploration Framework for Run-Time Cross-Stack Energy Optimization (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2013).

Book Google Scholar

Zhu, W. et al. Optimization of the thermophysical properties of the thermal barrier coating materials based on GA-SVR machine learning method: Illustrated with ZrO2doped DyTaO4system. Mater. Res. Express 8, 125503 (2021).

ADS CAS Article Google Scholar

Zhang, T. et al. Machine learning and evolutionary algorithm studies of graphene metamaterials for optimized plasmon-induced transparency. Opt. Express 28, 18899 (2020).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Li, X., Shu, J., Gu, W. & Gao, L. Deep neural network for plasmonic sensor modeling. Opt. Mater. Express 9, 3857 (2019).

ADS CAS Article Google Scholar

Baxter, J. et al. Plasmonic colours predicted by deep learning. Sci. Rep. 9, 119 (2019).

ADS Article CAS Google Scholar

He, J., He, C., Zheng, C., Wang, Q. & Ye, J. Plasmonic nanoparticle simulations and inverse design using machine learning. Nanoscale 11, 1744417459 (2019).

CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Sajedian, I., Kim, J. & Rho, J. Finding the optical properties of plasmonic structures by image processing using a combination of convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks. Microsyst. Nanoeng. 5, 18 (2019).

Article Google Scholar

Han, S., Shin, J. H., Jung, P. H., Lee, H. & Lee, B. J. Broadband solar thermal absorber based on optical metamaterials for high-temperature applications. Adv. Opt. Mater. 4, 12651273 (2016).

CAS Article Google Scholar

Seo, J. et al. Design of a broadband solar thermal absorber using a deep neural network and experimental demonstration of its performance. Sci. Rep. 9, 19 (2019).

ADS Article CAS Google Scholar

Nadell, C. C., Huang, B., Malof, J. M. & Padilla, W. J. Deep learning for accelerated all-dielectric metasurface design. Opt. Express 27, 27523 (2019).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Deppe, T. & Munday, J. Nighttime photovoltaic cells: Electrical power generation by optically coupling with deep space. ACS Photon. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.9b00679 (2019).

Article Google Scholar

Ma, W., Cheng, F. & Liu, Y. Deep-learning-enabled on-demand design of chiral metamaterials. ACS Nano 12, 63266334 (2018).

CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Li, Y. et al. Self-learning perfect optical chirality via a deep neural network. Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 16 (2019).

CAS Google Scholar

Balin, I., Garmider, V., Long, Y. & Abdulhalim, I. Training artificial neural network for optimization of nanostructured VO2-based smart window performance. Opt. Express 27, A1030 (2019).

ADS CAS PubMed Article Google Scholar

Elzouka, M., Yang, C., Albert, A., Prasher, R. S. & Lubner, S. D. Interpretable forward and inverse design of particle spectral emissivity using common machine-learning models. Cell Rep. Phys. Sci. 1, 100259 (2020).

Article Google Scholar

Peurifoy, J. et al. Nanophotonic particle simulation and inverse design using artificial neural networks. arXiv 18 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2289195.

An, S. et al. A Deep learning approach for objective-driven all-dielectric metasurface design. ACS Photon. 6, 31963207 (2019).

See the rest here:
Deep learning based analysis of microstructured materials for thermal radiation control | Scientific Reports - Nature.com

Youre at the wheel of your car but youre exhausted. Your shoulders start to sag, your neck begins to droop, your eyelids slide down. As your head pitches forward, you swerve off the road and speed through a field, crashing into a tree.

But what if your cars monitoring system recognised the tell-tale signs of drowsiness and prompted you to pull off the road and park instead? The European Commission has legislated that from this year, new vehicles be fitted with systems to catch distracted and sleepy drivers to help avert accidents. Now a number of startups are training artificial intelligence systems to recognise the giveaways in our facial expressions and body language.

These companies are taking a novel approach for the field of AI. Instead of filming thousands of real-life drivers falling asleep and feeding that information into a deep-learning model to learn the signs of drowsiness, theyre creating millions of fake human avatars to re-enact the sleepy signals.

Big data defines the field of AI for a reason. To train deep learning algorithms accurately, the models need to have a multitude of data points. That creates problems for a task such as recognising a person falling asleep at the wheel, which would be difficult and time-consuming to film happening in thousands of cars. Instead, companies have begun building virtual datasets.

Synthesis AI and Datagen are two companies using full-body 3D scans, including detailed face scans, and motion data captured by sensors placed all over the body, to gather raw data from real people. This data is fed through algorithms that tweak various dimensions many times over to create millions of 3D representations of humans, resembling characters in a video game, engaging in different behaviours across a variety of simulations.

In the case of someone falling asleep at the wheel, they might film a human performer falling asleep and combine it with motion capture, 3D animations and other techniques used to create video games and animated movies, to build the desired simulation. You can map [the target behaviour] across thousands of different body types, different angles, different lighting, and add variability into the movement as well, says Yashar Behzadi, CEO of Synthesis AI.

Using synthetic data cuts out a lot of the messiness of the more traditional way to train deep learning algorithms. Typically, companies would have to amass a vast collection of real-life footage and low-paid workers would painstakingly label each of the clips. These would be fed into the model, which would learn how to recognise the behaviours.

The big sell for the synthetic data approach is that its quicker and cheaper by a wide margin. But these companies also claim it can help tackle the bias that creates a huge headache for AI developers. Its well documented that some AI facial recognition software is poor at recognising and correctly identifying particular demographic groups. This tends to be because these groups are underrepresented in the training data, meaning the software is more likely to misidentify these people.

Niharika Jain, a software engineer and expert in gender and racial bias in generative machine learning, highlights the notorious example of Nikon Coolpixs blink detection feature, which, because the training data included a majority of white faces, disproportionately judged Asian faces to be blinking. A good driver-monitoring system must avoid misidentifying members of a certain demographic as asleep more often than others, she says.

The typical response to this problem is to gather more data from the underrepresented groups in real-life settings. But companies such as Datagen say this is no longer necessary. The company can simply create more faces from the underrepresented groups, meaning theyll make up a bigger proportion of the final dataset. Real 3D face scan data from thousands of people is whipped up into millions of AI composites. Theres no bias baked into the data; you have full control of the age, gender and ethnicity of the people that youre generating, says Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Datagen. The creepy faces that emerge dont look like real people, but the company claims that theyre similar enough to teach AI systems how to respond to real people in similar scenarios.

There is, however, some debate over whether synthetic data can really eliminate bias. Bernease Herman, a data scientist at the University of Washington eScience Institute, says that although synthetic data can improve the robustness of facial recognition models on underrepresented groups, she does not believe that synthetic data alone can close the gap between the performance on those groups and others. Although the companies sometimes publish academic papers showcasing how their algorithms work, the algorithms themselves are proprietary, so researchers cannot independently evaluate them.

In areas such as virtual reality, as well as robotics, where 3D mapping is important, synthetic data companies argue it could actually be preferable to train AI on simulations, especially as 3D modelling, visual effects and gaming technologies improve. Its only a matter of time until you can create these virtual worlds and train your systems completely in a simulation, says Behzadi.

This kind of thinking is gaining ground in the autonomous vehicle industry, where synthetic data is becoming instrumental in teaching self-driving vehicles AI how to navigate the road. The traditional approach filming hours of driving footage and feeding this into a deep learning model was enough to get cars relatively good at navigating roads. But the issue vexing the industry is how to get cars to reliably handle what are known as edge cases events that are rare enough that they dont appear much in millions of hours of training data. For example, a child or dog running into the road, complicated roadworks or even some traffic cones placed in an unexpected position, which was enough to stump a driverless Waymo vehicle in Arizona in 2021.

With synthetic data, companies can create endless variations of scenarios in virtual worlds that rarely happen in the real world. Instead of waiting millions more miles to accumulate more examples, they can artificially generate as many examples as they need of the edge case for training and testing, says Phil Koopman, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

AV companies such as Waymo, Cruise and Wayve are increasingly relying on real-life data combined with simulated driving in virtual worlds. Waymo has created a simulated world using AI and sensor data collected from its self-driving vehicles, complete with artificial raindrops and solar glare. It uses this to train vehicles on normal driving situations, as well as the trickier edge cases. In 2021, Waymo told the Verge that it had simulated 15bn miles of driving, versus a mere 20m miles of real driving.

An added benefit to testing autonomous vehicles out in virtual worlds first is minimising the chance of very real accidents. A large reason self-driving is at the forefront of a lot of the synthetic data stuff is fault tolerance, says Herman. A self-driving car making a mistake 1% of the time, or even 0.01% of the time, is probably too much.

In 2017, Volvos self-driving technology, which had been taught how to respond to large North American animals such as deer, was baffled when encountering kangaroos for the first time in Australia. If a simulator doesnt know about kangaroos, no amount of simulation will create one until it is seen in testing and designers figure out how to add it, says Koopman. For Aaron Roth, professor of computer and cognitive science at the University of Pennsylvania, the challenge will be to create synthetic data that is indistinguishable from real data. He thinks it is plausible that were at that point for face data, as computers can now generate photorealistic images of faces. But for a lot of other things, which may or may not include kangaroos I dont think that were there yet.

Excerpt from:
Is fake data the real deal when training algorithms? - The Guardian

Researchers have created a device that can read and decipher brain signals, allowing amputees to control the arm using only their thoughts.

A University of Minnesota research team has made mind-reading possible through the use of electronics and AI.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have created a system that enables amputees to operate a robotic arm using their brain impulses rather than their muscles. This new technology is more precise and less intrusive than previous methods.

The majority of commercial prosthetic limbs now on the market are controlled by the shoulders or chest using a wire and harness system. More sophisticated models employ sensors to detect small muscle movements in the patients natural limb above the prosthetic. Both options, however, can be difficult for amputees to learn how to use and are sometimes unhelpful.

University of Minnesota Department of Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Zhi Yang shakes hands with research participant Cameron Slavens, who tested out the researchers robotic arm system. With the help of industry collaborators, the researchers have developed a way to tap into a patients brain signals through a neural chip implanted in the arm, effectively reading the patients mind and opening the door for less invasive alternatives to brain surgeries. Credit: Neuroelectronics Lab, University of Minnesota

The Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota with the help of industrial collaborators has developed a tiny, implantable device that connects to the peripheral nerve in the arm of a person. The technology, when coupled with a robotic arm and an artificial intelligence computer, can detect and decipher brain impulses, enabling upper limb amputees to move the arm only with their thoughts.

The researchers most recent paper was published in the Journal of Neural Engineering, a peer-reviewed scientific journal for the interdisciplinary field of neural engineering.

The University of Minnesota-led teams technology allows research participant Cameron Slavens to move a robotic arm using only his thoughts. Credit: Eve Daniels

Its a lot more intuitive than any commercial system out there, said Jules Anh Tuan Nguyen, a postdoctoral researcher and University of Minnesota Twin Cities biomedical engineering Ph.D. graduate. With other commercial prosthetic systems, when amputees want to move a finger, they dont actually think about moving a finger. Theyre trying to activate the muscles in their arm, since thats what the system reads. Because of that, these systems require a lot of learning and practice. For our technology, because we interpret the nerve signal directly, it knows the patients intention. If they want to move a finger, all they have to do is think about moving that finger.

Nguyen has been working on this research for about 10 years with the University of Minnesotas Department of Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Zhi Yang and was one of the key developers of the neural chip technology.

When combined with an artificial intelligence computer and the above robotic arm, the University of Minnesota researchers neural chip can read and interpret brain signals, allowing upper limb amputees to control the arm using only their thoughts. Credit: Neuroelectronics Lab, University of Minnesota

The project began in 2012 when Edward Keefer, an industry neuroscientist and CEO of Nerves, Incorporated, approached Yang about creating a nerve implant that could benefit amputees. The pair received funding from the U.S. governments Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and have since conducted several successful clinical trials with real amputees.

The researchers also worked with the University of Minnesota Technology Commercialization office to form a startup called Fasikla play on the word fascicle which refers to a bundle of nerve fibersto commercialize the technology.

The fact that we can impact real people and one day improve the lives of human patients is really important, Nguyen said. Its fun getting to develop new technologies, but if youre just doing experiments in a lab, it doesnt directly impact anyone. Thats why we want to be at the University of Minnesota, involving ourselves in clinical trials. For the past three or four years, Ive had the privilege of working with several human patients. I can get really emotional when I can help them move their finger or help them do something that they didnt think was possible before.

A big part of what makes the system work so well compared to similar technologies is the incorporation of artificial intelligence, which uses machine learning to help interpret the signals from the nerve.

Artificial intelligence has the tremendous capability to help explain a lot of relationships, Yang said. This technology allows us to record human data, nerve data, accurately. With that kind of nerve data, the AI system can fill in the gaps and determine whats going on. Thats a really big thing, to be able to combine this new chip technology with AI. It can help answer a lot of questions we couldnt answer before.

The technology has benefits not only for amputees but for other patients as well who suffer from neurological disorders and chronic pain. Yang sees a future where invasive brain surgeries will no longer be needed and brain signals can be accessed through the peripheral nerve instead.

Plus, the implantable chip has applications that go beyond medicine.

Right now, the system requires wires that come through the skin to connect to the exterior AI interface and robotic arm. But, if the chip could connect remotely to any computer, it would give humans the ability to control their personal devicesa car or phone, for examplewith their minds.

Some of these things are actually happening. A lot of research is moving from whats in the so-called fantasy category into the scientific category, Yang said. This technology was designed for amputees for sure, but if you talk about its true potential, this could be applicable to all of us.

In addition to Nguyen, Yang, and Keefer, other collaborators on this project include Associate Professor Catherine Qi Zhao and researcher Ming Jiang from the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science and Engineering; Professor Jonathan Cheng from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; and all group members of Yangs Neuroelectronics Lab in the University of Minnesotas Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Reference: A portable, self-contained neuroprosthetic hand with deep learning-based finger control by Anh Tuan Nguyen, Markus W Drealan, Diu Khue Luu, Ming Jiang, Jian Xu, Jonathan Cheng, Qi Zhao, Edward W Keefer and Zhi Yang, 11 October 2021, Journal of Neural Engineering.DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/ac2a8d

Read the original here:
Making Mind Reading Possible: Invention Allows Amputees To Control a Robotic Arm With Their Mind - SciTechDaily

President Joe Biden capped off a rocky Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last week with a major declaration on migration also signed by 18 Latin American countries and Canada, with hundreds of millions of dollars set to be disbursed to help integrate migrants into countries other than the United States. But the deals dearth of initiatives addressing northward migration is unlikely to burnish Bidens credibility on the topic ahead of Novembers midterms and the 2024 presidential election, instead kicking the can down the road when it comes to dealing with the countries of origin of many U.S.-bound migrants.

The administration appears stuck in a bind, experts say, as maintaining the status quo on regional migration means Democratic candidates may get hammered for not reducing border crossings, but most solutions also constitute politically unpalatable choices.

Biden went into the summit with a spate of unresolved problems but little political capital to spend: Voters have been consistently unimpressed with his handling of immigration since he came to office, and the White House has struggled to find a balance of policies that fulfill legal and humanitarian obligations to migrants a key desire of progressives without inviting backlash from the broader electorate.

The summit did not end without results: As part of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration, the United States committed to taking 20,000 refugees from across Latin America over the next two fiscal years, as well as expanding temporary work visa programs. But the declaration was notably most expansive on the provision of pathways to legal status for migrants in Mexico, Canada, Spain, Guatemala and Belize rather than the United States, where arrivals on the southern border in March and April were at a 22-year high of more than 200,000 people a month.

That was hardly a surprise, according to Brian Winter, the vice president for policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas and editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly.

At the end of the day, a declaration coming from a hotel conference center in Los Angeles isnt going to do much to address migration itself, Winter said, explaining that the reforms needed to fix the U.S. immigration system long ago fell victim to Washington deadlock.

This is a United States that cant even do the easy stuff anymore, he said. Its not a mystery what commonsense immigration reform would look like and we have pluralities of Americans who support things like a pathway to citizenship for the people who are already here. But we also have pluralities who support background checks for guns and we cant get that done either.

As if to underscore how solvable migration can be if the political will exists, the Los Angeles Declaration did include status regularization and hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to resettle millions of migrants just not the ones who tend to end up in the United States.

Colombia, for instance, agreed to regularize the status of 1.5 million Venezuelan refugees. Ecuador also committed to issue a similar decree and Costa Rica renewed temporary protected status for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans, with the U.S. government agreeing to spend $314 million to help integrate Venezuelans in 17 countries.

We would not have said this five years ago, but suddenly most countries in the hemisphere have large numbers of immigrants thanks to Venezuelas collapse, noted Andrew Selee, president of the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. And so for the first time, you have a bunch of countries eager to talk about migration and to create some sort of order out of the large movements of people who are passing through without much control.

The United States itself, though, has found less room for similar maneuvers, with the prospect of regularizing millions of undocumented migrants and welcoming millions more asylum seekers into the country a political nonstarter for Biden.In fact, even the presidents most modest efforts to reform migration have proven fraught.

Morning Consult surveys show that Bidens two least popular policy moves have been raising the cap on the number of refugees admitted annually and the attempt to revoke Title 42, a pandemic-era measure that uses public health law to expel asylum seekers who would otherwise remain in the United States while their cases are adjudicated.

Both measures would only benefit legal migrants, but Alexandra Filindra, an associate professor of political science at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said any perception that a policy would lead to increased refugee arrivals from Latin America would be exploited in U.S. elections.

White Americans are reluctant to accept the entry and especially the relocation close to them of nonwhite refugees and non-Christian refugees, especially when it involves some sort of material burden, Filindra said. For a long time in political science, we have known that negative outgroup attitudes, whether they relate to African Americans or Latinos or Muslims, are big predictors of opposition to inclusive immigration programs. And conversely, nativism and xenophobia are big predictors of white American support for restrictive immigration policies.

Thats why, critics say, the Biden administration has continued the Trump-era strategy of pushing border enforcement further south, such as by asking Mexico and Guatemala to stop migrants hundreds of miles from U.S. territory and process or deport them, instead of prioritizing reform at home.

The strategy from day one has been, See what we can get Latin American countries to take off our hands, without giving them much to make it effective, said David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Washington-based Cato Institute. Its not like it was under the Trump administration, where relations were totally adversarial, but the strategy has been the same the entire time, just using these countries as an extension of the U.S. Border Patrol.

The early interdiction strategy that Bier mentioned does little to address the root causes of or to reduce northward migration, as the record numbers of southern border arrivals this year shows, and the factors pushing Latin Americans from their homes remain many.

Climate change has devastated farmers in Central America, decimating the harvest of key crops in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador the so-called Northern Triangle, from which more than 2 million people have fled since 2014. To make matters worse, beginning in 2006, more effective drug enforcement in Mexico began moving cartel traffic into the Northern Triangle. Flush with funds from the lucrative U.S. drug market, organized crime took control over urban areas, preying upon government institutions weakened by an array of internal and external wars from the 1960s to 1990s. The gangs physically and sexually victimize civilians as young as their early teens, and sometimes harsh retributions catch innocent people in the dragnet, like El Salvadors mass detainment of suspected criminal associates.

During last weeks summit, Vice President Kamala Harris announced nearly $3.2 billion in private investment in Central America in hopes of stabilizing the regions economy, but experts doubt it will do much. The fact that the funds wont be coming from taxpayer pockets makes them more palatable to the Biden administration, but also means there are no guarantees about when, where or how the money will be invested or if it will help.

The academic literature is quite clear that increasing GDP growth does not reduce out migration. It can increase out migration, because now all of a sudden more people have the means to migrate and youre going to make anywhere from three to 10 times as much by moving to the United States, Bier said. The Biden administration knows its not going to work, but highlighting the poverty is a way of saying, Its not our fault that people want to come.

The Biden administration has long arguedthat while the immigration system is in need of reform,those changes will take time. A White House spokesperson said that more U.S. investment throughout the region would in the meantime help strike at the root of the problem based on the logic that if people have jobs and economic opportunity at home, they will be less inclined to leave their home and migrate to the United States.

But in many Central American capitals, a more cynical spirit prevails.

Karla Valenzuela, a professor of international studies at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City noted that after Mexican President Andres Manuel Lpez Obrador announced he would boycott the Summit of the Americas due to the forced exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, his counterparts in the Northern Triangle countries quickly echoed him.

Migration is a topic that is seen as sacrificed already by Central American governments, said Valenzuela. We who study migration know that the measures Harris announced are not effective; what would be effective is removing Title 42 and revoking the Remain in Mexico policy to allow orderly and legal migration.

Valenzuela added that it often seemed as if the problem was unresolvable.

I dont think there is a political solution, she said, all the governments know what must be done, but the issue is seen as lost in the end.

The Biden administration finds itself with few good prospects.

The measures that would begin to stabilize the home countries of migrants coming to the United States and reduce inflows over the long term would include allowing many more migrants into the United States immediately nonstarters for an electorate already souring on the president.

But Bidens efforts so far are not likely to have much of an effect on border arrivals, meaning the Republican campaign for the upcoming November elections and in 2024 will have no shortage of images of migrant caravans.

In the end, that may lead to a situation where a failure by Biden to meaningfully address the problem helps elect a U.S. president even less interested in working with Latin American governments on resolving the deep roots of such problems, said Patricia Martuscelli, a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

You need to negotiate and coordinate efforts with other countries in the region: We need to talk about development, we need to talk about how to deal with economic crises, how to deal with the violence, with the organized crime in the region, Martuscelli said. The risk of having a second Trump presidency is really bad for Latin America, because Trump is not a negotiator.

Read more:
Immigration Is a Political Liability for Biden. But So Is Immigration Reform - Morning Consult