Monthly Archives: May 2015

New nano-material could lead to artificial brain cells

A press release from RMIT, Research mimics brain cells to boost memory power, details a new nano-material discovered that has the potential to lead to a new scale of computing architecture and possibly artificial intelligence.

At 10000 times small than a human hair the new material is may not supersede the current silicon based computer chips. Given that the best silicon technology can manage is about 9 million per square millimetre, or one transistor per 111 pm (1.1 X 10^-10m) vs the nano-material managing 1.7 nm (1.7×10^-8). However, this is just the first steps with this new material and when silicon was first used in this way only a circuits could be fitted per millimetre. So this technology has potential.

Of more interest is the fact that the material mimics brains cells that form the basis of neuro-networks, and could lead the the development of credible artificial intelligence (See Nano-scale thin film structure mimics brain cells) by creating a copy of the human brain structure.

PauseFest 2015

Recently these two videos appeared in my inbox and it reminded me of the experience. Back in February I was lucky enough to receive some free tickets to PauseFest. The event was an excellent melting pot of ideas from many different areas of life, looking at the ways innovation, technology, and business collide to create new forms of doing things.

The festival ran for the week from Monday the 9th until Sunday 15th of Feb, but I was only able to make the weekend. Although this still meant a very busy time looking at things like the effect of Australian copyright laws on innovation, a deconstruction of a 2D animation pipeline, how IoT (Internet of Things) is reshaping the world, why hackathons are good, and creating innovation cultures.

All of this is important because the core focus of as an educator is to bring a window of the world into the lives of those you educate. Each session highlighted the many directions that our world is rapidly changing and the unconventional paths that people follow to achieve their dreams.

Pause Fest is Australia’s premier digital event, aimed at supporting and showcasing the best in creative and tech from Australia and all over the world.

Each Pause festival tells a story through a unique theme. In 2015, the theme is Pure.