A new, non-invasive technique has been developed by researchers working for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that can boost the brain’s cognitive ability by up to 40 percent.
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One of the stumbling blocks being faced by the development of bionic prosthetics is the difficulty of developing a method of controlling an artificial limb, especially in a manner that would seem natural to the wearer. Advances in creating brain-machine interfaces have seen major advancements in recent years, but are still hampered by the difficulty of picking up the brain’s faint signals by sensors placed on the scalp.
Stronger signals can be received if the sensors are placed directly on (or in) the brain, but that method requires invasive, and potentially dangerous brain surgery. However, a new implant inserted through the subject’s blood vessels might help reduce the risk of inserting such implants.
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced that their hypersonic HTV-2 test aircraft crashed during an August 11 flight test, but not before demonstrating that it could maintain control at twenty times the speed of sound — for three minutes, at least.
DARPA’s unmanned prototype Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) was launched from Vandenberg AFB in California, and was propelled above the atmosphere by a Minotaur IV rocket. The HTV-2 then proceeded to glide along it’s planned course over the Pacific Ocean, but encountered a still-unidentified anomaly nine minutes into the mission, prompting the craft’s automated systems to ditch the plane in a controlled splashdown.
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The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, more commonly known as DARPA, is developing a system intended to enable aerial drones to be able to choose what combat targets to engage by themselves, without input from human controllers. However, this may constitute a violation of the Geneva convention.
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