This Nanochip Reprograms Cells To Heal Organs. The Tissue Nanotransfection Device Is A Noninvasive Nanochip

10 Minutes of Imaginary Japanese Anime Face

Video from Yingtao Tian presents anime characters generated using GAN Neural Networks:

You can create your own using the webtoy MakeGirlsMoe here

If you could talk to your childhood inspiration, what would you say?

Listen to Brian Lehrer’s full interview with LeVar Burton here. 

AR Experiments

Following the announcement of ARCore, Google Creative Lab have released a site featuring various projects using the framework ranging from drawing in mid-air, portals, and strange characters popping up:

AR Experiments is a site that features work by coders who are experimenting with augmented reality in exciting ways. These experiments use various tools like ARCore, an SDK that lets Android developers create awesome AR experiences. We’re featuring some of our favorite projects here to help inspire more coders to imagine what could be made with AR. 

At the moment, these projects are compatible with Android Nougat devices such as the Pixel and Samsung S8 but rollout for other devices is happening.

You can explore the set of experiments here

Example-based Face Stylization - Web Demo

DCGI and Adobe Research have put up an online interactive demo of their stylized facial animation paper.

Just drag and drop an image with a face into it, select one of the styles on the right, hit ‘Submit’ and see what happens …

Try it out for yourself here

Holographic Cortana Appliance

Doodle Studio 95

Project from Fernando Ramallo is a drawing and animation tool for Unity with simple interfaces to create assets for games and interactive experiences, a bit like Flash but in 2.5D:

DOODLE STUDIO 95 is a FUN drawing and animation tool for Unity.

Doodle an animation without leaving the Editor and turn your drawings into sprites, UI elements, particles or textures, with a single click.

Features

Draw inside the Unity Editor

Easy presets for backgrounds, characters and UI elements

Example scenes with 2.5D characters, foliage, speech bubbles and transitions, with reusable scripts

Draw and animate inside the Scene View (beta)

Shadow-casting shaders

Don’t think about materials or image formats, it Just Works.

Five Symmetry modes

Record mode adds frames as you draw

Record a sound with a single click! Boop!

Easy API for using animations with scripts

Convert to sprite sheets or GIFs

…and more

You can find out more here, and even try out a browser-based interactive tour here

Asinas II

Kinetic sculpture by Jennifer Townley is an iteration of a previous piece from 2015 yet still visually complex and mesmerizing:

‘Asinas II’ is the successor of the original sculpture 'Asinas’, showing the same concept and overall appearance but a different shape for the white “wing” parts.

The various angles and curves of the individual parts create an elaborated unity when joined together on the shaft. The two “wings” formed by these seventy-seven parts are able to slide through each other and rotate in opposite direction at a slightly different speed. This results in a movement that appears to be far more complex, existing of multiple layers, where repetitive shapes seem to be moving within oneanother.

More Here

Interesting Papers for Week 28, 2017

When do correlations increase with firing rates in recurrent networks? Barreiro, A. K., & Ly, C. (2017). PLOS Computational Biology, 13(4), e1005506.

Consequences of the Oculomotor Cycle for the Dynamics of Perception. Boi, M., Poletti, M., Victor, J. D., & Rucci, M. (2017). Current Biology, 27(9), 1268–1277.

The Head-Direction Signal Plays a Functional Role as a Neural Compass during Navigation. Butler, W. N., Smith, K. S., van der Meer, M. A. A., & Taube, J. S. (2017). Current Biology, 27(9), 1259–1267.

Predicting explorative motor learning using decision-making and motor noise. Chen, X., Mohr, K., & Galea, J. M. (2017). PLOS Computational Biology, 13(4), e1005503.

Feedback Synthesizes Neural Codes for Motion. Clarke, S. E., & Maler, L. (2017). Current Biology, 27(9), 1356–1361.

Direct Brain Stimulation Modulates Encoding States and Memory Performance in Humans. Ezzyat, Y., Kragel, J. E., Burke, J. F., Levy, D. F., Lyalenko, A., Wanda, P., … Pedisich, I. (2017). Current Biology, 27(9), 1251–1258.

A map of abstract relational knowledge in the human hippocampal–entorhinal cortex. Garvert, M. M., Dolan, R. J., & Behrens, T. E. (2017). eLife, 6(e17086).

Sequential sensory and decision processing in posterior parietal cortex. Ibos, G., & Freedman, D. J. (2017). eLife, 6(e23743).

Active Dentate Granule Cells Encode Experience to Promote the Addition of Adult-Born Hippocampal Neurons. Kirschen, G. W., Shen, J., Tian, M., Schroeder, B., Wang, J., Man, G., … Ge, S. (2017). Journal of Neuroscience, 37(18), 4661–4678.

Subsampling scaling. Levina, A., & Priesemann, V. (2017). Nature Communications, 8, 15140.

Noise-enhanced coding in phasic neuron spike trains. Ly, C., & Doiron, B. (2017). PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0176963.

Spatial working memory alters the efficacy of input to visual cortex. Merrikhi, Y., Clark, K., Albarran, E., Parsa, M., Zirnsak, M., Moore, T., & Noudoost, B. (2017). Nature Communications, 8, 15041.

Brain networks for confidence weighting and hierarchical inference during probabilistic learning. Meyniel, F., & Dehaene, S. (2017). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(19), E3859–E3868.

Statistical learning in social action contexts. Monroy, C., Meyer, M., Gerson, S., & Hunnius, S. (2017). PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0177261.

Saccadic eye movements impose a natural bottleneck on visual short-term memory. Ohl, S., & Rolfs, M. (2017). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(5), 736–748.

Correlates of Perceptual Orientation Biases in Human Primary Visual Cortex. Patten, M. L., Mannion, D. J., & Clifford, C. W. G. (2017). Journal of Neuroscience, 37(18), 4744–4750.

Medial Entorhinal Cortex Selectively Supports Temporal Coding by Hippocampal Neurons. Robinson, N. T. M., Priestley, J. B., Rueckemann, J. W., Garcia, A. D., Smeglin, V. A., Marino, F. A., & Eichenbaum, H. (2017). Neuron, 94(3), 677–688.e6.

Towards a theory of cortical columns: From spiking neurons to interacting neural populations of finite size. Schwalger, T., Deger, M., & Gerstner, W. (2017). PLOS Computational Biology, 13(4), e1005507.

Homeostatic Plasticity Shapes Cell-Type-Specific Wiring in the Retina. Tien, N.-W., Soto, F., & Kerschensteiner, D. (2017). Neuron, 94(3), 656–665.e4.

Robust information propagation through noisy neural circuits. Zylberberg, J., Pouget, A., Latham, P. E., & Shea-Brown, E. (2017). PLOS Computational Biology, 13(4), e1005497.