Algorithm helps analyze neuron images

Mechanized Process to Analyze Images Precisely

Scientists who have been seeking ways to stimulate growth of neurons and spending time in carefully analysing microscopic images of cells growing in petri dishes can now get help from a new procedure which has been developed by Brown University researchers.

They have mechanized the process to analyse images much more precisely than earlier automated methods.The initial round of testing and the method have been described in Nature’s Scientific Reports. As the neurons tend to grow, they seem to extend tough appendages known as neuritis which form grave connection with the nearby cells.

The networks of neurons and neurites are needed for healthy function of the nervous system. Scientists are concerned in discovering new ways of encouraging neuron growth through drugs, electrical stimulation or any other means. In order to test the effect of these attempts, they have grown neurons in the lab, with the application of various treatments to see if they could stimulate growth.

It generally involves taking pictures of hundreds of microscope of neurons as they tend to grow over a passage of hours or days.

Neurites –Tiny Structures – Difficult to View Under Microscope

Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering at Brown as well as the senior author of the new paper, comments that `one is left with this massive stack of photos and the needs to analyse the changes from one image to the next could be really laborious’.

Details in those images seem to be dangerous. Neurites seems to be tiny structures which are difficult to be viewed under a microscope at the time of live-cell imaging. However, measuring their length and thickness precisely is essential in assessing stimulated cell growth.

 A few methods are available which automate the image analysis, though they do not perform well. They tend to work by looking at individual pixels in an image, applying a uniform filter which tends to pick out pixels with the highest intensity and those high intensity pixels are presumed to be neuron and neurite structures.

The issue is that microscope images generally are not of high quality, thus making it difficult to discern cells structures from random artifacts which may be present in the image. This result in the filters often tends to include pixels which are not relevant to neuron structures, editing pixels which are important.

New Method – Neuron Image Analyzer – NIA

This seems to be a problem especially in measuring the tiny neurite appendages and the filters regularly fail to measure the complete extent of the neurite growth. A better solution was sought by a former graduate student in Patmore’s lab, Kwang-Min Kim who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford.

Inspired by the earlier work of Kilho Son, a graduate student in computer vision as well as a co-first author on the paper, he created a new method which dispenses with the uniform filters utilised in other approaches. The new approach known as Neuron Image Analyzer – NIA takes into consideration how pixels tend to be related to the nearby pixels.

He had commented that they don’t just look for high intensity pixels but look at the relational information between pixels. This way they can trace pixels which are connected to each other that help in tracing the complete neuron structure. Another procedure adopted by the method is a particular statistical test which is good in picking out circular or elliptical structures which is utilised to locate precisely and measure the soma, the blob shaped main body of a neuron.

Google Says It Has Proved Its Controversial Quantum Computer Really Works

Google’s Controversial Quantum Machine- Quicker than Conventional Computer

Google has informed that it has proof of a controversial machine bought in 2013, can use quantum physics to work through a kind of math which is critical to artificial intelligence and much quicker than a conventional computer. Governments together with leading computing companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM are putting in efforts in the creation of quantum computers due to which the improbability of quantum mechanics in representing data could unlock huge data crunching powers.

Computing giants are of the opinion that quantum computers can make their artificial intelligence software more commanding, unlocking scientific leaps in the field of materials science.

 NASA is expecting that quantum computers could be helpful in scheduling rocket launches and feign future missions as well as spacecraft. Rupak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California has commented that `it seems a disruptive technology which could change how we do everything. At media briefing at the research centre, Biswas had commented, regarding the agency’s work with Google on a machine which the company had bought in 2013 from Canadian start-up D-wave systems that it is the world’s first commercial quantum computer.

Superconducting Chip –Quantum Annealer

The computer has been installed at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California, operating on data utilising superconducting chip known as a quantum annealer. Quantum computer is hard coded with system fitted to what is known as optimization problems that are common on machine learning and artificial intelligence software.

But in the case of D-Wave’s chips it seems to be controversial among quantum physicists and researchers in and out of the company have not been capable of proving that the devices could tap into quantum physics in competing with conventional computers. The leader of Google’s Quantum AI Lab in Los Angeles, Hartmut Neven, had stated recently that his researchers had delivered some firm proof of that.

 They had set up a series of races between the D-Wave computers that was installed at NASA against a conventional computer with a single process. He commented that `for a specific carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem, they had achieved a 100 million-fold speed-up.

Bug in D-Wave Design

A research paper describing the results online had been recently posted by Google though it has not been formally peer-reviewed. Neven had stated that the journal publication would be coming up soon. The results of Google were striking though if they were verified, would only represent fractional evidence for D-Wave. 

The computer which had lost in the contest with the quantum machine had been running a code that solved the problem at hand utilising a system to the one that was in the D-Wave chip. A substitute system is known which could have enabled the conventional compute to be more competitive or win by exploiting what Neven has called a `bug’ in D-Wave design.

Neven had stated that the test which his group had staged tends to be still important since that shortcut would not be available to the regular computers when they tend to compete with the future quantum annealers with the potential of working on larger amounts of data.

A physics professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Matthias Trover had said that making that to come true could be crucial if chips like D-Wave are to be useful. It would be essential to explore if there are issues where quantum annealing has advantage over the best classical systems and to identify if there are classes of application problems, where these advantages could be realized.

Moonfruit takes Websites Offline after Cyber-Attack Threat

Cyber attacks have been increased rapidly throughout the globe. Sony was hacked just a few months which caused leakage of emails, movies details and other. Snapchat has also been hit in the past and now every website is playing cautious when it comes to imminent cyber attacks. Recently Moonfruit took thousands of its hosted business and personal websites offline after being threatened by a cyber-attack.

What is Moonfruit and why it took websites offline? 

Moonfruit is a UK company which helps its consumers and small business to create websites and online stores. Moonfruit is highly popular among the users in UK for its affordable pricing and efficient website builder which makes it simpler and easier to create demanding websites with less coding. Moonfruit has taken thousand of its customer’s website offline after receiving threats about a cyber attack.

Moonfruit had stated that it has kept thousands of its customer websites offline for up to 12 hours in order to make necessary changes in its infrastructure and to safeguard its consumers. Moonfruit has also perceived problems last Thursday when it suffered from a 45 minute of distributed denial-of-service attack. In this attack Moonfruit computer were overwhelmed by unwanted traffic and it made the use of its legitimate services non-functional.

Moonfruit consumers suffers from being offline

Moonfruit has informed its consumers about the decision of taking down the websites for up to 12 hours from Monday and it has generated some angst among the consumers. One such consumer Reece de Ville, a filmmaker, has complained that Moonfruit has been slow in communicating this decision which has the potential to disrupt the website performance and reach.

Moonfruits users had complained that this is bad time for taking down the websites as the holiday season is in full swings which brings higher web traffic and increases the sales volume. Apart from losing money through sales another problem faced by the users is the loss of potential clients or new clients within a day. Online stores will sells items especially for the holiday season like gifts and greeting cards store will take a severe hit in this Christmas week.

Armanda Collective behind the cyber attack threat

Moonfruit has sent emails to its customers where it explained that a notorious cyber hack group called Armanda Collective is attempting to extort money out of the company. Armanda Collective had previously successfully attacked the websites of web mail companies which included Hushmail, ProtonMail, RunBox and quite a number of Greek banking institutions.

The customers have been furious and quite unhappy with the loss of sales and potential clients. But it should also be understood that Moonfruit is a victim too of unpleasant criminal act where cyber criminals are threatening its business for extorting money. Moonfruit is working with the law enforcement authorities regarding this matter and hopes to dissolve this threat at the earliest. In the mean time customers have to bear with the Moonfruit decision of keeping the hosted websites offline.

Revolutionary 'Flat' Camera Could Make Your Next Phone As Thin As a Credit Card

FlatCam – Miniature Camera – Sensor Chip with Grid Coded Mask

According to Rice News, a miniature camera developed out of the Rice University labs comprises of a sensor chip with grid like coded mask that enables various channels of light to reach the sensor. FlatCam is said to be similar to a microchip, which utilises computer algorithms to process whatever is detected by the sensor after which it tends to transfigure the measurements into videos and images.

An assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, Veeraraghavan has commented that `as traditional cameras get smaller, their sensors also tend to get smaller and this means that they collect very little light. The low light performance of a camera is tied to the surface space of the sensor.

 However since all the designs of the cameras are generally cubes, surface space is tied to thickness. The design decouples the two parameters, offering the ability to use the enhanced light-collision potential of large sensors with a really thin device’.

The FlatCam could ultimately be turned into wearable, foldable as well as disposable cameras. However, the team state that photographers would be more likely to stay with lens-based systems.

Several Possibilities – Moving from Cube Design to a Surface

Developers state that the camera would be a necessary step in other applications. Baraniuk the Victor E. Cameron Professor of electrical and Computer engineering states that moving from a cube design to a surface without forgoing performance, gives rise to several possibilities.

 He added that they can make curved cameras, or wallpaper which is actually a camera and one can have a camera on credit card or a camera in an ultrathin tablet computer.The model tends to produce 512-by-512 images, a resolution which the researchers are expecting to increase as it tends to progress.

The models do not seem to have viewfinders, however if necessary, researchers state that a cell phone screen could someday do the job. Rice alumnus and assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, co-author Aswin Sankaranarayanan states that smart phone have already featured powerful computers and hence we can imagine computing at least a low resolution preview in real time.

Heritage Shared with Lens-less Pinhole Camera

FlatCam tends to share its heritage with lens-less pinhole camera though instead of a single hole it has a grid-like coded mask placed close to the sensor. Each aperture enables a slightly different set of light data to extentto the sensor. Raw data sent to the back end process, presently a desktop, is organized into an image and just as larger light field cameras; the picture tends to get focused to different depths after the collection of the data.

The lead author of the paper is Rice postdoctoral researcher, Rice graduate Salman Asif together with co-author Ali Ayremlou. Rice alumnus Sankaranarayan is now an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University while Baraniuk is the Victor E, Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice is Veeraraghavan.

The research team would be delivering a talk with regards to its work at the Extreme Imaging Workshop on December 17 in Santiago, Chile and published paper is also made available through ArXiv, an online service

Movavi Screen Capture Review

Are you able to record video footage directly from your screen? Despite what you may think it really isn’t all that complicated to do so – especially if you’re using the Movavi Screen Capture. More importantly, once you can capture video from your screen you’ll find that it’ll be extremely useful and allow you to record streaming videos and webinars, save Skype calls, or even create your very own ‘how to’ video guides or tutorials.

The reason why the Movavi Screen Capture excels at enabling you to record video footage directly from your screen is largely because of its unique approach. Unlike other software that is notoriously complicated and difficult to use, the Movavi Screen Capture has been designed so that it is as intuitive and straightforward as possible. In most cases, recording the video that you need will just take a couple of clicks.

For all its simplicity in terms of how easy it is to use however, the Movavi Screen Capture still comes with tons of features that will allow you a lot of flexibility. Some of the more interesting features include:

• Controlling all aspects of the capture settings, including the capture region, frame rate, and audio source.
• Setting the capture to also record keyboard and mouse actions by displaying the keys that are pressed on screen as well as highlighting the mouse cursor and playing a custom sound on mouse clicks.
• Easily manage the recording process through convenient hotkeys and timers to automatically stop the recording.
• Quickly and effectively optimize the videos that you capture for any device or platform using the hundreds of presets that are available.

With all these features, you should be able to capture exactly the video that you need and then save it in the best possible format for whatever device or platform you intend to use it on. As you can see you don’t need to know the first thing about video formats or settings to do so – which once again is part of the user-friendly design of the Movavi Screen Capture.

When it comes to video recording software, the Movavi Screen Capture really has no equal in terms of how easy to use and yet feature-rich it is. Once you give it a try for yourself you’ll be able to see firsthand just how quickly you’re able to familiarize yourself with the software and start recording the videos you require.