Government provides £3.1m for transformational tech which will assess how blast exposure from weapons training affects the brain to better protect personnel.
I think they’re doing themselves a huge disservice though…I mean, my first reaction was “okay, this makes absolutely no sense”, because I have a basic understanding of biology and physics
The technology stands for itself… You can image brain activity with a silly looking hat instead of strapping people into a giant machine. And it’s better than the big machine in every way.
Why would you try to make it mysterious? I could explain to a child why this is cool technology in 30 seconds
Also, I don’t think this team invented the opm tech or even the headset, so they basically bought a medical device, slapped the word magic on it, and pretended like it was this cool new thing they invented
This group is just researching the effects of shooting big guns on the brain. They might spend more on bullets than they did for the hat. They’re using a cool, fairly new, toy that is already in use elsewhere… It feels like they’re just being dishonest TBH
This particular research project is working on making the hat smaller, so it’s more portable. That’s what this small team is working on specifically.
Regarding the wording they used, well yeah, you may have some interest in science, but that doesn’t mean the broader public does. If they make people like us, hanging out in a tech community, raise an eyebrow but also generate some buzz among the broader public, that’s probably a smart move on their part. The word “quantum” can do that, the way bigger words like “miniaturization” can’t.
They didn’t even say they were working on miniaturization. Instead they implied they invented a new technology, and added the word quantum before someone else’s invention and presented it as a new technology
The broader public will never care about this either way. This is so specific that it’s barely even popsci…I mean the results might be interesting, starting a study using the latest toy isn’t
The more I think about it, the more dishonest it seems
This new generation of MEG lifts limitations that have historically confined scanners to universities, paving the way for mobile systems that can be taken directly to those who will benefit most
Mobile means smaller, so you can move it around. Did you even read the article? They don’t imply they invented something new anywhere, you just made that up.
Nor did they just add “quantum”. The word is featured in the links I provided above about MEG, from the NIH and Yale. Did you even look at those?
They go to the fucking lasers. They’re fiber optic cables. The big machine was a device your head was strapped into, and you couldn’t move or you’d disrupt the readings
See? This is what I mean by dishonest. My research took me to other groups who built this tech. If they miniaturized it, it was incremental improvement on the big advancement someone else made
Well of course it’s an incremental improvement. Nobody but you is claiming anyone invented anything new.
The wearable headset as it sits is still not portable, making it portable would be an excellent, and incremental, yes, advancement.
From a different article:
Although the wearable MEG system is housed inside a magnetically shielded room, it is still essential to cancel out the remnant Earth’s field. To do this, the team constructed a set of bi-planar electromagnetic coils that generate fields equal and opposite to the remnant Earth’s field. The coils – designed on two 1.6 m2 planes, placed either side of the subject – achieved a 15-fold reduction in the remnant field.
Making this portable if possible would be very useful.
See? Now that’s reasonable. If the article was about that, it’d be respectable
But instead, it was about quantum brain imaging. It took two science enthusiasts doing adversarial research to get to what the team was actually doing, which is cancelling out the impact of Earth’s magnetic field so opm-meg can be used outside
Do you still think this is good for public engagement?
I think they’re doing themselves a huge disservice though…I mean, my first reaction was “okay, this makes absolutely no sense”, because I have a basic understanding of biology and physics
The technology stands for itself… You can image brain activity with a silly looking hat instead of strapping people into a giant machine. And it’s better than the big machine in every way.
Why would you try to make it mysterious? I could explain to a child why this is cool technology in 30 seconds
Also, I don’t think this team invented the opm tech or even the headset, so they basically bought a medical device, slapped the word magic on it, and pretended like it was this cool new thing they invented
This group is just researching the effects of shooting big guns on the brain. They might spend more on bullets than they did for the hat. They’re using a cool, fairly new, toy that is already in use elsewhere… It feels like they’re just being dishonest TBH
This particular research project is working on making the hat smaller, so it’s more portable. That’s what this small team is working on specifically.
Regarding the wording they used, well yeah, you may have some interest in science, but that doesn’t mean the broader public does. If they make people like us, hanging out in a tech community, raise an eyebrow but also generate some buzz among the broader public, that’s probably a smart move on their part. The word “quantum” can do that, the way bigger words like “miniaturization” can’t.
They didn’t even say they were working on miniaturization. Instead they implied they invented a new technology, and added the word quantum before someone else’s invention and presented it as a new technology
The broader public will never care about this either way. This is so specific that it’s barely even popsci…I mean the results might be interesting, starting a study using the latest toy isn’t
The more I think about it, the more dishonest it seems
Mobile means smaller, so you can move it around. Did you even read the article? They don’t imply they invented something new anywhere, you just made that up.
Nor did they just add “quantum”. The word is featured in the links I provided above about MEG, from the NIH and Yale. Did you even look at those?
No, see I kept reading. I searched the keywords and went from there. It’s opm-meg, not meg… That’s the big ass machine vs the silly hat
These people aren’t the vanguard. They’re not the ones pushing the limits of the technology… They’re just another group using it
No, OPM-MEG is still done with a large machine, where do you think all the wires coming out of the silly hat go? I don’t think you read much at all.
They go to the fucking lasers. They’re fiber optic cables. The big machine was a device your head was strapped into, and you couldn’t move or you’d disrupt the readings
See? This is what I mean by dishonest. My research took me to other groups who built this tech. If they miniaturized it, it was incremental improvement on the big advancement someone else made
Well of course it’s an incremental improvement. Nobody but you is claiming anyone invented anything new.
The wearable headset as it sits is still not portable, making it portable would be an excellent, and incremental, yes, advancement.
From a different article:
Making this portable if possible would be very useful.
See? Now that’s reasonable. If the article was about that, it’d be respectable
But instead, it was about quantum brain imaging. It took two science enthusiasts doing adversarial research to get to what the team was actually doing, which is cancelling out the impact of Earth’s magnetic field so opm-meg can be used outside
Do you still think this is good for public engagement?