Government provides £3.1m for transformational tech which will assess how blast exposure from weapons training affects the brain to better protect personnel.
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?
Communicating to the public about science advances is about using marketing techniques, not education techniques. It’s business stuff, not science stuff. We have journal articles for the real science. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the reality with anti-intellectual attitudes running so rampant, where real science makes most people tune out.
Btw, the quantum refers to how the tiny magnetic field is actually detected. The laser shines into some helium, and the helium is set to all have one specific quantum spin. This allows the strength of the field to be consistently measured based on how much the laser gets deflected. Without the ability to manipulate quantum spin, this technology would be unavailable. (I did some more reading on it yesterday. lol) So it is actually pretty quantum stuff apparently.
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?
Yea I kinda still do.
Communicating to the public about science advances is about using marketing techniques, not education techniques. It’s business stuff, not science stuff. We have journal articles for the real science. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the reality with anti-intellectual attitudes running so rampant, where real science makes most people tune out.
Btw, the quantum refers to how the tiny magnetic field is actually detected. The laser shines into some helium, and the helium is set to all have one specific quantum spin. This allows the strength of the field to be consistently measured based on how much the laser gets deflected. Without the ability to manipulate quantum spin, this technology would be unavailable. (I did some more reading on it yesterday. lol) So it is actually pretty quantum stuff apparently.