Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury’s Reviews > The Secret of Secrets > Status Update

"Modulation? She immediately began scanning the section. Did they really solve modulation?! One of the most daunting hurdles in the quest to build an artificial neuron was to mimic “ion modulation”— a neuron’s unique ability to activate and deactivate sodium ion channels."

"There was a common quip among biologists: Humans will inhabit Mars long before we build an artificial neuron."

" Extremely cold. The critical temperature for its coils was somewhere below negative- 260 Celsius,and if the coils rose even slightly above this temperature, they lost superconductivity and began resisting the current. That resistance caused rapid heating of the coils,which in turn caused more resistance,and within seconds the feedback loop blossomed out of control… resulting in a dangerous event known as a quench."

"The Golěm had learned this morning that energy fed into the toroidal magnetic field would race in loops indefinitely with no degradation and could be siphoned off as needed. The only prerequisite was to keep the superconducting coils cold."

"True, Langdon realized. Brain implants are the future. Langdon had read enough science columns to know that implanted brain chips, despite conjuring images of cyborgs and science fiction, were already functional and startlingly advanced."

"Prague was a city of avant-garde art, and years earlier the concrete vent had been mysteriously transformed. The odd-shaped canvas now paid tribute to one of Hollywood’s most beloved movie stars—a robot who was conveniently shaped exactly like the tip of a torpedo—the droid R2- D2 from Star Wars."

"Guidebooks correctly identified it as the original ventilation shaft for the now- defunct Folimanka bomb shelter, and despite many petitions to remove the “torpedo tip” as an unsightly reminder of Cold War times, anonymous street artists had come up with a very different idea."

"There’s a new battleground emerging, and it requires new kinds of weaponry."

"Faukman knew nothing about fractals other than that they often appeared as swirling designs consisting of infinitely repeating patterns."

"Obviously, this was not an authentic out- of- body experience, but the sensation was so peaceful, reassuring, and connected to the nonphysical world that it cemented her career fascination with the potential nonlocality of consciousness."