Kurzweil AI Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:02:00 +0000
Whether or not God plays dice, I do ... Physicist Scott Aaronson is offering a US$100,000 award for a demonstration, convincing to him, that scalable quantum computing is impossible in the physical world. “This award has no time limit other than my death, and is entirely at my discretion (though if you want to convince me, a good approach would be to convince most [...]
Digital doctoring ... The digital revolution can spur unprecedented advances in the medical sciences, argues Eric Topol in The Creative Destruction of Medicine. With the aid of technology, Dr. Topol says, medical progress may well begin to resemble modern computers’ own astonishing surge in processing power and data storage.
India’s panel price crash could spark solar revolution ... In India, electricity from solar supplied to the grid is now cheaper than that from diesel generators. Recent figures from market analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) show that the price of solar panels fell by almost 50 per cent in 2011, resulting from economies of scale. They are now just one-quarter of what they were [...]
83 year-old woman got 3D-printed mandible ... The University of Hasselt (Belgium) has announced that Belgian and Dutch scientists have successfully replaced a lower jaw with a 3D printed model for a 83 year-old woman, 3Ders.org reports. According to the researchers, It is the first custom-made implant in the world to replace an entire lower jaw. Normally it takes a few days [...]
Highest-resolution in-vivo images of mouse brain achieved ... Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany led by Stefan Hell have imaged living neurons at less than 70 nanometers for the first time. The scientists used optogenetics to insert an extra gene that generates a yellow glow in mice brains, then used the Stimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy technique developed [...]
New super-Earth detected within the habitable zone of a nearby star ... An international team of scientists has discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star — the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it, the scientists say. With an orbital period of about 28 days and a minimum mass 4.5 times that of the Earth, the planet orbits [...]
iRobot goes to the hospital ... iRobot Corp. has announced plans to invest $6 million in InTouch Health, a telemedicine company operating in 80 hospitals around the world, possibly building on iRobot’s Ava, a tablet-compatible telepresence robot.
NASA probe captures 1st video of moon’s far side ... A gravity-mapping spacecraft orbiting the moon has beamed home its first video of the lunar far side, a view people on Earth never see. The new video was captured by one of NASA’s twin Grail probes using a novel camera called MoonKAM, which will eventually be used by students on Earth to snap photos of [...]
Self-guided bullet could hit laser-marked targets from a mile away ... Sandia National Laboratories researchers have built a prototype of a four-inch-long, small-caliber bullet capable of steering itself towards a laser-marked target located approximately 2,000 meters (1.2 miles) away. Aided by little fins, the on-board guidance and control electronics use the information passed on by an optical sensor located in the nose to calculate the flight [...]
‘Kissenger’ allows you to kiss your partner long distance, explore robot love ... Artificial intelligence researcher Hooman Samani has invented the “Kissenger,” a small pair of lips stuck to a circular body that you can plug into your computer via a USB cord while you’re Skyping with your partner far across the world. Simply kiss it and have your partner (human or robotic) do the same. The lips [...]
Polarization imaging for super vision ... Scientists at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) and ITN Energy Systems have developed a new circular polarization filter with the potential to aid in early cancer detection, enhance vision through dust and clouds, and even improve a moviegoer’s 3D experience. Polarization is the process by which rays of light exhibit different properties in different [...]
How YouTube is part of a global economic transformation ... Life in this world is not like it used to be just a few decades ago, and the availability of world-class education on-demand, at almost no cost, is likely to help things change all the more as this century unfolds. YouTube now hosts more than 500,000 educational videos, on a wide variety of topics. The [...]
Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake ... After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20 million years. This is the first direct contact with what scientists now know is a web of more than 200 subglacial [...]
Why the brain slows down when we age ... New findings by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol reveal why the brain may become less able to function as we grow older. In mice studies, the research identified a novel cellular mechanism (sodium channels) underpinning changes to the activity of neurons, which may underlie cognitive decline during normal healthy aging. The researchers recorded electrical [...]
DARPA works on ‘virtual reality’ contact lenses ... The Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) agency is working with Innovega to create  wearable contact lenses with tiny, full-color displays that digital images can be projected onto to give the wearers better situational awareness in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activities, according to the agency. iOptiks are contact lenses that enhance normal vision by allowing a wearer to view virtual [...]
Report identifies 16 highest priorities to guide NASA’s technology development efforts for next 5 years ... During the next five years, NASA technology development efforts should focus on 16 high-priority technologies and their associated top technical challenges, says a new report from the National Research Council, sponsored by NASA. The high-priority technologies include items such as radiation mitigation; guidance, navigation, and control; nuclear systems for both power generation and transportation; and [...]
NASA spacecraft reveals new observations of interstellar matter ... NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what lies beyond the solar system. The new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and the history of other stars in the Milky Way. The Earth-orbiting spacecraft [...]
Innovation without age limits ... Research by Vivek Wadhwa, VP of academics and innovation at Singularity University, and his team found in a survey that the average and median age of the founders of successful U.S. technology businesses (with real revenues) is 39. They found twice as many successful founders over 50 as under 25, and twice as many over [...]
Scientists turn skin cells into neural precursors, bypassing stem-cell stage ... Mouse skin cells can be converted directly into cells that become the three main parts of the nervous system, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is an extension of a previous study by the same group showing that mouse and human skin cells can be directly converted into functional neurons. [...]
The dilemma of being a cyborg ... “We’re all cyborgs now,” the anthropologist Amber Case said in a TED talk in 2010. Our devices allow us to compress time and space in a way that we’re able to mentally transport ourselves between planes of existence with the touch of a button. (Or, rather, a digital rendering of a button.) This is the [...]
Want to speak at TED? Now you can audition ... TED will host auditions in 14 countries on six continents this spring, reports the Mashable blog. Anybody can submit an application on the TED website, and include a short video if they’d like, but auditions are invite-only. Favorites from live auditions will record short videos to post on TED.com for public voting, and the top 50 most [...]
Scientists decode brain waves to eavesdrop on what we hear ... Neuroscientists may one day be able to hear the imagined speech of a patient unable to speak due to stroke or paralysis, according to University of California, Berkeley researchers. These scientists have succeeded in decoding electrical activity in the brain’s temporal lobe — the seat of the auditory system — as a person listens to [...]
Phase-change materials can fix machine memory crunch ... Researchers at IBM and elsewhere are exploring the idea that phase change materials (PCMs) could hold more information by switching between an amorphous state and a crystalline one. PCM memory can write and retrieve data 100 times faster than Flash memory, which is used in many consumer gadgets and computers. It is also extremely durable [...]
Surveillance video becomes a tool for studying customer behavior ... The huge success of online shopping and advertising — led by giants like Amazon and Google — is in no small part thanks to software that logs when you visit Web pages and what you click on. Startup Prism Skylabs offers brick-and-mortar businesses the equivalent — anonymously counting, logging, and tracking people in a store, coffee shop, [...]
Scientists create first free-standing 3D cloak ... Researchers led by the University of Texas at Austin have cloaked a three-dimensional object standing in free space, bringing the invisibility cloak one step closer to reality. The researchers used “plasmonic metamaterials” to hide an 18-centimeter cylindrical tube from microwaves. When light strikes an ordinary object, it rebounds off its surface towards another direction, just like throwing [...]
Fast, open-science publishing for biology and medicine ... The Faculty of 1000 (F1000) has announced an experiment in online science publishing aimed at sharing research results widely and rapidly, Nature News Blog reports. Unlike ArXiv, it will use open peer review to check postings afterwards and will charge for submissions. The F1000 Research project begins publishing later this year, covering biology and medicine. [...]
DARPA takes aim at ‘Achilles’ heel’ of advanced computing: power ... The power required to increase computing performance, especially in embedded or sensor systems, has become a serious constraint and is restricting the potential of future systems, reports the Layer 8 blog. DARPA plans to announce a new program to develop power technologies that could bolster computer system performance per watt from today’s 1 GFLOPS/watt to [...]
Private snoops find GPS trail legal to follow ... Anyone with $300 can buy a GPS tracking device no bigger than a cigarette pack, attach it to a car without the driver’s knowledge, and watch the vehicle’s travels and stops — at home on your laptop. Uses include monitoring teenage children, Alzheimer’s patients, and spouses. However, the Supreme Court held on Jan 23 that [...]
The science of antiaging ... Science reporter Jennifer Couzin-Frankel hosted an open public Science Live chat with antiaging experts Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illinois, and Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, U.K. and chief science officer of SENS Foundation. The objective: take an entirely new look at aging. Some interesting excerpts: Jay Olshansky [...]
What it’ll take to go exascale ... The next generation of powerful supercomputers will be used to design high-efficiency engines tailored to burn biofuels, reveal the causes of supernova explosions, track the atomic workings of catalysts in real time, and study how persistent radiation damage might affect the metal casing surrounding nuclear weapons. Those uses require supercomputers more powerful than any yet [...]
Rap music powers medical sensor ... A driving bass rhythm can be harnessed to power a new type of miniature medical sensor designed to be implanted in the body. Low-frequency acoustic waves from music were found to effectively recharge the pressure sensor. Such a device might ultimately help to treat people stricken with aneurisms or incontinence due to paralysis. The heart [...]
Search for aliens is on again, but next quest is finding money ... Early in December, 42 radio telescopes, the Allen Telescope Array, in Hat Creek, California went back into operation. The astronomers say that another $55 million would complete the planned array of 350 antennas, but there have been no volunteers yet. The U.S. Air Force, interested in tracking satellites and space junk, will pay for a share [...]
Dating in the multiverse ... In Nick Payne’s new play, Constellations, universe-crossing lovers repeat a scene over and over with different outcomes in different parallel universes, New Scientist Culture Lab reports.  
DARPA-funded hacker’s tiny $50 spy computer hides in offices, drops from drones ... Security researcher Brendan O’Connor is building a sensor-equipped surveillance-capable computer that’s so cheap it can be dropped from a drone and sacrificed after one use, with off-the-shelf parts that anyone can buy and assemble for less than $50. The F-BOMB (Falling or Ballistically launched Object that Makes Backdoors), built from just the hardware in a commercially [...]
First 3D structural model of cancer-prevention molecule ... Cancer Research UK scientists have mapped the first 3D structure of c-Cbl, a key protein that protects against the development of cancer. The team at Cancer Research UK’s Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, in Glasgow used X-ray analysis to map the structure of a protein called c-Cbl and showed that it changes shape when it is switched [...]
Biologists discover rotational motion of breast cells, required to avoid malignancy ... In a study that holds major implications for breast cancer research and basic cell biology, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a rotational motion that plays a critical role in the ability of breast cells to form the spherical structures in the mammary gland known [...]
Gingrich proposes Moon base by 2020 ... Newt Gingrich has called for a bold, aggressive space program that would establish a permanent base on the Moon by 2020, along with a next-generation propulsion system for taking humans to Mars, and commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism, and manufacturing. Transcript of the speech, courtesy of the National Space Society.      
‘Super Wi-Fi’ blankets first county in US ... New Hanover County, North Carolina, recently rolled out “Super Wi-Fi,” operating in the “white spaces” between 50–700Mhz, where previously only television stations were allowed to transmit, reports Technology Review’s Mim’s Bits blog. This could mean high-speed wireless connections for the county’s residents, and also the potential to connect to Wi-Fi towers that are miles distant [...]
Scientists create femtosecond atomic X-ray laser ... Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLNL) scientists and international collaborators have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and ultimately opening the door to new medicines, devices and materials. The researchers aimed radiation from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), at a cell [...]
Rice lab mimics Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids inside a single atom ... Rice University physicists have gone to extremes to prove that Isaac Newton’s classical laws of motion can apply in the atomic world: They’ve built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom of potassium. They showed they could cause an electron in an atom to orbit the nucleus in precisely [...]
How neutrons might escape into another universe ... Our universe may exist in parallel with other universes in other sets of dimensions, or braneworlds, so things from our Universe might somehow end up in another, some cosmologists suggest, says Technology Review Physics arXiv Blog. Michael Sarrazin at the University of Namur in Belgium and a few others showed how matter might make the [...]
Hayden Planetarium morphing into a giant videogame ... The Hayden Planetarium, under Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s direction, is becoming Space Cruiser, a giant virtual spacecraft videogame on a 4500×4500 pixel screen, Motherboard blog reports. Together, players will collaborate to navigate a virtual ship through asteroid belts and other dangers — kind of like a massively-multiplayer version of Carl Sagan’s imaginary space vessel from Cosmos. It [...]
Commercial version of MIT Media Lab CityCar unveiled ... A full-scale version of the stackable, electric CityCar, created by researchers at the MIT Media Lab and commercialized by a consortium of automotive suppliers in the Basque region of Spain, was unveiled at the European Union Commission headquarters on January 24. Branded “Hiriko,” the two-passenger EV vehicle incorporates all of the essential concepts of the MIT Media [...]
With prevalence of nanomaterials rising, panel urges review of risks ... Nanomaterials have moved into the marketplace over the last decade, in products as varied as cosmetics, clothing and paint. But not enough is known about their potential health and environmental risks, which should be studied further, an expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday. And because the nanotechnology market is expanding [...]
Collision in the making between self-driving cars and how the world works ... Questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance regulation self-driving vehicles have yet to be addressed, and such challenges might pose far more problems than the technological ones. Should the police have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles? Human drivers frequently bend the rules by rolling through stop signs and driving above speed limits; how [...]
AI will eventually drive healthcare, but not anytime soon ... A merging of artificial intelligence and healthcare is tougher than many realize because of the search space problem (complexity) and the good data (validity) problem. “Eventually, people will get better care from AI,” says medical AI programmer Fred Trotter. “For now, we should keep the algorithms focused on the data that we know is good [...]
Google announces privacy changes across products; users can’t opt out ... Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do on the Web: it plans to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTube, Gmail and its search engine. Consumers who are logged into Google services won’t be able to opt out of the changes, [...]
Why 3D printing will go the way of virtual reality ... The notion that 3D printing will on any reasonable time scale become a “mature” technology that can reproduce all the goods on which we rely is to engage in a complete denial of the complexities of modern manufacturing, unless you’d like everything made out of plastic, says Technology Review | Mim’s Bits blog.
A 3D image of an individual protein ... Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists have created detailed models of a single protein using electron microscopic images. Scientists routinely create models of proteins using X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance, and conventional cryo-electron microscope (cryoEM) imaging. But these models require computer “averaging” of data from analysis of thousands, or even millions of like molecules, [...]
Chemists create artificial cell membrane ... Chemists have taken an important step in making artificial life forms from scratch, creating self-assembling cell membranes, the structural envelopes that contain and support the reactions required for life and make a living organism from non-living molecules. Although Dr. Craig Venter recently announced the creation of the “first synthetic living cell,” only its genome was [...]