A new U.S. patent has been issued for the “Ten Ethical Laws of Robotics” (# 6,587,846), a system that radically expands upon previous ethical-AI systems: most notably, Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” (an earlier Sci-Fi construct that aimed to to rein-in the potential conduct of a futuristic AI-robot. Although Asimov’s system of safeguards [...]

Fully immersive virtual reality programs are an impressive way to experience digital architectural models, but they don’t always provide the best view, especially where action is involved.
Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford University, Microsoft Corporation and the University of Virginia have devised a way to add expanded, or exploded, views [...]

Popular Science is running an interesting article about the race to replace the jet turbine with a more efficient source of Mach-breaking airpower: the pulse-detonation engine. It works by detonating (instead of slow burning) fuel hundreds to thousands of times a second. PDE technology is poised to make supersonic passenger flights and space travel affordable. [...]

A widely used herbicide encourages the growth of toxic fungi that devastate wheat fields, laboratory studies by scientists working for the Canadian government suggest.
If field studies confirm that the herbicide, glyphosate, increases the risk of fungal infections – which are already a huge problem – farmers might be advised to use it less.
That could [...]

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a relatively old Internet technology that recently has become as easy as the everyday telephone. And Americans living overseas, as well as non-Americans with family in the United States, are discovering that they can call friends and family thousands of miles away for as little as $20 a month.
International communications [...]

Insurance cheats will be subject to lie-detector tests in a pilot project being introduced by a Edinburgh bank.
City-based HBoS will launch a three-month scheme starting in September analysing phone calls to its insurance hotlines using the sophisticated technology.
And the insurance industry is sure to be watching with interest as it fights to reclaim [...]