August 2018 – Impact Lab

3D Printer, Automation, Housing, Military, Science & Technology News

The Marines 3D printed a concrete barracks

August 31, 2018

Letting robots do construction jobs on the battlefield frees Marines to fight.

Forging ahead with plans to have robots do “dull, dangerous and dirty” jobs, the U.S. Marine Corps used a 3D printer to create a barracks building out of concrete. The process, which took less than two days, created a hardened living space capable of resisting enemy fire, a real improvement over canvas and nylon tents.

The U.S. Marine Corps moves around a lot, deploying worldwide, often to dusty, remote locations for months at a time. As a consequence, they tend to build a lot of housing for themselves, and it takes a team of ten Marines five days to build a barracks from wood. Not only is construction dangerous, it also prevents those ten Marines from doing other things during those five days.

Continue reading… “The Marines 3D printed a concrete barracks”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Education, Science & Technology News, Tom Frey

The world’s first digital teacher just debuted in New Zealand

September 3, 2018

Here’s a new kind of teacher. It’s back to school, and you know what that means — time to fire up the computer that teaches you!

That’s what primary school students in New Zealand have to look forward to, anyways. They’ll soon be the first students in the world to learn from an artificially intelligent (AI) digital avatar.

Continue reading… “The world’s first digital teacher just debuted in New Zealand”

Analysis, Entertainment, Latest Trend

The numbers of hours Americans watch TV every day is incredibly different depending on your age

August 31, 2018

Television is still the media medium of choice amongst adults in the US, with Americans aged 18 or older watching an average of almost five hours a day, according to a Total Audience Report.

But as this chart from Statista, based on Nielsen data, shows, younger adults watch significantly less television than do older adults — Americans ages 18 through 34 watch a third of what adults aged 50 to 64 do.

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Business, China, government

China is building an innovation ecosystem ripe for start-ups. Here’s how

August 30, 2018

The government is pumping funds into research, education and innovative projects, as Chinese tech firms flourish and investors and venture capitalists flock.

With rising production costs, an ageing population and shrinking return on investments it is clear why China’s economy has shifted from labour-intensive manufacturing to an innovation-driven paradigm in just a few years.

Today, Huawei is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world and JD.com, Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu are among the world’s top 10 internet companies in terms of revenue. These companies, and the new tech-based businesses seeking to emulate their success, have all benefited from the “innovation ecosystem” China is developing.

So what are the key elements that make up this ecosystem and have enabled China’s economy to rapidly climb the value chain?

Continue reading… “China is building an innovation ecosystem ripe for start-ups. Here’s how”

Artificial Intelligence, Farming, Farms, Food, Future

It’s the year 2038–here’s how we’ll eat 20 years in the future

August 30, 2018

A science-fiction look at the next two decades of food developments, from robot farmers to 3D-printed meals to government monitoring of your daily calorie intake.

It’s the year 2038. The word “flavor” has fallen into disuse. Sugar is the new cigarettes, and we have managed to replace salt with healthy plants.  We live in a society in which we eat fruit grown using genetics. We drink synthetic wine, scramble eggs that do not come from chickens, grill meat that was not taken from animals, and roast fish that never saw the sea.

Was this what we had in mind when we started seeking transparency, traceability, and sustainability of our food system many years ago in the early aughts? About a decade ago, we lived through an agricultural bottleneck caused by warm temperatures that caused plagues and diseases, which severely compromised the food sources we were cultivating and consuming. By the end, three quarters of the world’s food was derived from just 12 plant and five animal species. We learned from this mistake and started to embrace true biodiversity, grew meat in labs, and put robotics into farms. But the technological advances that have made clean, sustainable food possible have also created some horrifying scenarios.

Continue reading… “It’s the year 2038–here’s how we’ll eat 20 years in the future”

Analysis, Big Problems, Environment, new technology, Software Development

Software predicts landslides in weeks, not hours, in advance

August 30, 2018

Researchers have developed a new software tool that predicts the boundaries of where landslides will occur two weeks before they happen.

Landslides—masses of rock, earth, or debris moving down a slope—happen everywhere. The effect on communities, the economy, and most importantly, lives, can be devastating. A recent landslide at a jade mine in Myanmar, for example, claimed at least 27 lives.

In open pit mines, landslides are particularly common. In 2013 a 20 meter towering wall of dirt and rocks, deep enough to bury New York City’s Central Park, came crashing down when Bingham Canyon, one of the largest copper producing mines in the United States, gave way. Astonishingly no one was hurt, thanks to advance warnings.

Continue reading… “Software predicts landslides in weeks, not hours, in advance”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, cutting edge, Entertainment, Robots

Filmmaker Tony Kaye casts robot as lead actor in next feature

August 29, 2018

EXCLUSIVE: As the advancement of technology continues to replace the need for human labor, American History X director Tony Kaye is undertaking a new — and maybe controversial — step in filmmaking by employing an Artificial Intelligent (A.I.) actor as the lead in his next film, 2nd Born.

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Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Films, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Carnegie Mellon researchers create the most convincing deepfakes yet

August 29, 2018

Ever heard of “deepfakes”? Videos generated with artificial intelligence (AI) that learn to superimpose the face of one person onto the body of another have been used to swap Harrison Ford for Nicolas Cage in countless movie clips, and for far more nefarious purposes, like fake celebrity porn and propaganda. Now, for better or worse, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new AI system that’s more powerful — and versatile — than previous attempts.

It’s called “Recycle-GAN,” and the team described it as an “unsupervised, data-driven approach” for transferring the content of one video or photo to another. “Such a content translation and style preservation task has numerous applications, including human motion and face translation from one person to other, teaching robots from human demonstration,” the researchers wrote, “or converting black-and-white videos to color.”

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Automation, Drone, New Inventions, New Viewpoints

General Drones’ Auxdron Lifeguard UAV rescues swimmer in Spain

August 29, 2018

A group of seven swimmers was in trouble when an undertow whisked them off to sea. Fortunately, a lifeguard drone was deployed to the rescue.

When a group of seven swimmers found themselves carried off into the ocean by an undertow in Valencia, Spain Wednesday, time was of the essence. Though they successfully managed to alert the lifeguards, rapid response wasn’t guaranteed at 230 feet from the beach. Fortunately, an Auxdron Lifeguard Drone was at the scene and quickly flown to the rescue.

According to New Atlas, Diego Torres remotely piloted the eight-rotor General Drones vehicle. Guided by a lifeguard via radio and assisted by the drone’s camera feed, he managed to reach the swimmers in danger and drop a life jacket which automatically inflated upon deployment. The woman in most immediate need of assistance managed to untether it from the vehicle, and save herself from drowning.

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Biotech, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

The future of medicine may land within five to 10 years, CRISPR inventor says

August 28, 2018

A pioneer of the Crispr gene-editing technology that’s taken Wall Street by storm says the field is probably five to 10 years away from having an approved therapy for patients.

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who runs the Doudna Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, says major questions remain about the safety and effectiveness of experimental therapies that aim to disrupt or repair defective genes. But she’s optimistic about their prospects.

Continue reading… “The future of medicine may land within five to 10 years, CRISPR inventor says”

Breakthrough Thinking, communication, Military

MITdevelops water-to-air wireless Communication

August 28, 2018

You can wirelessly communicate with people on the other side of the world in real time, but it’s still impossible for a submarine to talk to an airplane. They both use systems designed for their environment, and those systems aren’t compatible. At least, they weren’t until now. Researchers from MIT have developed a technology to link the underwater world with the open air.

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Education, Higher Education, Space

Want a future-proof degree? Head to Colorado for asteroid mining

August 28, 2018

Are you a high schooler wondering what career to pursue that won’t be gobbled up by robots in the next few years? Are you an engineering grad, economist, physicist, or policy analyst looking to become an expert in a new, but fast-developing discipline? If so, the Colorado School of Mines has the perfect answer for you: You should totally take up space mining.

No, we’re not kidding. While the idea of extracting water, minerals or even metals from an asteroid sounds like the stuff of far-future science-fiction, it’s likely to actually happen in the coming decades — and Colorado School of Mines’ newly launched “Space Resources” course will help you get in on the ground floor.

Continue reading… “Want a future-proof degree? Head to Colorado for asteroid mining”