Researchers made a neural network out of DNA that can recognize handwritten numbers.
Last Wednesday, researchers at Caltech announced that they created an artificial neural network from synthetic DNA that is able to recognize numbers coded in molecules. It’s a novel implementation of a classic machine learning test that demonstrates how the very building blocks of life can be harnessed as a computer.
Continue reading… “Scientists invented AI made from DNA”
How to build global cooperation. It’s SIMPOL!
A while back I received a book in the mail titled “The SIMPOL Solution: A New Way to Think About Solving the World’s Biggest Problems” by John Bunzl and Nick Duffell, who were unknown to me. I get sent a lot of books with grandiose titles and don’t get around to reading most of them. But something about this one intrigued me, along with an endorsement by Noam Chomsky, who wrote “It’s ambitious and provocative: Can it work? Certainly worth a serious try”.
Continue reading… “A new way to think about solving the world’s biggest problems”
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a robot revolution in manufacturing to boost productivity.
Wages in China are rising, and it’s becoming harder to compete with cheap labor.
An aging population in China also necessitates automation. The working-age population, people age 15 to 64, could drop to 800 million by 2050 from 998 million today.
Chinese robotic growth is forecast to exceed 20 percent annually through 2020.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo’s JSK Lab have developed a “dragon drone,” made up of several small drones and capable of transforming on the fly, as reported by IEEE. Not only can the drone change into different shapes, like a square or curved line, it can also autonomously decide what shape it needs to change into depending on the space it’s required to navigate.
The name of the drone is actually an acronym, standing for “Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON,” or DRAGON for short. Its design was modeled off of traditional dragon kites, where the tail is made up of a series of smaller, interlinked kites.
Continue reading… “This flying ‘dragon’ drone can change shape in midair”
Microsoft has put a data centre in the sea in an experimental effort to see if it can provide internet services faster to coastal cities using renewable energy.
As part of its bigger Project Natick “moonshot,” Microsoft has put the data centre on the seafloor close to Scotland’s Orkney Islands.
The data centre is submerged 117 feet under the sea and is powered by a submarine cable running from Orkney. Microsoft picked the islands because it wants its data centres to run on renewable power, and Orkney is a major hub for renewable energy.
Long term, the goal of 3D bioprinting is to be able to 3D print fully functioning organs which can be used to replace the failing biological organs of humans in need of a transplant. That may still be years off, but Chicago-based biotech startup Biolife4D this week announced a major new milestone: Its ability to bioprint human cardiac tissue.
The scientific landmark followed shortly after the company opened a new research facility in Houston. It involved the printing of a human cardiac patch, containing multiple cell types which make up the human heart. It could one day be used to help treat patients who have suffered acute heart failure in order to restore lost myocardial contractility, the ability of the heart to generate force for pumping blood around the body.
Continue reading… “Scientists can 3D print human heart tissue now. The future is here”
For the past few months, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been teasing a giant battery project that would dwarf even the company’s 129 MWh Powerpack project in Australia.
Today, we learn that Tesla is working with PG&E on a massive battery system with a capacity of “up to 1.1 GWh” in California.
Continue reading… “Tesla and PG&E are working on a massive ‘up to 1.1 GWh power pack battery system”
Serving food at Hema. GIF via Alibaba video
Select some live seafood in one of Alibaba’s Hema grocery stores in Shanghai, get it rung up and bagged, and a robotic arm will whisk it away to a kitchen. Minutes later, a pod will wheel out of the kitchen, pulling up to your table with your meal under a transparent dome.
Continue reading… “Robotic waitresses: Alibaba launches automated restaurant in Shanghai”
The Dropcopter drone is designed to pollen-bomb rows of crops following a pre-programmed route
A large percentage of the world’s food production relies on bee pollination, but what do we do when the bees can’t be relied on? US startup Dropcopter has just demonstrated that it can deliver a 25 to 60 percent boost in pollination rates using autonomous drones to pick up where the bees left off.
Much has been made of the collapse of bee populations worldwide, what the causes might be and what we might be able to do about it. It’s no small issue, given how much of the global food supply hangs in the balance.
Continue reading… “Dropcopter’s drones boost crop pollination by up to 60% in bad bee years”
Public embarrassment is a horrible feeling. We’ve all experienced in one form or another. Predicting the future of technology is daunting enough but mix that with the future of money and markets – forget about it. The effort was to convey a whole worldview in less than ten minutes. Needless to say, it required a fair amount of sweating to be more than an embarrassment, which it undoubtedly will be considered by some as. The risk seems worth it though so let’s do this!
The below video and continued text go into why many of our trusted systems no longer function properly. I don’t know who built the pyramids but they certainly had their measurement system right for it to be possible and sustainable. The damage done by tech advancements are not yet visible in society on a large scale. We hear of declining sales in music, the press, deteriorating health care budgets, automated factories, AI in commerce and about self-driving cars. The heads of many old systems have already been cut, are bleeding heavily and lashing out aimlessly as the body of the octopus still moves. To make some sense of this, the topics include crypto, capitalism, communism, genetics, competition, media, competence, fairness, cultural revolutions and our shared decentralized future.
Continue reading… “Why the Crypto market will be trillions”
Following your passion presupposes that you have one. But many people don’t.
Develop a passion, don’t follow it.
It’s what kids do.
When someone in your life is asking the important “What should I do with my life?” question – have you ever told them “Just follow your passion”?
If so, please stop doing that. Yes, completely, and forever. Because it’s garbage advice. Among the worst out there, right next to the original food pyramid and playing hard to get after a date.
Continue reading… “‘Following your passion’ is dead- Here’s what to replace it with”
It could be the coolest new neighborhood on the planet—or a peek into the Orwellian metropolis that knows everything you did last night.
TORONTO—Even with a chilly mid-May breeze blowing off Lake Ontario, this city’s western waterfront approaches idyllic. The lake laps up against the boardwalk, people sit in colorful Adirondack chairs and footfalls of pedestrians compete with the cry of gulls. But walk east, and the scene quickly changes. Cut off from gleaming downtown Toronto by the Gardiner Expressway, the city trails off into a dusty landscape of rock-strewn parking lots and heaps of construction materials. Toronto’s eastern waterfront is bleak enough that Guillermo del Toro’s gothic film The Shape of Water used it as a plausible stand-in for Baltimore circa 1962. Says Adam Vaughan, a former journalist who represents this district in Canada’s Parliament, “It’s this weird industrial land that’s just been sitting there—acres and acres of it. And no one’s really known what to do with it.”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.