Science & Technology News – Page 111

GUT MICROBES COULD BE THE FUTURE OF BRAIN HEALTH

March 24, 2021

“We might end up being able to correct a behavioral deficiency by what we put in a milkshake.”

THE EVIDENCE FOR A CONNECTION between gut health and brain health is becoming increasingly hard to ignore. A new study adds to the mountain: In the paper, a team of scientists at Baylor College of Medicine link gut bacteria to specific brain conditions.

But beyond this, the team may have unlocked how to leverage the connection to treat brain conditions that affect social behavior.

WHAT’S NEW — The new research suggests hacking that connection via the vagus nerve by changing the composition of microbes in the gut. This nerve functions as a kind of fiber-optic cable that carries messages between the gut and the brain. Specifically, the team behind this paper looked at the microbiome’s role in hyperactivity seen in mice lacking a gene associated with autism. What they found suggests that altering the population of gut microbiota through food may in turn alter behavior.

Cancer, Science & Technology News

Tiny swallowable cameras will check for cancer in ‘sci-fi’ development

March 24, 2021

The disposable device take more than 57,000 pictures as it works its way through the digestive tract, replacing uncomfortable endoscopies

By Henry Bodkin

Swallowable cameras the size of capsules will be given to NHS patients in a “sci-fi” bid to check for cancer.

Taking more than 57,000 pictures as they work through the digestive system, the disposable devices are intended to replace complicated and uncomfortable endoscopies.

They will be handed out initially to 11,000 patients in more than 40 locations in England.

NHS leaders hope the revolutionary devices will help turn the tide of missed and late cancer diagnoses caused by disruption from the pandemic.

Users will wear an accompanying shoulder bag containing a data recorder, meaning they can carry on their lives as normal while the camera is at work. Known as colon camera endoscopy, the technology can provide a diagnosis within hours.

Science & Technology News, Transportation

Tech It Out: What is the future of high-speed maglev?

March 24, 2021

By Dong Yi, Yang Xiao, Yang Zhao

China already possesses the world’s largest high-speed railway network, and it will only expand more ambitiously, according to the country’s new Five-Year Plan. But it’s not just the railroads that are extending. China may also get a major boost in the speed of its bullet trains. A prototype maglev train recently unveiled at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu, Sichuan Province aims to set a new speed record for trains – the current record of 603 kilometers per hour is held by Japan’s SCMaglev. China’s answer to it is 620.

This maglev train deploys what’s known as “high-temperature superconductive” technology, or HTS. It takes advantage of two unique properties of high-temperature superconductors: the “Meissner effect” which allows a superconductor to completely repel the magnetic fields around it to achieve levitation, and “flux pinning,” which keeps the superconductor steady above its magnetic tracks, so it never falls off.

Unlike China’s existing high-speed railway technology and the country’s most iconic maglev line in Shanghai – both technologies which are largely imported, China’s new HTS maglev is 100 percent developed by its own top scientists. It took over 20 years for this technology to emerge from a university lab to become a real prototype.

Robots, Science & Technology News

Meet Digit: The ostrich-legged robot that might one day deliver you packages

March 23, 2021

By Luke Dormehl

What’s the robot equivalent of Rocky Balboa running up the 72 stone steps leading up to the entranceway of the Philadelphia Museum of Art? It could well be the sight of Agility Robotics’ biped robot, Digit, climbing up a wet, muddy, and not-all-that-grippable grassy hill at the company’s new HQ in Tangent, Oregon.

While the video is partly designed to show off this new home for Agility, it also demonstrates just how far its Digit tech has developed. If Rocky’s famous climb signifies the everyman overcoming great odds, Agility Robotics’ recent video is a reminder of just how impressively far robots have traveled in being able to traverse the real world. Both figuratively and literally.

Artificial Intelligence, Science & Technology News

New AI Technique Can Generate 3D Holograms in Real-Time

March 23, 2021

Holographic display prototype used in the experiments

By Derya Ozdemir

Not only can this technique run on a smartphone but it also needs less than 1 megabyte of memory.

Virtual reality has been around for decades, and every year, headlines all over the internet announce it to be the next big thing. However, those predictions are yet to become a reality, and VR technologies are far from being widespread. While there are many reasons for that, VR making users feel sick is definitely one of the culprits.

Better 3D visualization could help with that, and now, MIT researchers have developed a new way to produce holograms thanks to a deep learning-based method that works so efficiently that cuts down the computational power need in an instant, according to a press release by the university.

A hologram is an image that resembles a 2D window looking onto a 3D scene, and this 60-year-old technology remade for the digital world can deliver an outstanding image of the 3D world around us.

“People previously thought that with existing consumer-grade hardware, it was impossible to do real-time 3D holography computations,” explains Liang Shi, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. student in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “It’s often been said that commercially available holographic displays will be around in 10 years, yet this statement has been around for decades.”

Robotics, Science & Technology News

Ocean floor mapping robotics startup Bedrock announces an $8M raise

March 23, 2021

By Brian Heater

“It seems quite odd that no one has built the SpaceX equivalent for the ocean,” Anthony DiMare tells TechCrunch. “There’s no big, modern technology company that fits the space yet.”

DiMare cofounded Bedrock Ocean Exploration last year, with Charles Chiau. The latter brought a depth of robotics expertise to the space, while DiMare has experience with the oceans. His previous company, Nautilus Labs, which specialized in ocean fleet logistical planning, raised an $11 million Series A back 2019.

After leaving the startup, DiMare says he met up with Chiau at a San Francisco diner, where the pair discussed the challenges and opportunities in mapping the ocean floor. Today Bedrock is announcing that it has raised an $8 million seed round led by Eniac Ventures, Primary Venture Partners, Quiet Capital and R7.

The company notes that more than 80% of the ocean remains unmapped. And those parts are often at fairly low resolution. As the CEO puts it in a press release tied this morning’s news, “A far greater percentage of the surfaces of the Moon and Mars have been mapped and studied than our own ocean floor has.”

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

ICON’s First 3D Printed Homes for Sale in Austin, Texas

March 22, 2021

Written by Eric Baldwin

Kansas City developer 3Strands has announced U.S.A’s first 3D printed homes for sale, the company’s first multi-home project in Austin, Texas. Built with construction technology company ICON, the housing development includes two to four-bedroom homes in one of the fastest-growing cities in America. Designed by Logan Architecture, the project utilizes the Vulcan construction system to build each home.

Science & Technology News, Shopping

Here’s how you’ll shop in 2030

March 22, 2021

BY ELIZABETH SEGRAN

If the fashion industry cleans up its act.

If you’re worried about the planet, clothes shopping can feel like navigating a minefield. There are so many things to worry about when buying a T-shirt—from the carbon emissions to the wastewater generated during its manufacturing. But imagine a world where fashion labels cleaned up their act and the industry actually made the planet greener?

That’s the premise of a new report from Bain and Positive Luxury, a company that offers sustainability certifications to brands. The report explores the many initiatives brands are currently working on to become more eco-friendly and considers what the world would be like in 2030 if these became norms. At a time when many consumers are just beginning to reckon with the fashion industry’s devastating impact on the planet, the report offers a hopeful glimpse into the future—if the industry makes some changes.

Artificial Intelligence, Science & Technology News

Gartner: 75% of VCs will use AI to make investment decisions by 2025

March 22, 2021

By Kyle Wiggers

By 2025, more than 75% of venture capital and early-stage investor executive reviews will be informed by AI and data analytics. In other words, AI might determine whether a company makes it to a human evaluation at all, de-emphasizing the importance of pitch decks and financials. That’s according to a new whitepaper by Gartner, which predicts that in the next four years, the AI- and data-science-equipped investor will become commonplace.

Increased advanced analytics capabilities are shifting the early-stage venture investing strategy away from “gut feel” and qualitative decision-making to a “platform-based” quantitative process, according to Gartner senior research director Patrick Stakenas. Stakenas says data gathered from sources like LinkedIn, PitchBook, Crunchbase, and Owler, along with third-party data marketplaces, will be leveraged alongside diverse past and current investments.

“This data is increasingly being used to build sophisticated models that can better determine the viability, strategy, and potential outcome of an investment in a short amount of time. Questions such as when to invest, where to invest, and how much to invest are becoming almost automated,” Stakenas said. “The personality traits and work patterns required for success will be quantified in the same manner that the product and its use in the market, market size, and financial details are currently measured. AI tools will be used to determine how likely a leadership team is to succeed based on employment history, field expertise, and previous business success.”

Augmented Reality, Science & Technology News

Inside Facebook Reality Labs: The Next Era of Human-Computer Interaction

March 21, 2021

TL;DR: In today’s post — the first in a series exploring the future of human-computer interaction (HCI) — we’ll begin to unpack the 10-year vision of a contextually-aware, AI-powered interface for augmented reality (AR) glasses that can use the information you choose to share, to infer what you want to do, when you want to do it.

Imagine a world where a lightweight, stylish pair of glasses could replace your need for a computer or smartphone. You’d have the ability to feel physically present with friends and family — no matter where in the world they happened to be — and contextually-aware AI to help you navigate the world around you, as well as rich 3D virtual information within arm’s reach. Best of all, they’d let you look up and stay present in the world around you rather than pulling your attention away to the periphery in the palm of your hand. This is a device that wouldn’t force you to choose between the real world and the digital world.

It may sound like science fiction, but it’s a future that Facebook is building inside our labs. And today, we’ll share our vision for how people will interact with that future.

Robotics, Science & Technology News

This Fingertip for Robots Uses Magnets to ‘Feel’ Things

March 21, 2021

By sensing the subtle changes in the finger’s own magnetic field, this new technology could one day make for ultra-sensitive prosthetic hands.

By MATT SIMON

IMAGINE, IF YOU will, the home robot of the future. It picks clutter off the floor, sweeps, and does the dishes. And it has to do so perfectly: If the robot has an error rate of just 1 percent, it will drop one dish out of a hundred. Totally unacceptable. In no time, your floor would be covered in shards and the robot would get stuck in a sad, vicious feedback loop, dropping dishes and sweeping them up and dropping more dishes, ad infinitum.

To avoid this domestic nightmare, engineers will have to give robots a keen sense of touch. And for that, the machines will need fingertips, perhaps like the one recently described in the journal Science Robotics. It feels in a decidedly nonhuman way, by sensing the subtle changes in the finger’s own magnetic field, and it could one day make for ultra-sensitive prosthetic hands and robots that don’t maim tableware (or people) because they can’t control their grasp.

You, a human, can feel pressures and textures with your fingertips, thanks to specialized sensory cells in the skin called mechanoreceptors. These, along with the nervous system at large, translate mechanical information from the environment into signals your brain can comprehend as the perception of “touch.” Combined with thermoreceptors (which sense temperature) and nociceptors (which sense pain), you’re able to manipulate the world around you without hurting yourself.

Energy, Science & Technology News

Toyota creates hydrogen fuel-cell module to power buses, trains, ships

March 21, 2021

By STEPHEN EDELSTEIN

In addition to selling hydrogen fuel-cell cars, Toyota hopes to become a supplier of fuel-cell tech to other companies. To that end, the automaker has developed a modular fuel-cell system for use in other types of vehicles, including buses, trains, and ships, as well as stationary generators.

The goal is to grow the use of fuel cells by making a plug-and-play solution available to companies for the widest-possible array of applications, a Toyota press release said.

The modules are based on components from the second-generation Toyota Mirai sedan. While they include some ancillaries, such as power control, air supply, cooling, and hydrogen lines, the modules don’t include hydrogen tanks, leaving it up to each third-party user to figure out packaging.

Toyota plans to offer vertical and horizontal configurations, each with an output of 60 kilowatts (80 horsepower) or 80 kw (107 hp). The vertical version weighs about 550 pounds, while the horizontal version weighs about 530 pounds, according to Toyota.