Science & Technology News – Page 283

Amazon.com, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

Jeff Bezos unveils a giant lunar lander that he says is ‘going to the moon’ and will help Blue Origin populate space

May 15, 2019

Jeff Bezos shows off Blue Origin’s lunar lander concept, called Blue Moon, in Washington, DC, on May 9, 2019.
Dave Mosher/Business Insider

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, unveiled on Thursday a giant lunar lander concept by his spaceflight company, Blue Origin.

Called “Blue Moon,” the vehicle is designed to deliver a variety of types of payloads to the moon’s surface — including people at some point.

NASA said in April that it wants to fund a large, private lunar lander to get its astronauts to and from the moon, ideally as soon as 2024.

Continue reading… “Jeff Bezos unveils a giant lunar lander that he says is ‘going to the moon’ and will help Blue Origin populate space”

Food, Google, new technology, Science & Technology News

Restaurants are ignoring calls from Google’s Smart Assistant

May 13, 2019

Hello, This Is Robot

Almost exactly a year ago, everyone was flipping out over Google’s newly announced Duplex feature, which basically pretends to be a human assistant in order to make reservations at restaurants or schedule trips to the hairdresser.

But the AI-powered assistant has struggled to win over the hearts of service workers. The Verge reports that restaurants are hanging up on Google’s auto-calling voice assistant — sometimes because they’re creeped out by how lifelike it sounds.

“I was spooked at how natural and human the machine sounds,” server Shawn Watford of Birmingham, Alabama told The Verge. “It was so weird [that] when it called, I immediately hung up.”

Continue reading… “Restaurants are ignoring calls from Google’s Smart Assistant”

Breakthrough Thinking, Law Enforcement, Legal Issues, Legalized marijuana, Science & Technology News

Denver becomes first U.S. city to decriminalize “Magic Mushrooms”

May 13, 2019

This week, Denver, CO became the first city in the United States to decriminalize psilocybin, a compound with hallucinogenic properties that occurs in some mushrooms — a move that could signal new frontiers both in the country’s evolving relationship with mind-altering substances and in the medical community’s accelerating exploration of psychedelics.

“Because psilocybin has such tremendous medical potential, there’s no reason individuals should be criminalized for using something that grows naturally,” said Kevin Matthews, the director of the campaign to legalize psilocybin in Denver, in an interview with the New York Times.

The new law passed by a narrow margin, according to the Times, of less than 2,000 votes. It doesn’t entirely legalize psilocybin-containing mushrooms, but it makes the prosecution of possession and cultivation of them an extremely low-priority offense.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Cancer, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

MIT AI model is ‘significantly’ better at predicting breast cancer

May 13, 2019

The model can find breast cancer earlier and eliminates racial disparities in screening.

MIT researchers have invented a new AI-driven way of looking at mammograms that can help detect breast cancer in women up to five years in advance. A deep learning model created by a team of researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Massachusetts General Hospital can predict — based on just a mammogram — whether a woman will develop breast cancer in the future. And unlike older methods, it works just as well on black patients as it does on white patients.

Continue reading… “MIT AI model is ‘significantly’ better at predicting breast cancer”

cutting edge, Engineering, new technology, Science & Technology News, security

Move over, silicon switches: There’s a new way to compute

May 9, 2019

Logic and memory devices, such as the hard drives in computers, now use nanomagnetic mechanisms to store and manipulate information. Unlike silicon transistors, which have fundamental efficiency limitations, they require no energy to maintain their magnetic state: Energy is needed only for reading and writing information.

One method of controlling magnetism uses electrical current that transports spin to write information, but this usually involves flowing charge. Because this generates heat and energy loss, the costs can be enormous, particularly in the case of large server farms or in applications like artificial intelligence, which require massive amounts of memory. Spin, however, can be transported without a charge with the use of a topological insulator—a material whose interior is insulating but that can support the flow of electrons on its surface.

Continue reading… “Move over, silicon switches: There’s a new way to compute”

Analysis, Big Problems, Human Behavior, Law Enforcement, Science & Technology News

How Tech Empowers Dangerous Lone Wolves

May 9, 2019

Technology is democratizing the power of who gets to live and who does not. Are we ready for the consequences?

This is the second installment of “Privatizing the Apocalypse,” a four-part essay being published throughout October. Read Part 1: “The 50/50 Murder” here.

In 2015, a depressive young German named Andreas Lubitz killed himself, five co-workers, and quite a few strangers. He was one of perhaps 1,000 suicidal mass murderers to strike that year worldwide. But an unusual combination of two factors put Lubitz in a ghoulish class of his own.

First, he hatched and executed his plans without anyone’s help — which was not remarkable in itself. But the second factor was scale — in that he really killed a lot of strangers. As in 144 of them. Lubitz’s victims hailed from 18 countries and included infants, retirees, and all ages between. He killed dozens of times more people than most rampage murderers and almost three times as many as 2017’s Las Vegas shooter, who is (for now) history’s most prolific lone suicidal gunman.

Continue reading… “How Tech Empowers Dangerous Lone Wolves”

Energy, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy

These “biosolar panels” suck CO2 from the air to grow edible algae

May 9, 2019

In London, scientists are testing the “BioSolar Leaf,” which uses carbon-hungry organisms to help clean the air better than trees can–all while providing an excellent source of protein.

At Imperial College London’s new campus in West London, some rooftops will soon hold bright green “biosolar” panels covered with algae. The plants suck carbon dioxide out of the air and produce fresh oxygen at a rate 100 times faster than trees covering the same amount of land–and then the microscopic organisms can be harvested to be used in food.

“We call it a ‘BioSolar Leaf,’” says Julian Melchiorri, CEO of Arborea, the company that designed the new technology. “It uses solar energy, but instead of converting solar energy into electricity [like a solar panel], we convert solar energy into food.”

Continue reading… “These “biosolar panels” suck CO2 from the air to grow edible algae”

Big Problems, Children, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

More Teens are attempting suicide by poisoning. Here’s what parents should know

May 9, 2019

Suicide rates are on the rise in the U.S. across age groups and demographics. But in recent years, increases have been particularly pronounced among teenagers — especially girls, who die by suicide less frequently than boys but attempt it more often.

Intentional self-poisoning is the leading type of suicide attempt for adolescents (and the third-leading cause of suicide deaths), and a new study confirms that numbers here, too, are rising. The research, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, found that suicide attempts by poisoning have doubled in frequency among kids younger than 19, rising from almost 40,000 attempts in 2000 to almost 80,000 in 2018. Teen girls seemed to drive the increase in self-poisoning attempts, which can include intentional drug overdoses or exposure to other toxic substances.

Continue reading… “More Teens are attempting suicide by poisoning. Here’s what parents should know”

Food, Green Friendly, Hot Issues, Science & Technology News

Maine passes the U.S.’s first state ban on foam food packaging

May 9, 2019

The state joins several U.S. cities and counties in restricting the containers in an effort to reduce waste.

This article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society.

Maine has joined a growing list of states, cities, and counties, including 14 towns in Maine, to ban foam food containers in an effort to reduce plastic waste.

The bill bans bowls, plates, cups, trays, cartons, and other containers designed to hold prepared food and beverages. Signed by Governor Janet Mills Tuesday, it takes effect January 1, 2021.

Continue reading… “Maine passes the U.S.’s first state ban on foam food packaging”

Analysis, Genes, Genetics, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Why do people love coffee and beer? It’s the buzz, not the taste, study finds

May 9, 2019

“People like the way coffee and alcohol make them feel. That’s why they drink it. It’s not the taste,” a Northwestern University researcher said.

Whether you prefer a Café Latte or a diet soda may actually depend on how the drink makes you feel, rather than how it tastes, a new study finds.

This idea contradicts what scientists previously thought: that our taste genes determined why we preferred one drink over the other.

Continue reading… “Why do people love coffee and beer? It’s the buzz, not the taste, study finds”

3D Printer, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Bioengineers 3D print complex vascular networks

May 9, 2019

They’ll be essential to 3D-printed organs and replacement tissues.

Bioengineers are one step closer to 3D printing organs and tissues. A team led by Rice University and the University of Washington have developed a tool to 3D print complex and “exquisitely entangled” vascular networks. These mimic the body’s natural passageways for blood, air, lymph and other fluids, and they will be essential for artificial organs.

For decades, one of the challenges in replicating human tissues has been figuring out a way to get nutrients and oxygen into the tissue and how to remove waste. Our bodies use vascular networks to do this, but it’s been hard to recreate those in soft, artificial materials.

Continue reading… “Bioengineers 3D print complex vascular networks”

cutting edge, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

This injectable gel could one day rebuild muscle, skin, and fat

May 10, 2019

A new injectable gel could help repair damaged soft tissues.

This injectable gel could one day rebuild muscle, skin, and fat

Car crashes, battle wounds, and surgeries can leave people with gaping holes in soft tissue that are often too large for their bodies to repair. Now, researchers have developed a nanofiber-reinforced injectable gel that can rebuild missing muscle and connective tissues by serving as a scaffold and recruiting the body’s wound-healing cells. So far, the team has tested the material only in rats and rabbits. But if it performs as well in humans, it could give reconstructive surgeons a fast and easy way to help patients regenerate lost tissues without scarring or deformity.

Continue reading… “This injectable gel could one day rebuild muscle, skin, and fat”