Science & Technology News – Page 311

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Breakthrough Thinking, Human Behavior, Intelligence, Science & Technology News

Digital immortality: How your life’s data means a version of you could live forever

November 10, 2018

Your family and friends will be able to interact with a digital “you” that doles out advice—even when you’re gone.

Hossein Rahnama knows a CEO of a major financial company who wants to live on after he’s dead, and Rahnama thinks he can help him do it.

Rahnama is creating a digital avatar for the CEO that they both hope could serve as a virtual “consultant” when the actual CEO is gone. Some future company executive deciding whether to accept an acquisition bid might pull out her cell phone, open a chat window, and pose the question to the late CEO. The digital avatar, created by an artificial-intelligence platform that analyzes personal data and correspondence, might detect that the CEO had a bad relationship with the acquiring company’s execs. “I’m not a fan of that company’s leadership,” the avatar might say, and the screen would go red to indicate disapproval.

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Engineering, Inventions, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

‘Human brain’ supercomputer with 1 million processors switched on for first time

November 9, 2018

The world’s largest neuromorphic supercomputer designed and built to work in the same way a human brain does has been fitted with its landmark one-millionth processor core and is being switched on for the first time.

The newly formed million-processor-core Spiking Neural Network Architecture (SpiNNaker) machine is capable of completing more than 200 million million actions per second, with each of its chips having 100 million moving parts.

To reach this point, it has taken £15million in funding, 20 years in conception and over 10 years in construction, with the initial build starting way back in 2006. The project was initially funded by the EPSRC and is now supported by the European Human Brain Project. It is being switched on for the first time on Friday, 2 November.

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Engineering, Inventions, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

Scientists create a rare fifth form of matter in space for the first time ever

November 8, 2018

For a few minutes on Jan. 23, 2017, the coldest spot in the known universe was a tiny microchip hovering 150 miles over Kiruna, Sweden.

The chip was small — about the size of a postage stamp — and loaded with thousands of tightly-packed rubidium-87 atoms. Scientists launched that chip into space aboard an unpiloted, 40-foot-long (12 meters) rocket, then bombarded it with lasers until the atoms inside it cooled to minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius) — a fraction of a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature in nature.

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Analysis, Genetics, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

What researchers with the world’s longest running study of human aging know for sure

November 7, 2018

What is aging? That’s the question the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sought to answer in 1958 when it launched the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA)—now the world’s longest-running study of human aging.

Some 3,200 men and women have played a critical role in advancing our understanding of what it means to get older. And these particular volunteers made a lifelong commitment to participate in the research. In over six decades of work, BLSA researchers say they are certain of just two things: Aging is not synonymous with disease. And we all age differently.

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Alzheimer's Disease, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Eye scan may detect Alzheimer’s disease in seconds

November 7, 2018

Two new studies now suggest that a noninvasive eye scan could soon be used to catch Alzheimer’s disease early.

A simple eye scan may soon detect Alzheimer’s in a matter of seconds.

The world’s population is aging rapidly and the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise.

For this reason, the need for efficient dementia screening methods that can be applied to millions of people is dire.

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Business, Engineering, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Why are robotics companies dying?

November 6, 2018

Rethink Robotics shuttered its doors and closed for good on October 4, 2018. For many casual observers the collapse of a much-celebrated company, founded by preeminent artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and minor celebrity Rodney Brooks was a surprise. To others it’s just the latest indication of the trouble in robotics land. According to the company, Rethink Robotics was forced to shut its doors when it couldn’t find additional funding, and in a final attempt to sell the company and/or its assets it couldn’t find a buyer.

Rethink Robotics wasn’t the only robotics company forced to close its doors in the past year. Mayfield Robotics, developers of the social robot Kuri, closed down a few months before Rethink in August 2018, despite just making its debut one year earlier at CES 2017. Prior to that, Jibo, makers of a personal robotics device also shut down even after having raised over $70 Million. These companies shut down despite collectively raising several hundred million dollars in funding and developing their products over many years.

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Automobiles, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News

What is Volkswagen’s MEB platform?

November 6, 2018

The electric car offensive from Volkswagen will soon begin. After years of laggin behind other carmakers because of the research it needed to do, the German auto giant promises that thanks to its new modular platform, there will be ten million electric Volkswagen group cars on the roads in the coming years.

This new platform, the one which allows for this electric revolution is referred to by Volkswagen as the MEB. That’s kind of short for Modular Electrification Toolkit.

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China, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robots will build robots in $150 million Chinese factory

November 5, 2018

Swiss firm ABB is investing big money to conquer the Chinese robotics market.

Swiss robotics company ABB has revealed that it’s spending $150 million to build an advanced robotics factory in Shanghai — one that will use robots to build robots. The company will rely on its YuMi single-arm robots, which it once used to conduct an orchestra, for small parts assembly. It also plans to make extensive use”of its SafeMove2 software in the facility, which it says will allow its YuMi models and other automated machines to safely work in close proximity with human employees.

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Elon Musk, Hyperloop, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News, SpaceX, Tesla

We need Elon Musk much more than he needs us

November 5, 2018

Heroes are not created equal. Most people recognize the name Sully Sullenberger, but far fewer can tell you what Alan Turing did during World War II.

Fewer still could tell you that Turing was chemically castrated because he was gay, and committed suicide shortly thereafter. But thanks for bringing one of the most horrifying wars in history to an abrupt end, I guess?

Society isn’t always kind to its heroes. We ask for an ill-defined yet idealized sort of perfection, and when our heroes fall short, we make sure they fall twice as hard.

Some might write this phenomenon off as a minor inconvenience for the rich, successful or famous, but times have changed. The human costs of war pale in comparison to the battles humanity will face in the years to come.

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Breakthrough Thinking, cutting edge, Science & Technology News

Is anti-gravity real? Science is about to find out

November 4, 2018

The warping of spacetime, in the General Relativistic picture, by gravitational masses is what causes the gravitational force. It is assumed, but not experimentally verified, that antimatter masses will behave the same as matter masses in a gravitational field.LIGO/T. PYLE

One of the most astonishing facts about science is how universally applicable the laws of nature are. Every particle obeys the same rules, experiences the same forces, and sees the same fundamental constants, no matter where or when they exist. Gravitationally, every single entity in the Universe experiences, depending on how you look at it, either the same gravitational acceleration or the same curvature of spacetime, no matter what properties it possesses.

At least, that’s what things are like in theory. In practice, some things are notoriously difficult to measure. Photons and normal, stable particles both fall as expected in a gravitational field, with Earth causing any massive particle to accelerate towards its center at 9.8 m/s2. Despite our best efforts, though, we have never measured the gravitational acceleration of antimatter. It ought to accelerate the exact same way, but until we measure it, we can’t know. One experiment is attempting to decide the matter, once-and-for-all. Depending on what it finds, it just might be the key to a scientific and technological revolution.

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Engineering, Inventions, New Inventions, new technology, Science & Technology News

Scientists have created programmable shape-shifting liquid metal

November 3, 2018

Researchers at the University of Sussex and Swansea University have applied electrical charges to manipulate liquid metal into 2D shapes such as letters and a heart. The team says the findings represent an “extremely promising” new class of materials that can be programmed to seamlessly change shape. This open up new possibilities in ‘soft robotics’ and shape-changing displays, the researcher say.

While the invention might bring to mind the film Terminator 2, in which the villain morphs out of a pool of liquid metal, the creation of 3D shapes is still some way off. More immediate applications could include reprogrammable circuit boards and conductive ink.

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Brain, Latest Trend, Legal Issues, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Can tiny doses of magic mushrooms unlock creativity?

November 3, 2018

Preliminary study suggests that ‘microdoses’ of psychedelics may enhance a person’s creative problem solving abilities

The use of minute doses of magic mushrooms and truffles containing psychedelic substances could induce a state of unconstrained thought that may produce more new, creative ideas. ‘Microdosing’ in this way may allow people to experience the creative benefits of psychedelic drugs without the risk of the so-called ‘bad trips’ that often come with high doses of such substances.

The use of minute doses of magic mushrooms and truffles containing psychedelic substances could induce a state of unconstrained thought that may produce more new, creative ideas. “Microdosing” in this way may allow people to experience the creative benefits of psychedelic drugs without the risk of the so-called “bad trips” that often come with high doses of such substances. This is according to a new study in the Springer-branded journal Psychopharmacology which is the official journal of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (EBPS). The research was led by Luisa Prochazkova of Leiden University in The Netherlands and is the first study of its kind to experimentally investigate the cognitive-enhancing effects of microdosing on a person’s brain function within a natural setting.

Continue reading… “Can tiny doses of magic mushrooms unlock creativity?”