Science & Technology News – Page 68

AI “Nanny” Being Created by Chinese Scientists to Grow Babies in Robot Wombs

February 8, 2022

Researchers say the technology could help with imminent population crisis, with birth rates in China at their lowest level in six decades.

The artificial intelligence nanny has arrived. Robots and artificial intelligence (AI) may now be used in conjunction to optimize the generation of human life, marking a significant milestone in the science.

Robotics and artificial intelligence can now assist in the development of newborns via the use of algorithms and artificial wombs, which is eerily similar to what we see in the cult classic, The Matrix.

According to the South China Morning Post, Chinese experts in Suzhou have pioneered the development of the latest technological breakthrough. However, there are concerns about the ethical implications of raising human beings in an artificial environment.

The discoveries were published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Biomedical Engineering by Suzhou-based scientists. The AI nanny, according to the researchers, might aid in the growth of human kids in a “long-term embryo culture device.”

This artificial womb is a big machine containing compartments for individual fetuses. The infants will be fed as they would be in a real womb if they are in the chamber, which will be filled with an optimized mix of “nutritious fluids.”

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast with Jeff Booth

February 6, 2022

Watch our interview with Jeff on Youtube.

Jeff Booth is a visionary leader who has lived at the forefront of technology change for 20 years. In January 2020, Jeff released his first book titled “The Price of Tomorrow – Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future”, in which he offers his provocative thesis about the current state of our economies and what must happen to enable a brighter future.

Related

Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

DARPA’s RACER Program Sends High-Speed Autonomous Vehicles Off-Road

February 5, 2022

For the next three years, robotic vehicles will be pushing the limits of all-terrain racing

By EVAN ACKERMAN

DARPA DARPA has announced the first phase of a shiny new program called RACER, which stands for Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency.

I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just left it at RACE, but that’s government backronyms for you. Anyway, the RACER program is all about high-speed driving in unstructured environments, which is a problem that has not been addressed by the commercial-vehicle-autonomy industry, because we have, you know, roads.

But where DARPA is going there are no roads, and the agency wants autonomous vehicles to be able to explore on their own as well as keep up with vehicles driven by humans. DARPA has announced three teams that will each get funding and vehicles: Carnegie Mellon University, NASA JPL, and the University of Washington.

And if everything goes well, we’ll be seeing some absolutely bonkers off-road autonomous racing over the next three years.The goal of the Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program is to develop and demonstrate new autonomy technologies that enable ground combat vehicles to maneuver in unstructured, off-road terrain at speeds that are no longer limited by the autonomy software or processing time, but only by considerations of sensor limitations, vehicle mechanical limits, and safety.

Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Scientists regrow frogs’ amputated limbs in massive leap for regenerative medicine

February 5, 2022

By Ian Smith

Scientists in the US have successfully regrown the lost legs of a group of frogs in a significant advance for regenerative medicine.

The research is an important step to one day helping people who have experienced the loss of a limb and opens the door to the potential use of a similar treatment on humans in the future.

The African clawed frog used in the research does not have the ability to naturally regenerate a limb and was treated with a five-drug cocktail over 24 hours. That brief treatment set in motion an 18-month period of regrowth that restored a functional leg.

“It’s exciting to see that the drugs we selected were helping to create an almost complete limb,” said Nirosha Murugan, research affiliate at the Allen Discovery Centre at Tufts and first author of the paper outlining the experiment.

“The fact that it required only a brief exposure to the drugs to set in motion a months-long regeneration process suggests that frogs and perhaps other animals may have dormant regenerative capabilities that can be triggered into action”.

2022 predictions, Science & Technology News

ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2022: The 14 transformative technologies to watch this year

February 3, 2022

ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2022 annual research report identifies five innovation platforms that are evolving and converging and 14 transformative technologies that are approaching tipping points as costs drop.

Written by Vala Afshar

ARK Invest solely invests in disruptive innovations. ARK’s thematic investment strategies span market capitalizations, sectors, and geographies to focus on public companies that we expect to be the leaders, enablers, and beneficiaries of disruptive innovation. ARK’s strategies aim to deliver long-term growth with low correlation to traditional investment strategies.

ARK Invest defines “disruptive innovation” as the introduction of a technologically enabled new product or service that potentially changes the way the world works. ARK focuses solely on offering investment solutions to capture disruptive innovation in the public equity markets.

ARK released their annual BIG IDEAS 2022 research report centered around the belief that five innovation platforms are evolving and converging at the same time: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Energy Storage, DNA Sequencing, and Blockchain Technology. ARK has identified 14 transformative technologies that are approaching tipping points as costs drop, unleashing demand across sectors and geographies, and spawning more innovation.

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast with Kerry Vaughn

February 1, 2022

Watch our interview with Kerry on Youtube.

Kerry Vaughan is the Program Manager for Early Stage Science at Leverage Research. He studies the history of successful attempts at generating scientific knowledge in nascent fields, the characteristics these attempts share, and the historical relationship between failures in scientific ethics and slowdowns in scientific advance.

Metaverse, Science & Technology News

Personal AI avatars could be metaverse’s killer app

February 1, 2022

Big Tech race is on to define and dominate the metaverse’s projected $800 billion market

By ALEX CONNOCK

Big numbers coming. Microsoft’s US$75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has landed – true to Call of Duty vernacular – “like a bomb” on the $200 billion revenue video games industry.

It heavily arms the Xbox giant for its vision of the metaverse, in which gaming is the marketing adrenaline of this much-touted online future that is to be experienced immersively through virtual reality (VR) headsets or augmented reality (AR) glasses. The stock market knocked $10 billion off Playstation maker Sony’s valuation on the news.

The metaverse was also a big noise at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, branded “tech’s hottest trend” by Variety magazine. Product launches included Samsung’s new VR world My House, offering virtual home makeovers; and US beauty tech group Perfect Corp’s AR-driven virtual beauty makeover range, which lets people experiment with cosmetics and accessories using AR.

Certainly the metaverse has been fast-moving, even since (in October 2021) Facebook renamed itself Meta – a bold step when VR only brings in about 3% of the company’s current revenue. But Bloomberg is predicting that the overall metaverse will be generating revenues of $800 billion as soon as 2024 (compared to $500 billion in 2020), so the prize is huge.

About half of that 2024 projection is expected from video games, while a substantial remainder is from live entertainment – and major artists like Ariana Grande and Marshmello have already been holding concerts in the virtual world.

Yet besides niche attractions for early adopters, what about the rest of us? Will we sign up for virtual interaction en masse when the technology is ready in a few years time? Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the metaverse will allow people “to feel present – like we’re right there … no matter how far apart we actually are.”

drones, Science & Technology News

Berkeley researchers design self-folding in-flight drone arms

January 29, 2022

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a drone whose hinged arms can fold themselves from horizontal to vertical position in order to pass through tight spaces or carry light objects.

By Bruce Crumley

The objective of researchers at Berkeley’s High Performance Robotics Laboratory (HiPeRLab) was to design a quadcopter capable of raising and lowering its arms while in flight to adjust to limited spaces, or increase the tasks it could perform. To do that, they inserted hinges between the body of the square craft and its rotor-equipped appendages to enable their lowering and raising. In contrast to other experimental UAVs tricked up for similar folding movement, however, HiPeRLab scientists figured out a way for the drone itself to power all that flapping.

Previous limb-adjusting vehicles created by labs like Purdue University’s Engineering Technology school were outfitted with actuators that shifted the arms and rotors into different positions, making them more efficient in certain conditions like heavy winds. The HiPeRLab staff wanted to avoid inclusion of actuators, which draw off the drone’s batteries and thereby reduce its flight time. Their solution: use passive hinges whose up and down folding is powered by the rotors themselves.

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Futurati Podcast with Ben Landau-Taylor

January 26, 2022

Watch the interview with Ben on Youtube Listen to the episode on Futurati Podcast

Ben Landau-Taylor is a senior researcher at Bismarck Analysis, where he focuses on power, industry, economics, and social dynamics.

Science & Technology News

THIS DEVICE TURNS AIR INTO PURE DRINKING WATER, PROVIDING 10 LITERS OF FRESH MINERAL WATER EACH DAY

January 25, 2022

BY NEHA MISTRY

What’s funny about the idea of progress is that it’s much more layered than we think. Sure, 30 years from now, we will have sent humans to Mars… but 30 years from now most cities will even be dealing with extreme climate change, polluted air, and scarcity of resources like running water. Sounds odd when you look at the whole picture, right? Well, we’re living in a world that’s on a path to change, and it may be prudent to stop taking things like drinking water for granted.

Meet Kara Pure, a water dispenser that basically turns air into drinking water. Designed by Cody Soodeen, Kara Pure wasn’t created in a void — Soodeen grew up in a town where the drinking water was contaminated by a strain of bacteria that had health implications for the people who consumed it. Unfit drinking water isn’t particularly rare nowadays, with groundwater tables either being infected/polluted, or being entirely depleted due to overconsumption and a lack of accounting for climate change. While Kara Pure is clearly built keeping a pretty inevitable future in mind, it’s important that Soodeen and other people like him perfect the technology now, rather than later.