Impact Lab – Page 559 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Biotech, brain hacking, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

New mind-controlled robot arm first to work without brain implant

July 15, 2019

Just strap on the EEG cap and start thinking.

If you want to control a robot with your mind — and really, who doesn’t? — you currently have two options.

You can get a brain implant, in which case your control over the robot will be smooth and continuous. Or you can skip the risky, expensive surgery in favor of a device that senses your brainwaves from outside your skull — but your control over the bot will be jerky and not nearly as precise.

Now, a team from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is narrowing the gap between those two options, creating the first noninvasive mind-controlled robot arm that exhibits the kind of smooth, continuous motion previously reserved only for systems involving brain implants — putting us one step closer to a future in which we can all use our minds to control the tech around us.

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Batteries, Energy, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Fake blood pumps life into this robotic fish

July 11, 2019

Autonomous robots may soon be an ever-present force in our lives, but they are going nowhere fast — or rather, a short distance quickly — without better batteries. You’ve surely seen modern robots scamper through woods or vacuum your floors, but they can only do it for short periods before their energy runs out. Many carry a large battery, which increases a robot’s weight, and in a vicious cycle, requires more power to move.

But a new development in robotic technology that borrows from biology may lead to longer lasting batteries.

The fish “blood” that runs through it serves as both the robot’s power source and controls its movement.

Researchers have engineered a robotic lionfish with synthetic arteries, similar to those found in a human’s circulatory system. The fish “blood” that runs through it serves as both the robot’s power source and controls its movement. The findings, published Wednesday in Nature, may propel the new wave of soft robots, in which inventors seek to improve lifelike automated machines for human connection.

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Big Data, City Planning, Engineering, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs unveils its high-tech ‘city-within-a-city’ plan for Toronto

July 11, 2019

Sidewalk Labs says it will spend $1.3 billion on the project in the hopes of spurring $38 billion in private sector investment by 2040

Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet’s smart city subsidiary, released its massive plan Monday to transform a slice of Toronto’s waterfront into a high-tech utopia. Eighteen months in the making and clocking in at 1,524 pages, the plan represents Alphabet’s first, high-stakes effort to realize Alphabet CEO Larry Page’s long-held dream of a city within a city to experiment with innovations like self-driving cars, public Wi-Fi, new health care delivery solutions, and other city planning advances that modern technology makes possible.

Previously, Sidewalk Labs called it “a neighborhood built from the internet up.” But on Monday, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff went a step further to describe it as “the most innovative district in the world.”

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Fashion, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

This fully biodegradable “leather” is welded together from waste

July 11, 2019

This fully biodegradable “leather” is welded together from waste

Mirum is the latest entry in the attempt to make a cheap, sustainable cow-free leather.

Vegan leather shoes are typically made from plastics like polyurethane–so even though they might avoid the carbon footprint and animal welfare issues of raising cattle, they aren’t exactly environmentally friendly. Even plant-based leather typically uses plastic resin or glue to hold the material together. And while some companies work on lab-grown collagen or leather made from mushroom roots, those aren’t widely available and can be difficult to scale up. A new leather brand thinks it has technology that could make plant-based leather–without any plastic–mainstream.

“The foundation of the company is plants, not plastic,” says Luke Haverhals, the founder and CEO of Natural Fiber Welding, the company making a new brand of leather called Mirum. The product has a similar cost to plastic alternatives, but can be made from agricultural waste and is fully biodegradable.

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Battery, Energy, Science & Technology News, Solar Energy

Siemens Gamesa unveils world first electrothermal energy storage system

July 11, 2019

Spanish renewable energy giant and offshore wind energy leader Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy last week inaugurated operations of its electrothermal energy storage system which can store up to 130 megawatt-hours of electricity for a week in volcanic rock.

Siemens Gamesa, a company known more famously for its offshore wind turbines, is nevertheless a large-scale renewable energy technology manufacturer, with its hands in various renewable technology pots. One of these pots is energy storage, and last week the company announced the beginning of operations of its electric thermal energy storage system (ETES), claimed by the company as a world first. The opening ceremony for the pilot plant in Hamburg-Altenwerder was held last week to celebrate the beginning of operations.

The newly-opened electric thermal energy storage system is billed by Siemens Gamesa as “The Future Energy Solution” and as costing “significantly” less than classic energy storage solutions. Specifically, according to the company, even at the gigawatt-hour (GWh) pilot scale, ETES “would be highly competitive compared to other available storage technologies.”

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Education, Higher Education, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Top 6 trends in higher education

July 11, 2019

Around the world, tuition at universities is rising at a much faster rate than inflation and challenging students’ return on investment. Reduced government funding and higher operating costs are driving the need for change at universities. The mismatch in employer needs and employee skills is leaving over seven million jobs unfilled in the U.S.

These trends are opening the way for new approaches in higher education. Innovations in how post-secondary education are delivered, financed, and recognized are driven by a range of actors—from large public universities like Arizona State University to elite private institutions like MIT to the many relatively new education companies entering the sector like Make School, Coursera, and Trilogy Education.

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communication, Computer Security, Science & Technology News, security

How a trivial cell phone hack is ruining lives

July 11, 2019

On a Tuesday night in May, Sean Coonce was reading the news in bed when his phone dropped service. He chalked it up to tech being tech and went to sleep. When he woke up, his Gmail account had been stolen and by Wednesday evening he was out $100,000.

“This is still very raw (I haven’t even told my family yet),” Coonce wrote in an anguished Medium post. “I can’t stop thinking about the small, easy things I could have done to protect myself along the way.”

On a Monday night in June, Matthew Miller’s daughter woke him up to say that his Twitter account had been hacked. He had no cell phone service; within a few days Miller lost his Gmail and Twitter account and $25,000 from his family bank account.

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Biotech, Engineering, Science & Technology News, security

The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat

July 11, 2019

The Jetson prototype can pick up on a unique cardiac signature from 200 meters away, even through clothes.

Everyone’s heart is different. Like the iris or fingerprint, our unique cardiac signature can be used as a way to tell us apart. Crucially, it can be done from a distance.

It’s that last point that has intrigued US Special Forces. Other long-range biometric techniques include gait analysis, which identifies someone by the way he or she walks. This method was supposedly used to identify an infamous ISIS terrorist before a drone strike. But gaits, like faces, are not necessarily distinctive. An individual’s cardiac signature is unique, though, and unlike faces or gait, it remains constant and cannot be altered or disguised.

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Environment, Green Friendly, Recycling, Science & Technology News

New unprinting method can help recycle paper and curb environmental costs

July 11, 2019

A new way to unprint paper using intense pulsed light from a xenon lamp.

Imagine if your printer had an “unprint” button that used pulses of light to remove toner—and thereby quintupled the lifespan of recycled paper.

A Rutgers-led team has created a new way to unprint paper that, unlike laser-based methods, can work with the standard, coated paper used in home and office printers. The new method uses pulses of light from a xenon lamp, and can erase black, blue, red and green toners without damaging the paper, according to a study in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

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Automation, Employment, Report, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Robots ‘will take 20 million manufacturing jobs over the next decade’, report warns

July 11, 2019

People have long been nervous about robots and artificial intelligence taking over human jobs – but the next decade will see the process shoot into overdrive.

During the next decade, machines will displace 20 million manufacturing jobs, a report by analyst firm Oxford Economics suggests.

That amounts to 8.5% of the global manufacturing workforce, with each robot displacing 1.6 workers on average.

The report says that robotisation is accelerating due to falling costs, with the average unit price of a robot falling 11% between 2011 and 2016, CNN reported.

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3D Printer, Breakthrough Thinking, Fashion, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

Baldness breakthrough uses 3D-printed “hair farms” to grow new hair follicles

July 11, 2019

The 3D-printed structure can for the first time grow human hair follicles entirely in a laboratory dish

An exciting breakthrough from Columbia University researchers demonstrates a new way to grow human hair follicles using 3D printed molds. This is the first time human hair follicle cells have been grown completely in lab conditions, opening up a potentially unlimited source of hair follicles for future hair restoration surgical procedures.

Over the last few decades hair transplantation surgery has rapidly evolved, becoming more sophisticated and successful, however the process has still fundamentally relied on hair follicles being redistributed from one part of the body to another. Growing human hair follicles in laboratory conditions has proved challenging for researchers, ultimately limiting the efficacy of hair restoration surgery, especially in patients without hair already present that can be grafted.

This new breakthrough brings together a couple of recent innovations. First, the researchers created a unique plastic mold using 3D printers. The moulds are designed to resemble a natural micro-environment stimulating hair follicle growth through tiny extensions just half a millimeter wide.

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Employment, Latest Trend, Report, Science & Technology News

Remote jobs are exploding and salaries can top $100,000

July 11, 2019

The lure of remote work is obvious. You can save on the costs of a formal work wardrobe, lunches out and commuting.

Until now, you might have been limited in your choice of jobs. That’s changing. Some fields had an increase of more than 50% in remote jobs in the past year, according to FlexJobs.

More than 4 million employees — slightly more than 3% of the U.S. workforce — work from home at least half the time, according to Global Workplace Analytics, a telecommuting research site.

Certain careers offer more remote jobs than others. FlexJobs found that seven fields had high rates — more than 50% — of remote career opportunities over the last year.

Continue reading… “Remote jobs are exploding and salaries can top $100,000”