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Aug 30, 2016

Flying with the Fourth State of Matter

Posted by in category: transportation

By harnessing the power of plasma, engineers may be on the cusp of a revolution in aircraft design and more.

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Aug 30, 2016

Elon Musk Hints That Tesla Updates Will Soon Lead To Level 4 Autonomy

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, robotics/AI, sustainability, transportation

Elon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO, is alluding to a big announcement about level 4 autonomy later this year. For now though, the technology is still in need of software improvements.

Tesla Motors has been starring in headlines recently, thanks to crashes attributed to the autopilot system, the announcement of the ambitious Master Plan, and the company’s acquisition of SolarCity. Now, Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, is attracting even more media attention.

When asked about Tesla’s progress toward Level 4 fully autonomous driving on a conference call, Musk teased, “what we’ve got will blow people’s minds, it blows my mind …it’ll come sooner than people think.”

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Aug 30, 2016

Scientists Are Creating Micro Fuel Cells for Our Shrinking Technology

Posted by in categories: electronics, energy

Researchers developed a method of transferring an energy source to virtually any shape using direct laser writing…

As electronics shrink in size, their energy sources have to fit into tighter, and sometimes more oddly-shaped, spaces. Researchers at the University of Missouri had this challenge in mind when they developed a method of transferring an energy source to virtually any shape using direct laser writing (DLW).

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Aug 30, 2016

The Lionfish Terminator: Researchers Built a Robot to Kill Invasive Species

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI

In response to the lionfish invasion’s adverse impact on the ecosystem, RISE will be building a robotic lionfish exterminator.

Biodiversity in the Carribean Waters, right now, is hanging on a thread. For years, its aquatic life has been threatened by pollution, overfishing, and other malpractices. Now, an even greater and uncontrollable threat has risen. It’s goal: having the “all you can eat seafood buffet” of its lifetime.

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Aug 30, 2016

Watly: Clean water, electricity and internet using only the sun!

Posted by in categories: internet, solar power

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Aug 30, 2016

A new study looks for the cortical conscious network

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, mathematics, neuroscience, physics

New research published in the New Journal of Physics tries to decompose the structural layers of the cortical network to different hierarchies enabling to identify the network’s nucleus, from which our consciousness could emerge.

The is a very complex network, with approximately 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses between the neurons. In order to cope with its enormous complexity and to understand how brain function eventually creates the conscious mind, science uses advanced mathematical tools. Ultimately, scientists want to understand how a global phenomenon such as consciousness can emerge from our neuronal network.

A team of physicists from Bar Ilan University in Israel led by Professor Shlomo Havlin and Professor Reuven Cohen used network theory in order to deal with this complexity and to determine how the structure of the human cortical network can support complex data integration and . The gray area of the human cortex, the neuron cell bodies, were scanned with MRI imaging and used to form 1000 in the cortical network. The white matter of the human cortex, the neuron bundles, were scanned with DTI imaging, forming 15,000 links or edges that connected the network’s nodes. In the end of this process, their network was an approximation of the structure of the human cortex.

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Aug 30, 2016

Could an algorithm help to save people’s eyesight? Google thinks so

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, life extension, robotics/AI

Google’s artificial intelligence research lab DeepMind is exploring whether its technology could be used to identify early signs of eye diseases that ophthalmologists might not spot.

DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014, has struck an agreement with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London that gives it access to about a million anonymous retinal scans, which it will feed into its artificial intelligence software.

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Aug 30, 2016

Virtual Reality Gets More Immersive With Face Tracking Software

Posted by in category: virtual reality

VR can now pretty much transform us all into virtual characters.

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Aug 30, 2016

Why Bitcoin is and isn’t like the Internet — By Joichi Ito | LinkedIn

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, internet

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“In the post that follows I’m trying to develop what I see to be strong analogues to another crucial period/turning point in the history of technology, but like all such comparisons, the differences are as illuminating as the similarities.”

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Aug 30, 2016

President Barack Obama Will Guest-Edit Wired’s November Issue — By Robert Capps | Wired

Posted by in category: futurism

President Barack Obama reviews layout boards in the Roosevelt Room with Wired Magazine Editor in Chief Scott Dadich and Editorial Director Rob Capps for the issue he his guest editing.

“Wired has had some amazing guest editors over the years. J.J. Abrams on magic, mysteries, and puzzles; Bill Gates on solving the world’s biggest problems; Christopher Nolan on space, time, and multiple dimensions; and, most recently, Serena Williams on equality in the digital age. This November we will add President Barack Obama to our guest editor ranks—the first time WIRED (or any other magazine) has been guest-edited by a sitting president.”

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