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Nov 29, 2017

More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issue ‘warning to humanity’

Posted by in category: futurism

More than 15,000 scientists around the world have issued a global warning: there needs to be change in order to save Earth.

It comes 25 years after the first notice in 1992 when a mere 1,500 scientists issued a similar warning.

This new cautioning — which gained popularity on Twitter with #ScientistsWarningToHumanity — garnered more than 15,000 signatures.

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Nov 29, 2017

Artificial Intelligence, Video Games and The Mysteries of the Mind

Posted by in categories: entertainment, robotics/AI

Artificial intelligence could be the powerful tool we need to solve some of the biggest problems facing our world, argues Raia Hadsell. In this talk, she offers an insight into how she and her colleagues are developing robots with the capacity to learn. Their superhuman ability to play video games is just the start.

Raia Hadsell is a research scientist on the Deep Learning team at DeepMind. She moved to London to join DeepMind in early 2014, feeling that her fundamental research interests in robotics, neural networks, and real world learning systems were well-aligned with the agenda of Demis, Shane, Koray, and other members of the original team. Raia’s research at DeepMind focuses on a number of fundamental challenges in AGI, including continual and transfer learning, deep reinforcement learning, and neural models of navigation. Raia came to AI research obliquely. After an undergraduate degree in religion and philosophy from Reed College, she veered off-course (on-course?) and became a computer scientist. Raia’s PhD with Yann LeCun, at NYU, focused on machine learning using Siamese neural nets (often called a ‘triplet loss’ today) and on deep learning for mobile robots in the wild. Her thesis, ‘Learning Long-range vision for offroad robots’, was awarded the Outstanding Dissertation award in 2009.

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Nov 29, 2017

Blocking Second Dont Eat Me Pathway to Kill Cancer Cells

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, education

Cancer can often evade the immune system by sending signals that fool it into thinking that the cancer cells are normal, healthy cells and that it should ignore them. Earlier this year, we reported on an approach to treating cancer in which the immune system can be taught to detect cancer by seeing past the cancer cell’s attempts to hide.

One of these attempts involves a signaling pathway that sends a “don’t Eat Me” signal to the immune system. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a second biological pathway that signals the immune system not to engulf and consume cancer cells.

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Nov 29, 2017

Medical Device Development and The Case for Real World Evidence (RWE)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering

By Michael Kanis, National Sales Engineering Manager, Proven Process Medical Devices, and Jodi Hutchins, RAC, CQA

All Those in Favor of Using Real World Evidence, Say Aye!

Medical Devices are used in the real world every day, so shouldn’t they be tested in the real world? You would think so. But the FDA hasn’t necessarily been of that mindset — until now.

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Nov 29, 2017

A future of driverless cars, virtual reality and other advanced services beckon as China’s ZTE bets on massive 5G roll-out

Posted by in categories: education, health, internet, mobile phones, robotics/AI, virtual reality

The international authorities overseeing the creation of a unified standard for 5G mobile technologies are expected to release the initial specifications next year and the final phase in 2019, paving the way for the commercial deployment of 5G services by mobile network operators from 2020.


China is one step closer to achieving the reality of seamless, super high speed communications that will enable driverless cars, virtual reality education and nationwide health care services after a partnership comprising China Mobile, Qualcomm and ZTE accelerated efforts to finalise technical standards for the next generation of smartphones.

With the world’s largest population and most number of internet users, China is making a huge bet that the wide roll-out of 5G mobile infrastructure by the country’s three main telecommunications network operators would support the country’s rapid digital transformation – enabling a raft of advanced applications and services that were the stuff of science fiction just decades ago.

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Nov 28, 2017

FedEx is buying up to 100 new flying delivery trucks

Posted by in category: transportation

FedEx is keen on Cessna’s newest small plane, the SkyCourier, which can carry freight or passengers.

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Nov 28, 2017

North Korea missile launch: regime says new type can hit anywhere in US

Posted by in categories: existential risks, military

North Korea has claimed that the rocket it test-fired on Wednesday morning is a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM] that can strike anywhere on the United States mainland.

In a special announcement broadcast on state TV, the regime said it had successfully tested a Hwasong-15, which appears to be an advanced version of ICBMs it launched in July.

The claim has not been independently verified, but experts had been expecting North Korea to demonstrate that it now has all of the US in range – a development that significantly strengthens its position in any negotiations with Washington over its nuclear weapons programme.

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Nov 28, 2017

Artificial muscle inspired by origami can lift 1,000 times its own weight

Posted by in category: cyborgs

Inspired by the Japanese art of origami, scientists in the US have developed an artificial muscle that can lift up to a thousand times its own weight.

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Nov 28, 2017

Airbus partners with Rolls-Royce and Siemens to build an electric airplane

Posted by in category: transportation

Battery technology improvements are expected to soon enable electric flight and companies in the field are preparing their powertrain technology to support it. In a major move toward that goal, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens have announced a new partnership to gradually convert a plane to electric propulsion. The project they are collaborating on is the ‘E-Fan X’, a BAe 146 plane on which they are testing their electric motor technology. During ground tests, they already replaced one of the four gas turbines by a two-megawatt electric motor. Paul Eremenko, Airbus’s CTO, commented on the pr…

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Nov 28, 2017

How Zero Mass is using solar panels to pull drinkable water directly from the air

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Zero Mass’s ambitious plan to change water.

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