Toggle light / dark theme

Micro-sized cameras have great potential to spot problems in the human body and enable sensing for super-small robots, but past approaches captured fuzzy, distorted images with limited fields of view.

Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have overcome these obstacles with an ultracompact the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported in a paper published Nov. 29 in Nature Communications.

Enabled by a joint design of the camera’s hardware and computational processing, the system could enable minimally invasive endoscopy with medical robots to diagnose and treat diseases, and improve imaging for other robots with size and weight constraints. Arrays of thousands of such cameras could be used for full-scene sensing, turning surfaces into cameras.

To persist, life must reproduce. Over billions of years, organisms have evolved many ways of replicating, from budding plants to sexual animals to invading viruses.

Now scientists have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction—and applied their discovery to create the first-ever, self-replicating living robots.

The same team that built the first living robots (” Xenobots,” assembled from frog cells—reported in 2020) has discovered that these computer-designed and hand-assembled organisms can swim out into their tiny dish, find , gather hundreds of them together, and assemble “baby” Xenobots inside their Pac-Man-shaped “mouth”—that, a few days later, become new Xenobots that look and move just like themselves.

This is what we are experiencing over the next ten years in the near vertical rate of change. We are in these last stages of these changes where we can shape this future into the flowers analogy. The confluence of environmental, social, biological, physical, digital-inspired, technological, quantum-infused, cosmological, creator culture; an endless list. All significantly transforming our lives. We are in the time where creativity, innovation, intuition, imagination, inspiration, purpose, meaning can be driving us.

What we are experiencing forms my top 10 omni wishes for 2022 that will have outsized impact on our lives.

Top Ten Omni Wishes.

Full Story:


With the increasing demand for data science approaches and cognitive technologies across all industries, organizations are learning how to successfully implement and manage newer, more intelligent tools and systems. What are the challenges that enterprises encounter when adopting AI and ML models for their organizations, and how can teams work to overcome these obstacles?

At an upcoming Data for AI event, Anil Kumar, Executive Director — Head of AI Industrialization at Verizon will be sharing in particular the ways that Verizon has leveraged AI to overcome some of their key challenges. This past January, the Machine Learning Lifecycle 2021 Conference featured Radha Sankaran, Executive Director of Algorithmic Customer Experiences at Verizon Wireless, where she shared some insight into the current state of AI usage and its challenges, techniques, and impacts. At the upcoming Data for AI virtual event, Anil Kumar, also from Verizon Wireless, will be speaking more on his experiences.

Full Story:

Substantially extending the strike range of fighter jets.

Boeing’s unmanned air tanker MQ-25 Stingray is currently completing ground tests at the Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia in preparation for a carrier demonstration, the U.S. Navy confirmed in a press release.

Unveiled over three years ago, the MQ-25 or T1 tanker is designed to refuel naval fighter aircraft mid-air. Although mid-air refueling is common practice for the U.S. military, this is the first attempt with an unmanned drone. The MQ-25 has been making rapid strides since its unveiling and has successfully completed a refueling attempt of the F-35C aircraft in September this year.

The drone tanker is now moving a step closer to deployment. According to the press release, the U.S. Navy and Boeing are moving through ground tests currently and aiming for a carrier demonstration in December. As part of the tests, the team recently completed deck handling where the engines on the aircraft were up and running and the taxiing was handled by controllers on the deck.

Full Story:

Circa 2017


The brain is really little more than a collection of electrical signals. If we can learn to catalogue those then, in theory, you could upload someone’s mind into a computer, allowing them to live forever as a digital form of consciousness, just like in the Johnny Depp film Transcendence.

But it’s not just science fiction. Sure, scientists aren’t anywhere near close to achieving such a feat with humans (and even if they could, the ethics would be pretty fraught), but there’s few better examples than the time an international team of researchers managed to do just that with the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans.

Detailed map captures 3D shapes of neurons and their synapses in stunning detail and is open to community for neuroscience and machine learning research July 29, 2021…


NoneSeveral different mouse neurons virtually reconstructed in 3D show the complexity of tracing the shapes and branching axons and dendrites within a small piece of the brain.

A team of neuroscientists and engineers at the Allen Institute, Princeton University and Baylor College of Medicine has just released a collection of data that marries a 3D wiring diagram with the function of tens of thousands of neurons to create the most detailed examination of mammalian brain circuitry to date.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has set a new pair of records after it survived its 10th close encounter with the Sun. On November 21, 2021 at 4:25 am EST (08:25 GMT), the robotic deep-space explorer came within 5.3 million miles (8.5 million km) of the Sun’s surface and reached a speed of 363,660 mph (586,864 km/h), making it both the closest satellite to survive such a near pass of the Sun and the fastest-ever artificial object.

The Parker Solar Probe was launched on August 12, 2018 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket, and this latest solar flyby between November 16 and 26 marks the halfway point in the spacecraft’s seven-year mission to study the Sun at such close quarters that it will eventually fly through the Sun’s corona.

Having easily beaten the record holder, the Helios-2 spacecraft and its maximum speed of 157,078 mph (252,792 km/h), Parker is now in a league of its own. Its latest speed record beats its own previous record, as will be the case for the future record speeds the probe is expected to reach in later flybys.