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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1975

Brief mention of AI implications…

As a mathematical concept, the idea of zero is relatively new in human society—and indisputably revolutionary. It’s allowed humans to develop algebra, calculus and Cartesian coordinates ; questions about its properties continue to incite mathematical debate today. So it may sound unlikely that bees — complex and community-based insects to be sure, but insects nonetheless — seem to have mastered their own numerical concept of nothingness.

Despite their sesame-seed-sized brains, honey bees have proven themselves the prodigies of the insect world. Researcher has found that they can count up to about four, distinguish abstract patterns, and communicate locations with other bees. Now, Australian scientists have found what may be their most impressive cognitive ability yet: “zero processing,” or the ability to conceptualize nothingness as a numerical value that can be compared with more tangible quantities like one and two.

While seemingly intuitive, the ability to understand zero is actually quite rare across species—and unheard of in invertebrates. In a press release, the authors of a paper published June 8 in the journal Science called species with this ability an “elite club” that consists of species we generally consider quite intelligent, including primates, dolphins and parrots. Even humans haven’t always been in that club: The concept of zero first appeared in India around 458 A.D, and didn’t enter the West until 1200, when Italian mathematician Fibonacci brought it and a host of other Arabic numerals over with him.

Continue reading “Bees May Understand Zero, a Concept That Took Humans Millennia to Grasp” | >

Scientists have developed tiny elastic robots that can change shape depending on their surroundings and can swim through fluids, an advance which may help deliver drugs to diseased tissue one day.

The smart, biocompatible microrobots that are highly flexible are made of hydrogel nanocomposites that contain magnetic nanoparticles allowing them to be controlled via an electromagnetic field.

As a result, these devices are able to swim through fluids and modify their shape when needed. They can also pass through narrow blood vessels and intricate systems without compromising on speed or manoeuvrability, said the group of scientists led by Selman Sakar at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Bradley Nelson at ETH Zurich.

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Biofeedback will also be able to help with problems that feel intractable, by conditioning students to make time to think outside the box. Studies show the best way is to deal with a seemingly intractable problem is to consider it intensely for a period of time and then to relax to an almost meditative state to foster the brain’s creative side.

We have trialled technology that can help users manage this approach in Finland, using an app called Study Train that has been designed by Finnish education experts. The app combines the Pomodoro time-management technique with customised learning rhythms based on an individual’s brain waves, telling students to focus when learning efficiency is high and to rest meditatively to promote lateral thinking and creativity when efficiency is low. It is now being used by students in China, Malaysia and Taiwan as well as in Finland and next year will be rolled out further.

We have long known that the brain has good and bad times for retaining information and solving problems. By combining EEG data and machine learning we can now we confident when those different states occur and use that information to improve students’ learning. 2019 will be the year when study becomes turbocharged.

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Using a modular construction kit of tailor-made cell systems, the researchers hope to simulate various properties of biological systems in the future. The idea is that cells react to their environment and learn to act independently.

The first applications are already on the horizon: In the long term, artificial cell assemblies can be deployed as mini-factories to produce specific biomolecules, or as tiny micro-robot sensors that process information and adapt to their environments.

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“Hear from leaders across science, academia, and business as they share the latest research and scientific advancements, industry innovation, and their perspective on how these domains will evolve,” Amazon’s re: Mars site says. Speakers from Amazon, MIT, UC Berkeley, NASA and Harvard are on the docket.

Amazon announces a new re: Mars conference that will gather experts in machine learning, robotics, automation and space in Las Vegas.

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I wonder how many people it will feed.

80 Acres Farms, an Ohio-based vertical farming startup, has raised private equity funding from Virgo Investment Group, a private equity firm from San Francisco for the construction of what it says will be the first fully automated indoor farm.

AgFudnerNews can reveal that the deal was worth more than $40 million in equity capital, according to sources close to the deal.

The funding will go towards the completion of 80 Acres’ Hamilton, Ohio facility, which was announced last year and is set to be partially operational in the next few months.

Continue reading “80 Acres Farms Raises m to Complete ‘First Fully Automated Vertical Farm’” | >