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Jan 10, 2024

A magnetically actuated acoustic metamaterial

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, space

Space coiling acoustic metamaterials are static and require manual reconfiguration for sound-field modulation. In a new report published in Communications Materials, Christabel Choi, and a team of scientists in computer science and engineering in the U.K., and Italy, developed an approach for active reconfiguration with standalone dynamics to space-coil unit cells known as dynamic meta-bricks.

The meta-bricks housed an actuatable, magnetorheological, elastomeric flap, to function like a switch and to directly regulate the transmitted ultrasound. The scientists showed the synergy between active and passive reconfigurability to develop multifunctional metamaterials with additional degrees of freedom, for design and implementation.

Jan 10, 2024

SAG-AFTRA Approves AI Voice Acting For Video Games

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The union’s agreement with AI voiceover studio Replica is being called out by some of the industry’s top voice talent.

Jan 10, 2024

Oxford starts human testing of Nipah virus vaccine

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Jan 11 (Reuters) — The University of Oxford said on Thursday it had begun human testing of an experimental vaccine against the brain-swelling Nipah virus that led to outbreaks in India’s Kerala state and other parts of Asia.

There is no vaccine yet for the deadly virus. Nipah was first identified about 25 years ago in Malaysia and has led to outbreaks in Bangladesh, India and Singapore.

The first participants in the Oxford trial received doses of the vaccine over the last week. The shot is based on the same technology as the one used in AstraZeneca (AZN.L) and Serum Institute of India’s COVID-19 shots.

Jan 10, 2024

Ancient human DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have higher multiple sclerosis risk

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience

Ancient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: It’s a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago.

The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with that culled from ancient humans’ teeth and bones — allowing scientists to trace both prehistoric migration and disease-linked genes that tagged along.

When a Bronze Age people called the Yamnaya moved from the steppes of what are now Ukraine and Russia into northwestern Europe, they carried gene variants that today are known to increase people’s risk of multiple sclerosis, researchers reported Wednesday.

Jan 10, 2024

UN Security Council demands Houthis stop Red Sea attacks

Posted by in categories: business, space

Jan 10 (Reuters) — The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday demanded Yemen’s Houthis immediately end attacks on ships in the Red Sea and cautioned against escalating tensions while implicitly endorsing a U.S.-led task force that has been defending vessels.

The demand came in a Security Council resolution that also called on the Houthis to release the Galaxy Leader, a Japanese-operated vehicle carrier linked to an Israeli businessman that the group commandeered on Nov. 19, and its 25-person crew.

Eleven members voted for the measure demanding the Houthis “immediately cease all attacks, which impede global commerce and navigational rights and freedoms as well as regional peace.”

Jan 10, 2024

NASA plans to unveil experimental X-59 supersonic jet on January 12

Posted by in category: transportation

The cutting-edge plane aims to generate a 75 decibel ‘sonic thump’ instead of a sonic boom.

Jan 10, 2024

Primary VTE Prevention for Patients with Cancer

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Primary prophylaxis in high-risk patients with lung or gastrointestinal cancers lowered incidence of thromboembolism in a randomized trial.


NEJM Journal Watch reviews over 250 scientific and medical journals to present important clinical research findings and insightful commentary.

Jan 10, 2024

‘Magical’ Error Correction Scheme Proved Inherently Inefficient

Posted by in category: futurism

Locally correctable codes need barely any information to fix errors, but they’re extremely long. Now we know that the simplest versions can’t get any shorter.

Jan 10, 2024

Energy Savings & Predictive Maintenance at AB InBev’s Largest European Brewery

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

Staff at the Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) brewery in Leuven, Belgium took Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot on a test run in 2022 to see how many mechanical issues or air leaks it could find in the sprawling facility. Less than two hours later, they were ready to offer the robot a full-time job.

In the year since, Spot has become a key part of AB InBev’s “Brewery of the Future” program, which invests in emerging technology to support the company’s ambition of achieving net-zero operations at the Leuven facility by 2028. Spot conducts 1,800 individual inspections each week across ten packaging lines that churn out over 50,000 containers of Stella Artois, Budweiser, and Corona beer every hour. In its first six months of deployment, Spot discovered nearly 150 anomalies and slashed average repair times from a few months to a mere 13 days.

Continue reading “Energy Savings & Predictive Maintenance at AB InBev’s Largest European Brewery” »

Jan 10, 2024

AI discovers that not every fingerprint is unique

Posted by in categories: government, robotics/AI

It’s a well-accepted fact in the forensics community that fingerprints of different fingers of the same person— intra-person fingerprints—are unique and, therefore, unmatchable.

A team led by Columbia Engineering undergraduate senior Gabe Guo challenged this widely held presumption. Guo, who had no prior knowledge of forensics, found a public U.S. government database of some 60,000 fingerprints and fed them in pairs into an artificial intelligence-based system known as a deep contrastive network. Sometimes the pairs belonged to the same person (but different fingers), and sometimes they belonged to different people.