The Silicon Valley property management startup Zenplace wants to streamline the rental process with AI learning and robot realtor home tours.
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Prosthetics have improved my leaps and bounds over the past century and we’ve reached a point where someone with an artificial limb is often just as capable (and in some cases even more capable) than a person with their natural arms and legs. Still, prosthetics have long fell short in one very important aspect, which is the sense of touch afforded by human skin. That could all be changing thanks to an incredible breakthrough that has provided a woman with a bionic hand that can actually feel.
Almerina Mascarello lost her left hand and part of her forearm in an accident more than two decades ago, and was chosen as one of the test subjects for a new type of prosthetic that relays the feeling of touch to the wearer. Remarkably, it seems to work brilliantly.
Don’t Miss : Apple brand battery cases for the iPhone 6/6s and iPhone 7 are discounted on Amazon.
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Leave A.I. Alone
Posted in information science, law, robotics/AI
December was a big month for advocates of regulating artificial intelligence. First, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives introduced the Future of A.I. Act, the first federal bill solely focused on A.It would create an advisory committee to make recommendations about A.I. — on topics including the technology’s effect on the American work force and strategies to protect the privacy rights of those it impacts. Then the New York City Council approved a first-of-its-kind bill that once signed into law will create a task force to examine its own use of automated decision systems, with the ultimate goal of making its use of algorithms fairer and more transparent.
Sure, the technology poses risks. But the current approach to regulating it is a mistake.
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What if scientists could develop an opioid-based painkiller that is not addictive and has limited side effects?
That is possible based on new findings by an international team of scientists that included contributions from top researchers at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience.
The international team captured the crystal structure of the kappa opioid receptor—critical for providing pain relief—in action on the surface of human brain cells. The researchers also made another important discovery: a new opioid-based compound that, unlike current opioids, activates only the kappa opioid receptor, raising hopes that they may develop a painkiller that has no risk of addiction and, therefore, none of the devastating consequences and side effects that accompany it.
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A team from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics in Australia have demonstrated how to rigorously test if pairs of photons — particles of light — display Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”, even under adverse conditions that mimic those outside the lab.
They demonstrated that the effect, also known as quantum nonlocality, can still be verified even when many of the photons are lost by absorption or scattering as they travel from source to destination through an optical fiber channel. The experimental study and techniques are published in the journal Science Advances.
Quantum nonlocality is important in the development of new global quantum information networks, which will have transmission security guaranteed by the laws of physics. These are the networks where powerful quantum computers can be linked.
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Call it whatever you like—a blue red moon, a purple moon, a blood moon—but the moon will be a special sight on Jan. 31.
Three separate celestial events will occur simultaneously that night, resulting in what some are calling a super blue blood moon eclipse. The astronomical rarity hasn’t happened for more than 150 years.
A super moon, like the one visible on New Year’s Day, is the term for when a full moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit, appearing bigger and brighter than normal.
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