Lifeboat Foundation

It would seem that no one’s immune from the effects imposed by our increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence and robotics — not even doctors. As research from Indiana University has revealed, a new computer program is doing a better job than doctors when it comes to both diagnosing and treating health conditions — and by a significant margin.

The system, which uses decision making processes similar to the Jeopardy-bot, Watson, was recently given the task of analyzing and predicting the health outcomes of 500 real individuals. After plugging in the relevant data — which mostly had to do with clinical depression and chronic diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes — researchers Kris Hauser and Casey Bennett compared the outcomes to the simulated treatment prescriptions.

The pilots used no fuel to complete the epic trip.

The deep-learning machine can match digital sounds to visuals in a way that fools people most of the time.

The craving to explore beyond our solar system grows sturdier every day. This proves true for the understanding of wormholes and time travel as well. In order to satisfy our thirst for the unknown, NASA will research unknown physics revolutionizing exploration of space. We first have to advance our understanding of space-time, the quantum vacuum, gravity and other physical phenomena. This info will help NASA send robots on interstellar space missions. Precisely 15 areas will be studied comprising human exploration, landing systems, nanotechnology and robots.

A small clinical trial of 10 patients with early Alzheimer’s disease has shown that the memory loss and cognitive impairment caused by the disease can be reversed.

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles found a new treatment that could potentially reverse memory loss and cognitive impairment among patients with early Alzheimer’s disease.

In a small clinical trial, 10 individuals underwent a treatment called “metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration,” or MEND. The treatment is based on 36 different factors, including changes in diet, exercise, and sleeping habits. It also includes the integration of certain drugs, vitamins, and brain stimulation therapy to a patient’s regular routine.

Continue reading “New Alzheimer’s Treatment Could Reverse Memory Loss” »

A transistor, conceived of in digital terms, has two states: on and off, which can represent the 1s and 0s of binary arithmetic.

But in analog terms, the transistor has an infinite number of states, which could, in principle, represent an infinite range of mathematical values. Digital computing, for all its advantages, leaves most of transistors’ informational capacity on the table.

In recent years, analog computers have proven to be much more efficient at simulating biological systems than digital computers. But existing analog computers have to be programmed by hand, a complex process that would be prohibitively time consuming for large-scale simulations.

Having UAVs conduct routine aerial surveillance is already having a transformative effect on farming and and energy production but they can only operate when there’s a human at the controls. That’s about to change thanks to an autonomous drone system that not only flies but also maintains itself. Tel Aviv-based UAV Airobotics has debuted a completely automated patrol drone system of the same name that is capable of operating with virtually no human intervention.

The system is composed of three parts: the drone itself, the “Airbase” robotic base station and the command software. It uses an “Optimus” UAV that can carry a 1-kilogram payload for up to 30 minutes. When the UAV finishes its patrol, it will land atop the base station whereupon a robotic arm will automatically swap out its battery and payload. All of this is controlled by the integrated software which enables users to pre-program flight paths as well as view real-time video and data feeds. The Airobotic system will likely find use in the mining and oil and gas industries as an aerial mapping platform, though it could easily be applied to any repetitive delivery or flyover task.

Continue reading “Fully-autonomous drone launcher never needs a pilot” »

The rooms double as detachable flying pods.

Power consumption is one of the biggest reasons why you haven’t seen a brain-like computer beyond the lab: the artificial synapses you’d need tend to draw much more power than the real thing. Thankfully, realistic energy use is no longer an unattainable dream. Researchers have built nanowire synapses that consume just 1.23 femtojoules of power — for reference, a real neuron uses 10 femtojoules. They achieve that extremely low demand by using a wrap of two organic materials to release and trap ions, much like real nerve fibers.

There’s a lot of work to be done before this is practical. The scientists want to shrink their nanowires down from 200 nanometers thick to a few dozen, and they’d need new 3D printing techniques to create structures that more closely imitate real brains. Nonetheless, the concept of computers with brain-level complexity is that much more realistic — the team tells Scientific American that it could see applications in everything from smarter robots and self-driving cars through to advanced medical diagnosis.