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Blog – Page 10733

AI machines injected into our bodies could give us superhuman strength and let us control gadgets using the power of THOUGHT within 20 years…

Humans could be ‘melded’ to machines, giving us huge advancements in brain power, experts told peers at the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee (pictured, stock)

Growing the Artificial Intelligence Industry in the UK, an independent review of artificial intelligence recommended information about people’s health and lifestyles should be opened up to allow major advances to be made in developing artificial intelligence (AI).

Continue reading “AI nano-machines could be injected into our brains within 20 years” | >

WOODS HOLE, Mass.—For the octopus and cuttlefish, instantaneously changing their skin color and pattern to disappear into the environment is just part of their camouflage prowess. These animals can also swiftly and reversibly morph their skin into a textured, 3D surface, giving the animal a ragged outline that mimics seaweed, coral, or other objects it detects and uses for camouflage.

This week, engineers at Cornell University report on their invention of stretchable surfaces with programmable 3D texture morphing, a synthetic “camouflaging skin” inspired by studying and modeling the real thing in octopus and cuttlefish. The engineers, along with collaborator and cephalopod biologist Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, report on their controllable soft actuator in the October 13 issue of Science.

Led by James Pikul and Rob Shepherd, the team’s pneumatically activated material takes a cue from the 3D bumps, or papillae, that cephalopods can express in one-fifth of a second for camouflage, and then retract to swim away with minimal hydrodynamic drag. (See video below of live Octopus rebescens expressing its skin papillae.)

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The four drivers received specialist training, including a new virtual reality mode…

Lincolnshire police officers have been receiving extra lessons in high-speed car chases — by playing a video game.

PlayStation has partnered up with Lincolnshire Police in order to provide extra tuition to specialist drivers using Gran Turismo Sport.

Continue reading “Game on! Police play Gran Turismo Sport to improve driving skills” | >

In his new book, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, Galloway, an entrepreneur and professor at NYU Stern, provides a perceptive analysis of the four-horse race to become the first trillion-dollar company. In a casually incisive style, he uncovers how each of these companies have deployed iconic leadership, technology, storytelling, fearless innovation, lightning execution — and blatant plagiarism- to devastating effect.

From 2013 to 2017, the combined market capitalisation of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google increased in size by the GDP of Russia – $1.4 trillion. And the power of The Four keeps on growing.

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Military applications of gene-altering technology must also be considered (Op-Ed by Tomasz Pierscionek)

Recent developments in the field of biotechnology have shown that mutations can be edited out of the human genome. What are the future implications of this research and will it be used to the benefit or detriment of society?

Last month, UK scientists performed gene-editing experiments for the first time in order to gain a greater understanding of how embryos develop, and it is likely researchers in other countries will soon follow suit.

UK law permits experiments to be performed on embryos that are no more than 14 days old and prohibits their implantation into a human host.

Continue reading “Where’d you get those genes? The answer may shock you” | >

Interesting article on how Google’s mismanagement took a wrecking ball to the robotics industry. Most notably almost ruining Boston Dynamics that thankfully managed to get away to Soft Banks.

Its scattered, ambiguous, frequently abandoned objectives for its string of big acquisitions have hurt the whole field.

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You could drive past and never see the only farm in San Carlos, California. The tiny city of 30,000 that sits between San Francisco and Silicon Valley has all the charms of suburbia—sprawling office parks and single-story homes—but doesn’t seem a likely suspect for agriculture.

The farm, run by startup Iron Ox, is nestled between three stonemasons and a plumber in a nondescript office park building; there’s no greenhouse, no rows of freshly-tilled soil, or tractor parked outside. Only peeking in the large bay door reveals the building’s tenants: a few hundred plants and two brightly-colored robot farmers.

Iron Ox looks a lot like a tech company. One of its co-founder is an ex-Google engineer and it raised $1.5 million in pre-seed venture capital from Y Combinator, Pathbreaker, and Cherubic Ventures in April 2016. Instead of fake food, or plant-based meat meals, or even a food delivery service tethered to an app, Iron Ox is reinventing farming, raising real, not faux, food. Think hydroponically raised lettuce and basil, like what you’d get at an ordinary farmers market.

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With the EV market about to explode and the European Union planning a battery-making consortium to bring the continent onto the global EV battery scene, Stanford researchers released a paper claiming their sodium battery could compete with the lithium-ion market leader.

New battery development has been fairly slow against the backdrop of the projected electric car market size, and so far no innovation has proved to be as economical as lithium-ion. The Stanford battery uses sodium—a cheaper, more abundant material than lithium—and is still in the development stages.

Sodium makes up the Stanford battery’s cathode, and the anode is made from phosphorus, with the addition of a compound called myo-inositol, which can be derived from rice bran or corn. According to the researchers, this chemical combination yields efficiency rates comparable to that of lithium-ion batteries at a lower cost—a much lower cost.

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