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May 14, 2016

Team discovers new HIV vaccine target

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

A team led by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reported a research trifecta. They discovered a new vulnerable site on HIV for a vaccine to target, a broadly neutralizing antibody that binds to that target site, and how the antibody stops the virus from infecting a cell. The study was led by scientists at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of NIH.

The new target is a part of HIV called the fusion peptide, a string of eight amino acids that helps the virus fuse with a cell to infect it. The fusion peptide has a much simpler structure than other sites on the virus that HIV vaccine scientists have studied.

The scientists first examined the blood of an HIV-infected person to explore its ability to stop the virus from infecting cells. The blood was good at neutralizing HIV but did not target any of the vulnerable spots on the virus where broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies (bnAbs) were known to bind.

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May 14, 2016

The U.S. Military Wants a Robot That Can Fly Any Plane

Posted by in categories: military, robotics/AI

The military is looking to fund a system that can turn any plane autonomous.

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May 14, 2016

Google a step closer to developing machines with human-like intelligence

Posted by in categories: computing, information science, neuroscience, robotics/AI

An algorithm developed by Google is designed to encode thought, which could lead to computers with ‘common sense’ within a decade, says leading AI scientist.

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May 14, 2016

Thought-reading headset lets users speak their mind

Posted by in category: neuroscience

By combining a wireless connected EEG headset from Emotiv and an assistive communication app, California-based Smartstones is bringing the power of speech to those who have difficulty communicating verbally. The “think to speak” technology works by reading the brainwaves of the user and expressing them as phrases spoken through the app.

:prose is the app at the heart of it all, developed by Smartstones to help nonverbal people communicate by tapping or swiping on a mobile device. Like sign language, individual gestures and movements are linked to words and phrases: for example, swiping up could mean “I want”, and drawing a circular motion could mean “water”. The app recognizes the input and speaks aloud the complete sentence, “I want water.” The commands are customizable too, so a user can assign phrases to specific movements however they like.

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May 14, 2016

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 1

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Part 1 of 2: “The Road to Superintelligence”. Artificial Intelligence — the topic everyone in the world should be talking about.

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May 14, 2016

Self-Filling Water Bottle

Posted by in category: futurism

This ingenious water bottle is designed to convert the air into drinking water.

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May 14, 2016

The existence of massive particles of light could finally explain dark energy

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics, space

In the late 1990s, astronomers discovered something mysterious pushing galaxies apart faster than gravity pulls them together. It seemed like every little bit of space had some amount of energy that spread it away from every other little bit of space, and that strange pushing came to be known as ‘dark energy’ — dark, because no one knows what it is.

And now a group of physicists have shown that dark energy could probably be explained — as long as we’re willing to give up a fundamental piece of our understanding of light…

Most scientists think that dark energy exists because of what’s known as a cosmological constant — something acting throughout the Universe that tells different bits of space to repel each other. It’s sort of like an anti-gravity force, but it acts everywhere instead of just being between two things with mass and it always acts with the same strength.

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May 14, 2016

Scientists have discovered a cell that does something they thought was impossible

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Interesting…

Odd, but definitely interesting.


For a long time it has been thought that all eukaryotes — organisms in which the DNA is enclosed in a membrane including almost all life we can see — had to contain mitochondria.

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May 14, 2016

IPhone photography is cool, eyeball photography is cooler

Posted by in categories: futurism, mobile phones

Inevitable, but still awesome!


Sony is the latest company to file a patent for a futuristic contact lens that does much more than improve vision.

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May 14, 2016

First SpaceX #Hyperloop transit pod contender unveiled [w/mini documentary video] @MITHyperloop

Posted by in categories: education, Elon Musk, transportation

Competitors are racing to answer Elon Musk’s call to create a capsule that can carry commuters at the speed of sound. MIT unveiled its entry on Friday.

By Larry Greenemeier on May 14, 2016.

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