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Fans of science fiction movies that depict weird, speculative or dystopian futures have plenty to look forward to in 2017. Here are our picks of the movies you should put on your radar if you enjoy cinematic depictions of future technology, from a couple of space station thrillers to a story that turns our current social media exhibitionist tendencies into an Orwellian take on the importance of privacy in a digital age.

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The coming year promises to be a good one for those of us watching the augmented and mixed reality world. And the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), starting Jan. 5 in Las Vegas, Nevada, for its 50th year, is bringing 2017 in with a bang—we’re expecting a ton of great announcements on the horizon.

From the HoloLens developers edition release and ever-churning Magic Leap rumor mill, to Pokémon Go and the resurgence of the smart glasses movement, augmented, mixed, and virtual realities have been all over the place in 2016. So, it’s no surprise that for its second year, CES will dedicate an entire section of the floor to augmented reality called the Augmented Reality Marketplace.

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This could be a huge deal, a game changer even.

Definitely research to follow closely.


A composite image showing newly discovered immune cells in the brain (credit: Sachin Gadani | University of Virginia School of Medicine)

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered a rare and powerful type of immune cell in the meninges (protective covering) of the brain that are activated in response to central nervous system injury — suggesting that these cells may play a critical role in battling Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, meningitis, and other neurological diseases, and in supporting healthy mental functioning.

Apple’s first paper on artificial intelligence, published Dec. 22 on arXiv (open access), describes a method for improving the ability of a deep neural network to recognize images.

To train neural networks to recognize images, AI researchers have typically labeled (identified or described) each image in a dataset. For example, last year, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers developed a deep-learning method to recognize images taken at regular intervals on a person’s wearable smartphone camera.

Example images from dataset of 40,000 egocentric images with their respective labels (credit: Daniel Castro et al./Georgia Institute of Technology)

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Some research suggests macrophages might be the best target for senescent cell therapies. Here is Mantas from cell age answering a reader question “Are senescent macrophages the problem of other cell types?”


Mantas from CellAge answers a question from one of our readers who asked if senescent macrophages (the cleaner cells of the body) should be the focus of senescent cell removal. Some research this year by Gudkov et al. suggests that macrophages become tainted by senescent cell signals and become dysfunctional and that removing them could be beneficial as they could be replaced with macrophages that do work properly.

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Amazon has designed a floating warehouse that sits thousands of feet in the air, from which the internet retailer could dispatch swarms of delivery drones to metropolitan areas.

The company has patented futuristic plans for enormous “airborne fulfillment centres” that would be used as bases for aerial deliveries to homes.

Flying at up to 45,000 feet, the warehouses would be suspended by cables from zeppelin-style airships, and stocked with popular items. When a shopper makes an order, an onboard drone would dive down to earth and deliver it, before being sent back up to the station by a shuttle that could also restock and refuel the floating warehouse.

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Nice.


(NaturalNews) A diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was once considered a death sentence, but advanced automation technology is offering new hope to sufferers of the rare condition.

Most ALS patients eventually face an extremely difficult choice: either die from the lack of ability to breathe once the disease progresses or undergo a tracheostomy and spend the rest of one’s life on a ventilator – unable to move or speak.

Less than 10 percent of ALS patients choose the second option, but one man who suffers from the disease is helping to develop a viable third option: an opportunity to lead a relatively independent and mobile existence with the help of automation technology that can respond to head and eye movements, or even brain waves.

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