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Jan 20, 2016

Alibaba Teams With Nvidia in $1 Billion Bet on Cloud Computing

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics, robotics/AI

The excitement keeps growing on Quantum. Now, the “MAGIC” will happen.


Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will work with Nvidia Corp. on cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and plans to enlist about 1,000 developers to work on its big-data platform during the next three years.

The arm of China’s biggest e-commerce operator, known as AliCloud, will boost investment in data analysis and machine learning, it said in a statement Wednesday. AliCloud is staking $1 billion on the belief that demand for processing and storage from governments and companies will boost growth during the next decade as its tries to compete with Amazon.com Inc. in computing services.

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Jan 20, 2016

Russia Plans Nuclear Rocket Engine for Deep Space Exploration

Posted by in category: space travel

Russia announces plans to construct a nuclear rocket engine as part of its ten-year Federal Space Program plans from 2016–2025.

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Jan 20, 2016

Astronomers say a Neptune-sized planet lurks beyond Pluto

Posted by in category: space

Planet would orbit the sun once every 15,000 years.

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Jan 20, 2016

Stephen Hawking: Black Holes Have ‘Hair’

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Black holes may sport a luxurious head of “hair” made up of ghostly, zero-energy particles, says a new hypothesis proposed by Stephen Hawking and other physicists.

The new paper, which was published online Jan. 5 in the preprint journal arXiv, proposes that at least some of the information devoured by a black hole is stored in these electric hairs.

Still, the new proposal doesn’t prove that all the information that enters a black hole is preserved.

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Jan 20, 2016

Report by Robert Scoble from CES | KurzweilAI

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, driverless cars, electronics, virtual reality

Allworlds

“CES wrapped up last week and I can say it was the best one I’ve seen in a decade. Three big stories jumped out this year:

1. VR.
2. Self driving cars.
3. AR.”

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Jan 20, 2016

Evidence of a real ninth planet discovered

Posted by in categories: computing, space

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.

The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.”

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Jan 20, 2016

Weak electrical field found to carry information around the brain

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Researchers have identified slow-moving brainwaves they say could be carried only by the brain’s gentle electrical field, a mechanism previously thought to be incapable of spreading neural signals on its own.

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Jan 20, 2016

Globalization is dead: what now?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, economics, genetics, robotics/AI

Interesting perspective of the world and globalization.


It is my belief that we are heading toward a blend of Islandization and Commonization. World transformation is powered first and foremost by the mega-driver of technology, which in turn is central to both of these worlds. The most significant change in the past seven years of world history is that we have entered into a period of sustained technological progress. I fully expect in coming years further breakthroughs in areas including alternative energy, biotechnology and artificial intelligence that dramatically change our economies and our societies.

Unfortunately, I am less sure that technological change will be positive. The exploitation by violent extremists of social media is a case in point of the double-edge that new technologies can bring. This is an extremely disruptive and dislocating time for individuals, organizations and governments alike. The net gain of technology will almost certainly be positive, but there will be winners and losers, and losers will not necessarily go quietly. Nor will the winners necessarily perceive objective gain as actual gain. And some new technologies, such as the gene-editing powers of CRISPR, point to a highly uncertain future.

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Jan 20, 2016

Electromagnetic properties of graphene-boron nitride materials

Posted by in categories: materials, nanotechnology

Change NextGen Product Landscape


The electromagnetic properties of graphene and boron nitride hybrids has been defined by new research. The results provide a roadmap for new nano-engineered applications.” id=” metasummary.

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Jan 20, 2016

Switchable material could enable new memory chips

Posted by in categories: computing, materials

Retaining information even when loss of power.


Small voltage can flip thin film between two crystal states — one metallic, one semiconducting — new research indicates. The research involves a thin-film material called a strontium cobaltite, or SrCoOx.”

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