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REMINDER: DARPA’s Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) Program Proposers Days is tomorrow and Wed. (February 2–3, 2016) at The Westin Gateway Hotel, 801 N. Glebe Road, Arlington, VA 22203. This is part of the Brain Mind Interface development work. Good thing that the research on Graphene came out recently showing that it is a viable substance for BMIs.

Users of assistive technologies such as screen readers should use the following link to activate Accessibility Mode before continuing: Learn more and Activate accessibility mode.

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Very messed up.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 (UPI) — Residents of Appalachia continue to have higher rates of cancer regardless of race and location.

Appalachia is a region of the Eastern United States defined by the presence of the Appalachian Mountains. It stretches from Mississippi to New York and includes 420 counties in 13 states and roughly 25 million people.

Though rich in natural resources, the region has historically lagged behind the rest of the country in measures of economic health, with consistently higher rates of poverty and worse healthcare outcomes.

Continue reading “Cancer rates still higher in Appalachia, but gap is narrowing” | >

YOU GOT A BOT PROBLEM — use DARPA’s BOT Killer”

DARPA shared their method of eliminating “bots.

Bots are a particularly pernicious presence on Twitter. While they can be used for good, (R.I.P., original @horse_ebooks), bots often power spam, scams and, most interestingly, very volatile clusters of political and cultural discussion on Twitter. Last year, DARPA confronted the problem and, according to MIT Tech Review, a new report shows just how researchers were able to identify and shutdown the malicious programs.

The report, released last month by researchers at University of Maryland and Carnegie Mellon among others, shows the methods used by the teams in a four-week challenge designed to root out those dastardly “influence” bots.

Bots make up about 8.5 percent of Twitter’s user base, but they can congregate when groups of people discuss controversial topics. The challenge asked participants to figure out which Twitter users taking part in a discussion about vaccines. If they managed to find one, would gain points — but if they incorrectly guessed which were bots in the discussion, they would lose them.

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I do believe that there will be a need (especially in certain fields) for humans to BMI technology. I believe over time that this technology will become less and less of an invasive procedure and can even be controlled by the individual to be on or off.

The agency is working on a neural interface that will allow data to be transferred between the brain and digital world.

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The lifting body vehicle will be launched on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket and will have the ability to return—along with cargo—by landing at any available airport. SNC’s Dream Chaser is made of non-toxic materials meaning it can touch down on commercial runways and be accessed immediately.

The chance to showcase a reusable spacecraft on government funded missions bodes well for a potential pivot to commercial use. SNC is at the leading edge of private space companies that one day might cater to a more diverse base of consumers like universities, medical companies and individuals.

To learn more about Dream Chaser’s history and development, we spoke to John Roth, Vice President of Business Development for SNC’s Space Systems.

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2 trends that is happening now especially with millennials: car ownership is no longer the desire; and home ownership is out of reach. And, this will impact at a minimum 4 industries — financial, real estate, auto, and insurance industries? Something that many in industry will need to get very creative in addressing to entice the future larger market consumers.

Young people no longer rush to buy their first car, meaning future cities need to think quickly about public transport and the emerging “share economy”, one of Australia’s leading urban futurists says.

Fewer people will “own a car”, “shared” driverless cars will be common and the “Uber” idea of sharing a ride will extend beyond an alternative to taxis, to ‘sharing’ homes, jobs, electric cars, hotel rooms and bikes by 2050.

That is a version of the Gold Coast’s future to be outlined this morning on the Gold Coast by former Adelaide mayor Stephen Yarwood, who is one of Australia’s few urban futurists.

Continue reading “Young Aussies thinking twice about car ownership: city futurist” | >

I must admit, the thought of something constantly reading my mind would get on my nerves after a while; just like a nagging spouse asking you constantly what are you thinking about. Ugh.

The team behind Siri have a new idea: a voice-controlled personal assistant linked to all your devices that can almost read your mind.

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Could an avg “Joe” from Wall Street actually beat AI? It sounds like it.

Investor and Forbes contributor John S. Tobey has a rather fatalistic view of artificial intelligence-based investing and trading regimes. In a recent article, the former professional investment manager who formerly operated a multi-manager fund of funds, likes three primary investment strategies – and they don’t generally include artificial intelligence and computer-based hedge fund decision processes.

For his personal investment strategy, Tobey likes to switch from safety, income, value and growth, changing approaches as market conditions warrant. He particularly likes “trends being ignored or misinterpreted by investors.” Trends, it should be noted, are most often best defined quantitatively. In retail stores, popular music or movies, actual sales trends are calculated by computers to determine the force and popularity of trends. In hedge fund investing, computers examine pricing variables to document a trend.

Continue reading “Beat Artificial Intelligence In Markets By Investing In Individual Stocks?” | >

Another major leap forward in Quantum; researchers have been able to transport heat consistently ten thousand times further than ever before. This will enable Quantum technology to be leveraged in across multiple areas of manufacturing (clothing, etc.), energy, and electronics due to its heat conductive properties.

Heat conduction is a fundamental physical phenomenon utilized, for example, in clothing, housing, car industry, and electronics. Thus our day-to-day life is inevitably affected by major shocks in this field. The research group, led by quantum physicist Mikko Möttönen has now made one of these groundbreaking discoveries. This new invention revolutionizes quantum-limited heat conduction which means as efficient heat transport as possible from point A to point B. This is great news especially for the developers of quantum computers.

Artistic impression of quantum-limited heat conduction of photons over macroscopic distances

Figure 1. Artistic impression of quantum-limited heat conduction of photons over macroscopic distances. (Image: Heikka Valja)

Continue reading “New invention revolutionizes heat transport (w/video)” | >