By: Eray Ozkural - h+

During writing a paper for the 100 Year Starship Symposium, I wished to convince the starship designers that they should acknowledge the dynamics of high-technology economy, which may be crucial for interstellar missions. Thus motivated, I have made a new calculation regarding infinity point, also known as the singularity. According to this most recent revision of the theory of infinity point, it turns out that we should expect Infinity Point by 2035 in the worst case. Here is how and why.

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By LISA CORNWELL, Associated Press

CINCINNATI (AP) — Some Ohio schools are preparing students for a boom in the drone industry once the federal government, as is expected, allows civilian unmanned aircraft to fly in U.S. airspace.

The Federal Aviation Administration estimates as many as 7,500 commercial drones could be flying in national airspace within a few years, and has until 2015 to present a plan for safely integrating drones into U.S. airspace.

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By Mohana Ravindranath — The Washington Post

In May, brothers Guiseppe and Mario Lanzone started a Peruvian food business in Washington, hoping to cash in on the District’s enchantment with food trucks.

Today, the two are betting on another trend: a virtual currency called Bitcoin. The Lanzones decided a few weeks ago they would be accepting Bitcoin, announcing the change in a tweet to their 800 followers.

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by Paul Strauss — Technabob

Two of the biggest challenges with today’s desktop 3D printers are that they 1) don’t print very large objects and 2) are painfully slow. The Solidator 3D printer aims to change both of those things, in a printer that costs less than $5,000.

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By JOHN MARKOFF — The New York Times

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — An international competition to pave the way for a new generation of rescue robots was dominated by a team of Japanese roboticists who were students in the laboratory of a pioneer in the design of intelligent humanoid machines.

The early roboticist, Hirochika Inoue, began working in the field almost a half-century ago at the University of Tokyo, and in the mid-1990s led the design of robots that could both walk and manipulate objects.

Continue reading “Japanese Team Dominates Competition to Create Generation of Rescue Robots” »

Solid Concepts Inc.

By AOL Real Estate Editors

Thinking about building a home on Mars, but having trouble finding a contractor? That might no longer be such a problem, thanks to a new technology that one day could make it much faster to build one there than it takes us now on Earth. A professor at the University of Southern California has designed an automated 3D printer that, he says, would make it “possible to build an entire home within a day.” “You press a button and it will be built,” says Behrokh Khoshnevis, who teaches industrial and systems engineering at USC.

The process, called “Contour Crafting,” was conceived as a way to quickly construct emergency housing on this planet out of concrete. But NASA sees other applications for Khoshnevis’ homebuilding innovation — for starters, projects such as an airport on the moon. “Behrokh’s work is one of the most creative and far reaching concepts I’ve seen,” said Jason Derleth, the program manager for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, in a news release this past summer. “He really has a chance to change the world by robotically printing buildings here, and he may even change the next human world by doing the same on the moon and Mars.”

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By Julie Bort — Business Insider

Here’s an interesting idea: Maybe your company could be raising extra money by using its data center to mine for bitcoins at night.

The thought was half seriously suggested by Jason Langone, director of Federal Sales at a hot Valley startup called Nutanix. He wrote a blog post that explains how it could be done.

Mary (Missy) Cummings is Associate Professor at Duke University and Director of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Humans and Automation Laboratory.

In just the past two years, it seems as if drones are everywhere in the news. This technology has been around for more than 60 years, but has only recently captured both national and international attention. This is primarily because of the increasing use in the military, but also because of concerns that such technology will be turned on a country’s own citizens.

The average person thinks of a drone as a flying spy camera, loitering overhead waiting to spot a target and then possibly launching a weapon when that target is labeled as a threat. To be sure, this is indeed one mission of drones, typically of organizations like the CIA.

However, this is by far the least common mission. The vast majority of military drone missions today are data and image collection. Their ability to provide “situational awareness” to decision makers on the ground is unparalleled in military operations since drones can essentially conduct perch and stare missions nearly endlessly.