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Research papers will be free to access, eventually – Nature’s Philip Campbell

Knowledge is Power and soon it’s going to be free and available to all. #Awesome

As university students we often take for granted the massive luxury of having access to unprecedented amounts of scientific articles. But accessing journals and papers can be prohibitively expensive for individuals or small organizations.

In the coming decade, science will become increasingly open-sourced. This will further democratize science and pave the way for powerful innovation.

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Metal foams found to excel in shielding X-rays, gamma rays, neutron radiation

Lightweight composite metal foams like this one have been found effective at blocking X-rays, gamma rays and neutron radiation, and are capable of absorbing the energy of high impact collisions — holding promise for use in nuclear safety, space exploration, and medical technology applications (credit: Afsaneh Rabiei, North Carolina State University)

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We are data: the future of machine intelligence — By Douglas Coupland | Financial Times

I sometimes wonder, How much data am I generating? Meaning: how much data do I generate just sitting there in a chair, doing nothing except exist as a cell within any number of global spreadsheets and also as a mineable nugget lodged within global memory storage systems — inside the Cloud, I suppose. (Yay Cloud!)

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Wall Street analysts say virtual reality can’t go mainstream until these issues are fixed — Corey Stern | Business Insider

“‘We are unsure if gamers and general consumers alike are willing to spend long periods of time alone, in a confined space, with a headset, and completely shut off from surrounding environment,’ [Oppenheimer analysts] wrote of the limiting characteristics. This brings us to the social issue: virtual reality has so far only been a single person experience.” Read more

Robot Soldiers — By Geoff Dyer | Financial Times

There was no one standing beside Chimp with a joystick, manipulating the robot’s every movement. Instead, Chimp’s head and body are packed with cameras, sensors and processors that allow it to generate a 3D model of its environment, which it sends back to a control team. “If it is a task that is familiar, we can say ‘grab that drill or turn that valve’,” says Tony Stentz, a Carnegie Mellon university professor who runs Chimp. Or to put it more bluntly, the robot was making many of the decisions itself.

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