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Thrusters may provide propulsion in any direction and can “roll” around the limb.

Meet the University of Tokyo’s SPIDAR, the backronym of “SpherIcally vectorable and Distributed rotors assisted Air-ground amphibious quadruped Robot,” with multimodal locomotion capability.

Continue reading “SPIDAR: A groundbreaking spider-like robot is ready to change robotics” »

Allen & Overy (A&O), one of the world’s largest law firms, has partnered with OpenAI-backed artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Harvey AI to automate legal document drafting and research.

The London-based law firm claims that over 3,500 of its lawyers have already tested Harvey AI, an adaption from OpenAI’s ChatGPT software, according to a press release published by the company on Wednesday.

AI has the potential to improve our lives and increase efficiency but it also raises important ethical and societal questions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come a long way since its inception and is now an integral part of our daily lives.

Continue reading “From chatbots to facial recognition, here’s how AI impacts your daily life” »

A team of researchers has successfully developed drones from the bodies of stuffed dead birds. While a little macabre, the team members believe such drones could one day be used to watch animals without being seen.

But, as revealed at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech 2023 Forum, the same taxidermy drones could also be used to spy on human subjects by governments or militaries.

Elon Musk, an outspoken AI commentator, has reiterated his calls for safety checks at the World Government Summit in DubaiMusk founded OpenAI to promote AI regulation, but says the company’s changed since Microsoft’s investment.

Microsoft and Google are vying to best one another in the field, which Musk worries drives down safety checks in the pursuit of winning the race.

Thanks to the success of ChatGPT, 2023 kicked off with intense hype around the power of artificial intelligence. It’s no wonder Elon Musk, one of tech’s most outspoken public figures, had something to say on the subject.

Susan Wojcicki is stepping down as YouTube CEO after nine years at the helm. In a letter to employees (first published by Recode), Wojcicki says that she’s leaving in order to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about.”

“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube,” Wojcicki wrote. “The time is right for me, and I feel able to do this because we have an incredible leadership team in place at YouTube.”

Wojcicki will be replaced by Neal Mohan, YouTube’s longtime chief product officer. Mohan came to Google with the tech giant’s DoubleClick acquisition in 2007, and — as his responsibilities grew — he was promoted to SVP of display and video ads before assuming his current role in 2015. As for Wojcicki, she says that she’ll take on an “advisory role” across Google and Alphabet, offering counsel and guidance.

Year 2020 face_with_colon_three

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are two fatal and incurable neurodegenerative diseases linked by a shared genetic cause – a heterozygous hexanucleotide (GGGGCC) repeat expansion in a single allele of the C9orf72 gene. The goal of this work is to develop novel CRISPR based therapeutic gene editing technologies and test whether gene editing can reverse the cellular pathology caused by this repeat expansion in patient derived cells. The results of these studies will advance our use of CRISPR technologies for therapeutic editing in FTD/ALS, inform our understanding of the regulation of C9orf72 gene, and will be applicable to many other repeat expansion and single gene disorders.

Physicists used MINERvA, a Fermilab neutrino experiment, to measure the proton’s size and structure using a neutrino-scattering technique.

For the first time, particle physicists have been able to precisely measure the proton’s size and structure using neutrinos. With data gathered from thousands of neutrino-hydrogen scattering events collected by MINERvA, a particle physics experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, physicists have found a new lens for exploring protons. The results were published today in the scientific journal Nature.

This measurement is also important for analyzing data from experiments that aim to measure the properties of neutrinos with great precision, including the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab.

Whether the light in our living spaces is on or off can be regulated in everyday life simply by reaching for the light switch. However, when the space for the light is shrunk to a few nanometers, quantum mechanical effects dominate, and it is unclear whether there is light in it or not. Both can even be the case at the same time, as scientists from the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) and the University of Bielefeld show in the journal Nature Physics (“Identifying the quantum fingerprint of plasmon polaritons”).

“Detecting these exotic states of quantum physics on the size scales of electrical transistors could help in the development of optical quantum technologies of future computer chips,” explains Würzburg professor Bert Hecht. The nanostructures studied were produced in his group.

The technology of our digital world is based on the principle that either a current flows or it does not: one or zero, on or off. Two clear states exist. In quantum physics, on the other hand, it is possible to disregard this principle and create an arbitrary superposition of the supposed opposites. This increases the possibilities of transmitting and processing information many times over. Such superposition states have been known for some time, especially for the particles of light, so-called photons, and are used in the detection of gravitational waves.