From an emerging golden age in medicine to Microsoft’s quantum supercomputer, check out this week’s awesome tech stories from around the web.
If you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot.
This phenomenon, described by the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, depends neither on group member intelligence nor personality. Leaders emerge based on the quantity of speaking, not quality.
Researcher Neil G. MacLaren, lead author of the study published in The Leadership Quarterly, believes his team’s work may improve how groups are organized and how individuals within them are trained and evaluated.
MIT engineers have synthesized a superabsorbent material that can soak up a record amount of moisture from the air, even in desert-like conditions.
As the material absorbs water vapor, it can swell to make room for more moisture. Even in very dry conditions, with 30 percent relative humidity, the material can pull vapor from the air and hold in the moisture without leaking. The water could then be heated and condensed, then collected as ultrapure water.
The transparent, rubbery material is made from hydrogel, a naturally absorbent material that is also used in disposable diapers. The team enhanced the hydrogel’s absorbency by infusing it with lithium chloride — a type of salt that is known to be a powerful dessicant.
When Max More writes, it’s always worth paying attention.
His recent article Existential Risk vs. Existential Opportunity: A balanced approach to AI risk is no exception. There’s much in that article that deserves reflection.
Nevertheless, there are three key aspects where I see things differently.
Humans rely increasingly on sensors to address grand challenges and to improve quality of life in the era of digitalization and big data. For ubiquitous sensing, flexible sensors are developed to overcome the limitations of conventional rigid counterparts. Despite rapid advancement in bench-side research over the last decade, the market adoption of flexible sensors remains limited. To ease and to expedite their deployment, here, we identify bottlenecks hindering the maturation of flexible sensors and propose promising solutions. We first analyze challenges in achieving satisfactory sensing performance for real-world applications and then summarize issues in compatible sensor-biology interfaces, followed by brief discussions on powering and connecting sensor networks.
Bacteria that contribute to gum disease may be a cause of the gynaecological condition endometriosis, which means it could be treated with antibiotics.
By Grace Wade
The project has been funded by the European Space Agency.
The Danish Technological Institute (DTI) has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to engineer a smart skin for robot arms to be used in space.
This is according to a report by Printed Electronics published on Thursday…
300ad/iStock.
The development could result in many more general-purpose robots being developed at a faster rate.
Robots today can do a variety of tasks as long as they are trained on real-world data. But what if they could bypass this step? It would result in many more general-purpose robots being developed at a faster rate.
Google’s DeepMind has introduced a self-improving AI model called RoboCat that may just be the key to machines that can self-generate new training data to improve their technique without too much human interference.
“This year, we’re introducing new features that use AI to help fans gain more insight and access commentary through our match highlights videos.”
Wimbledon, one of the most prestigious tennis tournaments in the world, is set to revolutionize its coverage this year by introducing artificial intelligence-powered commentary and analysis, according to a press release. The All England Club has partnered with tech giant IBM to offer fans a unique immersive experience with AI-generated audio commentary and captions in online highlights videos.
IBM, pioneers of AI-curated video highlights which earned the IBM Consulting team an Emmy Award, trained its bleeding-edge Watson AI platform in tennis… More.
Dmytro Aksonov/iStock.
Suseela Santhosh, director of Vishwa Vidyapeeth school in Bengaluru started an organic farm in her school that feeds its 1,400 students and staff for free.