How intelligent can robots get?Robots are getting smarter, which means they are better able to execute our commands. A number of different companies worldwide focus their attention on creating robots but one company in particular is really taking the lead on this lofty goal: Google.
Giving a robotic assistant a broad-based understanding of how to be helpful at home or work isn’t easy. But Google researchers are making progress.
In Part 1 of this who-knows-how-many-parts-there-will-be mini-series, we focused on one of my favorite display technologies in the form of Nixie tubes. We also featured a photograph showing the main control room of an abandoned power plant in Hungary that—much like your humble narrator—was simply oozing with style.
In that photograph, you may have spotted another of my favorite display technologies—vintage analog meters—which I typically acquire at Hamfests and electronic flea markets. I really like the look and feel of these little beauties so long as they are of a certain age, thereby bestowing an air of gravitas upon the occasion of their use.
One of my ongoing hobby projects is what I call my Vetinari Clock, which is named after one of the characters from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Lord Havelock Vetinari, who is the Lord Patrician in charge of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, has a strange clock in his waiting-room. While it does keep completely accurate time overall, it sometimes ticks and tocks out of sync (for example, “tick, tock … ticktocktick, tock …”) and it occasionally misses a ‘tick’ or a ‘tock’ altogether. As a result, by the time Lord Vetinari’s visitors are finally granted an audience, their nerves are already frayed and frazzled.
The machine learning technique that taught notorious text generator GPT-3 to write can also help robots make sense of spoken commands.
The newly-found, three-mile-wide natural satellite orbits the 17-mile-wide asteroid Polymele, which is about 480 million miles from Earth.
Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager probes are NASA’s longest-operating mission and the only spacecraft ever to explore interstellar space.
This new invention is highly scalable since its raw materials are commercially available and easy to access.
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) College of Design and Engineering (CDE) has developed a self-charging electricity generation (MEG) device that generates electricity from air moisture, according to a press release by the institution.
Imagine being able to generate electricity by harnessing moisture in the air around you with just everyday items like sea salt and a piece of fabric, or even powering everyday electronics with a non-toxic battery that is as thin as paper. A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) College of Design and Engineering (CDE) has developed a new moisture-driven electricity generation (MEG) device made of a thin layer of fabric — about 0.3 millimetres (mm) in thickness — sea salt, carbon ink, and a special water-absorbing gel.
The concept of MEG devices is built upon the ability of different materials to generate electricity from the interaction with moisture in the air. This area has been receiving growing interest due to its potential for a wide range of real-world applications, including self-powered devices such as wearable electronics like health monitors, electronic skin sensors, and information storage devices.
His new prototype had 39 percent greater torque over a traditional motor.
A young engineer called Robert Sansone won the first prize, and winnings of $75,000, at this year’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world’s largest international high school STEM competition.
As per Smithsonian Magazine, his new invention could one day transform the electric vehicle (EV) industry. It is a synchronous reluctance motor with improved performance over previous models.
The launch of Artemis I is within touching distance.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is almost ready for launch. The U.S. space agency’s big new rocket reached Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at approximately 07:30 am EDT after a 10-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
NASA recently announced an August 29 launch date for its Artemis I mission, which will see SLS launch the agency’s Orion capsule on a trip to the moon and back. This came after the space agency successfully completed a much-delayed wet dress rehearsal in June, during which it filled SLS with fuel and performed a simulated countdown that stopped just short of launch.
Around 7:30 a.m. EDT the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission arrived atop Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a nearly 10-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building.
Saccorhytus is not our grandpa anymore.
Scientists from Bristol University have solved a mystery of a 500 million-year-old microscopic creature with a mouth but no anus. The study reveals that the spiny creature is not the earliest human ancestor, after all.
This creature — called Saccorhytus — was first discovered in 2017. The study found that a wrinkly sack with a vast mouth entwined by spines and holes is a primitive feature of the deuterostome group from which our ancestors emerged.
Saccorhytus coronarius are millimetric fossils from the early Cambrian period in China that are proposed to represent the most basal known deuterostomes.
And these miniaturized brains could save regular-sized brains.
Electroencephalography (EEG) caps are medical devices doctors use to diagnose brain disorders like epilepsy and seizures in patients. In the past decade, scientists have created 3D mini-brains called brain organoids from human-derived stem cells that mimic some aspects of brain development. A team of researchers at John Hopkins University has recently developed the world’s smallest EEG caps to study these more efficiently. The micro EEG caps can be used on a brain organoid the size of a pen dot.
Brain organoids can mimic some key features of the human brain. Scientists create them to understand the human brain’s development process and the factors leading to various neural disorders. Moreover, such mini-brains can also be used to perform experiments that researchers would have to otherwise perform on a real brain. Thus, eliminating the need to conduct tests on live human and animal subjects. has long been the stuff of science fiction but now mind-reading machines may actually be here and they may not be invasive. Researchers from the Russian corporation Neurobotics and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have found a way to visualize a person’s brain activity as actual images without the use of invasive brain implants.
