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Jan 29, 2018
‘Robotic Habitats’ imagines a self-sustaining AI ecosystem
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: habitats, robotics/AI, space
As artificial intelligence advances at an unprecedented pace, we tend to see its arrival in emotional terms — usually, either excitement or fear. But Noumena, a collective of designers, engineers and architects, is looking at AI and robots more practically. What form will they take, how will they survive and develop, and where will they live? It aims to explore those idea with an exhibition entitled “Robotic Habitats.”
Noumena’s project assumes that deep learning systems will grow out of their narrow Go-playing abilities and soon match humans at many, if not most, tasks. While that would put them on par with us, it doesn’t mean they would live the same way, though. “Society will need to develop a framework for both to thrive,” explains Neumena on its website. “A new form of artificial life will emerge, finding space at the peripheries of humanity in order to not compete for human-dominated resources.”
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Jan 29, 2018
‘Holy Grail’ of dinosaur fossils discovered in Egyptian desert
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in category: education
A new species of dinosaur has been uncovered in the Egyptian desert, a rare discovery in a part of the world not known for dino fossils.
The huge animal, which was roughly the size of a school bus, is an “incredible discovery,” scientists said in a new study that was published Monday.
“This was the Holy Grail — a well-preserved dinosaur from the end of the age of dinosaurs in Africa — that we paleontologists had been searching for for a long, long time,” said Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, one of the authors of the study.
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Jan 29, 2018
Handheld device sequences human genome
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in category: biotech/medical
Jan 29, 2018
Diamonds show promise for spintronic devices
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: particle physics, quantum physics
Conventional electronics rely on controlling electric charge. Recently, researchers have been exploring the potential for a new technology, called spintronics, that relies on detecting and controlling a particle’s spin. This technology could lead to new types of more efficient and powerful devices.
In a paper published in Applied Physics Letters, researchers measured how strongly a charge carrier’s spin interacts with a magnetic field in diamond. This crucial property shows diamond as a promising material for spintronic devices.
Diamond is attractive because it would be easier to process and fabricate into spintronic devices than typical semiconductor materials, said Golrokh Akhgar, a physicist at La Trobe University in Australia. Conventional quantum devices are based on multiple thin layers of semiconductors, which require an elaborate fabrication process in an ultrahigh vacuum.
Jan 29, 2018
African countries have taken the first major step towards cheaper continental flights — By Yomi Kazeem | Quartz
Posted by Odette Bohr Dienel in categories: drones, governance, innovation, transportation
“Yesterday (Jan. 28), 23 African countries launched the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) initiative by the African Union (AU). ”
Jan 29, 2018
Revolutionary gene edited T cell therapy to treat lymphoma shows promise and little toxicity
Posted by Brady Hartman in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
This revolutionary gene modified T cell therapy is bearing fruit in treating a type of lymphoma, a resistant form of cancer.
Summary: After years of effort, this revolutionary gene-modified T cell therapy is bearing fruit in treating a type of lymphoma, a resistant form of cancer. [This article first appeared on the website LongevityFacts.com. Author: Brady Hartman. ]
Thirty-seven-year-old Nick Asoian of Denver unsuccessfully fought Hodgkin’s Lymphoma using conventional cancer treatments for two years. In 2008, while in New Zealand for a ski race, Nick was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Two bone marrow transplants and two years of chemotherapy combined with radiation therapy didn’t bring his cancer to heel.
Jan 29, 2018
Learning From First Principles — Demis Hassabis
Posted by Müslüm Yildiz in category: robotics/AI
Between 04–09 December 2017, thousands of researchers and experts gathered for at the largest and most influential AI and Thirty-first Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) in Long Beach, California. This is the conference’s 40th year, and its most-attended, at 7,229 registrations.
Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of DeepMind and an expert chess player himself, presented further details of the system, called Alpha Zero, at an Artificial Intelligence Conference in California. The program often made moves that would seem unthinkable to a human chess player.
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Jan 29, 2018
Artificial brains could soon be reality: Superconducting switch, which can ‘learn’ like human brain, developed
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: computing, neuroscience
Researchers have developed a superconducting switch that can make future computers think like the human brain.
Jan 29, 2018
All living organisms on Earth owe a debt to these protein-based ‘Legos of life’
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: energy
As an added bonus, these tiny building blocks could even be used to split water, creating a clean-burning and near infinite source of energy.