Menu

Blog

Page 8121

Feb 16, 2020

Why Bill Gates thinks gene editing and artificial intelligence could save the world

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, health, robotics/AI

Bill-gates-thinks-gene-editing-artificial-intelligence-save-world.


Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been working to improve the state of global health through his nonprofit foundation for 20 years, and today he told the nation’s premier scientific gathering that advances in artificial intelligence and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead.

“We have an opportunity with the advance of tools like artificial intelligence and gene-based editing technologies to build this new generation of health solutions so that they are available to everyone on the planet. And I’m very excited about this,” Gates said in Seattle during a keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Continue reading “Why Bill Gates thinks gene editing and artificial intelligence could save the world” »

Feb 16, 2020

What happens when all the tiny satellites we’re shooting into space get hacked?

Posted by in category: satellites

Hackers could shut them down—or turn them into weapons.

[Source Images: 3DSculptor/iStock, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center]

Feb 16, 2020

How to donate a piece of your brain to science—while you’re still alive

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, science

Living donors are becoming key to understanding the human brain.

Feb 16, 2020

Step aside Alexa & Google Home, Panasonic joins the smart home race with ‘MirAIe’

Posted by in categories: habitats, robotics/AI

MirAIe can work in perfect harmony with Google Home and Amazon Alexa.

Feb 15, 2020

Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett agree: Now is the best time to be alive

Posted by in category: Elon Musk

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk says if people are negative about the present, then they aren’t reading enough history. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett also agree this is the best time to be alive.

Feb 15, 2020

Coronavirus continues to infect earnings as Tesla, McDonald’s and Boeing highlight busiest day

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

Coronvirus fears are being raised in earnings calls throughout different sectors as Wall Street looks for any effects from the virus spreading within and outside of China, which should lead to a lot of talk on what could be the busiest single day of the earnings season.

Nearly 10% of the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.18%, 46 components, are scheduled to report on Wednesday, along with four members of the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, −0.09% — Boeing Co. BA, −0.68%, Dow Inc. DOW, +0.68%, McDonald’s Corp. MCD, −0.15% and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.89%.

The company on that list most linked to coronavirus fears is McDonald’s, which has had to temporarily shut down some of its stores in China due to fears about the outbreak. During the SARS crisis in the early 2000s, there was a “pronounced but relatively short-lived” impact on restaurant sales in the Greater China region, according to Bernstein analyst Sara Senatore. China accounts for only 2% of McDonald’s earnings and the company has only closed about 1% of its China stores so far, so expect executives to play down any effects when they report before the bell Wednesday.

Feb 15, 2020

It turns out rust is… a great shield for deadly space radiation

Posted by in category: space

Compared to existing shields, rust gives much better protection per unit weight.

Feb 15, 2020

Interrupted Sleep Affects Your Mental Health

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Read more

Feb 15, 2020

AI Design: Can AI Systems Replace Human Designers?

Posted by in categories: employment, robotics/AI

AI starts playing an important role in design. So should designers be worried about it? Will AI-enabled systems take over jobs that require creativity?

Feb 15, 2020

Eye-tracking data improves prosthetic hands

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, computing, cyborgs

Prosthetic hands restore only some of the function lost through amputation. But combining electrical signals from forearm muscles with other sources of information, such as eye tracking, promises better prostheses. A study funded by the SNSF gives specialists access to valuable new data.

Page Content

The hand is a precious limb. Its 34 muscles and 20 joints enable movements of great precision and complexity which are essential for interacting with the environment and with others on a daily basis. Hand amputation thus has severe physical and psychological repercussions on a person’s life. Myoelectric prosthetic hands, which work by recording electrical muscle signals on the skin, allow amputees to regain some lost function. But dexterity is often limited and the variability of the electrical signals from the forearm alone makes the prosthetics sometimes unreliable. Henning Müller, professor of business informatics, is investigating how combining data from myoelectric signals with other sources of information could lead to better prosthetics. Müller has now made available to the scientific community a dataset that includes eye tracking and computer vision as well as other information (electromyography and acceleration sensor data).