Lifeboat Foundation

These glasses from Bosch use tiny lasers to project an image directly onto your retina.

My priority at CES every year is to find futuristic new technology that I can get excited about. But even at a tech show as large as CES, this can be surprisingly difficult. If I’m very lucky, I’ll find one or two things that really blow my mind. And it almost always takes a lot of digging, because the coolest stuff is rarely mentioned in keynotes or put on display. It’s hidden away in private rooms because it’s still a prototype that likely won’t be for ready the CES spotlight for another year or two.

Continue reading “Bosch Gets Smartglasses Right With Tiny Eyeball Lasers” »

In a historic decision, the US Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency authorization for public use of a new test for the novel coronavirus. The exemption makes the diagnostic test available to any qualified lab in the world.

The FDA has given emergency authorization to a new test that promises to help public health labs meet a potential surge in cases.

AI cancer detection may be able to provide doctors the ability to recognize and treat the disease before it spreads.

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) has been rapidly developing over the past few years.

With Siri and Amazon Alexa, self-driving cars, targeted advertisements, chatbots, and automated customer service representatives, the infiltration of AI into our daily lives is anything but subtle.

A collaboration between McMaster and Harvard researchers has generated a new platform in which light beams communicate with one another through solid matter, establishing the foundation to explore a new form of computing.

Their work is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu, an associate professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at McMaster, explains that the technology brings together a form of hyrdrogel developed by the Harvard team with light manipulation and measurement techniques performed in her lab, which specializes in the chemistry of materials that respond to light.

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Government regulators plan to review drone designs in the same way they review other aircraft, a major step toward allowing routine drone deliveries and other flights over congested cities.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Feb. 3 announced it’s seeking comment from the public and the drone industry on what criteria should be used for determining whether these novel new devices are safe.

TOKYO – Japan’s first robot bartender has begun serving up drinks in a Tokyo pub in a test that could usher in a wave of automation in restaurants and shops struggling to hire staff in an aging society.

The repurposed industrial robot serves drinks in is own corner of a Japanese pub operated by restaurant chain Yoronotaki. An attached tablet computer face smiles as it chats about the weather while preparing orders.

The robot, made by the company QBIT Robotics, can pour a beer in 40 seconds and mix a cocktail in a minute. It uses four cameras to monitors customers to analyze their expressions with artificial intelligence (AI) software.

The University of Rochester research lab that recently used lasers to create unsinkable metallic structures has now demonstrated how the same technology could be used to create highly efficient solar power generators.

In a paper in Light: Science & Applications, the lab of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics also affiliated with Physics and the Material Sciences Program, describes using powerful femto-second laser pulses to etch metal surfaces with nanoscale structures that selectively absorb light only at the solar wavelengths, but not elsewhere.

Continue reading “Lasers etch a ‘perfect’ solar energy absorber” »

Spacecraft’s new moniker honors NASA’s retired Earth Science Division leader Michael Freilich.

An artist’s concept depicts the Sentinel-6A satellite, which NASA and several partners have renamed in honor of noted earth scientist Michael Freilich, who retired from the space agency but oversaw many missions from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich is set to launch this fall from the Central Coast. (NASA illustration)

3D printed catalysts and new propellant types are making rockets more environmentally-friendly.