Circa 2016
U.Scientists are working on next-generation combat wear for soldiers inspired by the nano suit worn in the Iron Man films — and say it could be just two years away.
The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (Talos) would effectively give its wearer superpowers, such as the ability to see in the dark, super-human strength and a way of deflecting bullets.
Robot enthusiasts were sending up cheers this month to the team advancing Atlas into an even more human-like walker through obstacles including a bunch of cinder blocks and a balance beam. They have turned Atlas into the very credible hulk, who wins the spotlight with its display of walking, which was recorded May 1.
The video is “IHMC Atlas Autonomous Path Planning Across Narrow Terrain.” Don’t miss the key word “narrow.” This is why the walk is being eyed as a big deal.
Narrow terrain is difficult due to the need to do tricky cross-over steps, tricky, in that there is limited range of motion in the hip joint, said the video notes. There was “a small polygon of support when one foot is directly in front of the other.”
Computer scientists the University of Melbourne in Australia and the University of Toronto in Canada have developed an algorithm that is capable of writing poetry following the rules of rhyme and metre.
With the use of poetries rules and taking the metre into account, this AI algorithm creates weaves of words and grouped them together to produce meaningful sentences.
This AI is trained extensively on the rules it needed to follow to craft an acceptable poem and the dataset researcher used to train the AI has over 2,600 real sonnets.
Posted in futurism
University of Sydney research provides new evidence that nanoparticles, which are present in many food items, may have a substantial and harmful influence on human health.
The study investigated the health impacts of food additive E171 (titanium dioxide nanoparticles) which is commonly used in high quantities in foods and some medicines as a whitening agent. Found in more than 900 food products such as chewing gum and mayonnaise, E171 is consumed in high proportion everyday by the general population.
Published in Frontiers in Nutrition, the mice study found that consumption of food containing E171 has an impact on the gut microbiota (defined by the trillions of bacteria that inhabit the gut) which could trigger diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases and colorectal cancer.
The human body has powerful healing abilities. But treating brain disorders is no easy task, as brain cells—neurons—have limited ability to regenerate. Nonetheless, stem cells are a form of natural backup, a vestige of our days as still-developing embryos.
The difficulty is that with age, neural stem cells ‘fall asleep’ and become harder to wake up when repairs are needed. Despite efforts to harness these cells to treat neurological damage, scientists have until recently been unsuccessful in decoding the underlying ‘sleep’ mechanism.
Now, researchers at Kyoto University studying brain chemistry in mice have revealed the ebb and flow of gene expression that may wake neural stem cells from their slumber. These findings, which may also apply to stem cells elsewhere in the body, were recently published in the journal Genes & Development.
