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A radical alternative to nuclear reactors

March 15, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica

sbsp_flowchart

With deterioration of the nuclear reactor situation in Japan and radiation heading for Tokyo — in one extreme Pentagon scenario, catastrophic meltdowns and megadeaths in Japan, according to a source — many scientists are ramping up the search for alternates to earthquake-vulnerable nuclear power.

“The Japanese Government has dissembled regarding the gravity of the failure of their power plants and the potential for meltdown of their  containment… read more

Topics: Environment/Climate | Space | Survival/Defense

Comments (8)

A robot that learns how to tidy up after you

May 23, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

A robot places an item in a refrigerator (credit: Saxena Lab)

Finally: a robot I really need. Like right now.

Researchers at Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong, and put them away. Bingo!

“This is the first work that places objects in non-trivial places,” said Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science.

“It learns not to put a shoe in the refrigerator,”… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Computers/Infotech/UI | Electronics | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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A stylish new brain-sensing headband

October 22, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

Muse

Finally: a brainwave-sensing gadget disguised as a stylish wearable headband that would fit right in with Google Glass … and not make you look like a Fringe experiment run amok.

InteraXon just announced its Muse tonight. It’s available for pre-order now on crowd-funding platform Indiegogo (to raise $150,000) and due out in Spring 2013, the company says.

It’s not clear to me yet how this gadget differs from other EEG… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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A super-memory smart drug?

December 15, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica

Suppression of PKR

Could this be the “Limitless” breakthrough we’ve been looking for?

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine  (BCM) have discovered that when the activity of PKR — a molecule normally elevated during viral infections — is inhibited in the brain, mice learn and remember dramatically better.

“The molecule PKR (the double-stranded RNA-activated protein kinase) was originally described as a sensor of viral infections,… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Social Networking/Web/Education

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A universe of self-replicating code

March 27, 2012 by John Brockman

georgedyson

What we’re missing now, on another level, is not just biology, but cosmology. People treat the digital universe as some sort of metaphor, just a cute word for all these products. The universe of Apple, the universe of Google, the universe of Facebook, that these collectively constitute the digital universe, and we can only see it in human terms and what does this do for us?

We’re missing a… read more

Topics: Biotech | Computers/Infotech/UI | Internet/Telecom | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Accelerate with Acceler8or!

June 7, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica

ACCELER8OR

R. U. Sirius launched today his new Acceler8or website, “covering and uncovering accelerating culture from all imaginable vantage points and providing links — complete with snappy, playful headlines — to particularly cool, smart, funny or important stuff.

“Use us as your thoroughfare to all the best transhumanist bits and bytes, with a side order of strangeness and charm,” the website suggests.

R. U. was editor… read more

Topics: Human Enhancement

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Accelerated returns in food production

August 19, 2012 by Sam Ghandchi

Average daily calorie consumption in countries (credit: Interchange88/Wikimedia Commons)

Ray Kurzweil’s “law of accelerating returns” is a very viable economic theory that can be used to address many of the issues that economists are facing in our times, but unfortunately most university departments of economics pay very little attention to it, whereas the old economic theories are not able to answer issues that global economy has been facing since the inception of computer revolution of the last thirty

… read more

Topics: Singularity/Futures | Social/Ethical/Legal | Survival/Defense | Synthetic Biology

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Activism in the age of viral reality

February 1, 2011 by John Postill

(Al Jazeera)

On the subject of Egypt’s and other countries’ protests, I’m currently doing anthropological research into social media and activism in Barcelona. I’m wondering whether we’re entering an era in which political reality is framed by re-sent SMS messages, retweets, YouTube videos, viral campaigns, and so on — an age of “viral reality.”

Even those who rightly reject the hyperbole surrounding these events would appear to be shaped in their… read more

Topics: Entertainment/New Media | Internet/Telecom | VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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Ads for monkeys: sign of the end times?

June 28, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica

Monkey trades a coin for grapes, picking the better deal (credit: Laurie Santos/Yale University)

This is not an Onion story. No, really.

Turns out Laurie Santos gave a TED talk last year on “monkeynomics” — the realization that monkeys understood an abstract idea like currency. Unfortunately, two advertising executives happened to be in the audience, New Scientist reports today.

The result: a monkey ad campaign (shown at the Cannes Lions Festival) to see if they can change the monkeys’… read more

Topics: Entertainment/New Media

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AI and Ethiopia: an unexpected synergy

October 25, 2012 by Ben Goertzel

Getnet Aseffa explains Ray Kurzweil's exponential growth of computing (credit: Getnet Aseffa)

In February of this year, KurzweilAI.net’s Amara Angelica put me in touch with an enterprising young Ethiopian engineer named Getnet Aseffa, who was interested in advanced technologies and their implications, and especially in their potential application to help Ethiopia and other African nations.

After some email dialogue, Getnet arranged for me to give a talk via Skype to an audience at Addis Ababa Institute of Technology. The themes of… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Alcor update from Max More, new CEO

January 13, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica

Max More CEO

“It’s not every day that you start a new job and immediately become responsible for over a thousand lives,” says Max More, who took over the reins as CEO of Alcor on January 1. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Alcor has 102 patients in cryopreservation (freezing with minimal tissue damage in liquid nitrogen) in hopes of revival by future scientists; the rest are members signed up for the process.

A… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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An autonomous flying car? Really?

May 12, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

Artist's impression of TF-X future flying car in flight (credit: Terrafugia Inc.)

“Where’s my flying car?”

Skeptics have trashed predictions of flying cars with this annoying question ever since the Jetsons.

But now Terrafugia Inc. has announced feasibility studies of a four-seat, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) [similar to a helicopter] plug-in hybrid-electric flying car, the TF-X.

Just tell it where to go. It flies (and lands) for you — no runway needed — and… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Singularity/Futures | Social/Ethical/Legal

Comments (31)

Animusic’s virtual reality instruments of the future

February 7, 2011 by Sarah Black

Animusic LLC logo

Animusic’s fascinating and novel approach to creating and animating virtual instruments is full of possibility for the future of augmented and virtual reality.

Wikipedia | Animusic is an American company specializing in the 3D visualization of MIDI-based music. Founded by Wayne Lytle, the company is known for its Animusic compilations of computer-generated animations, based on MIDI events processed to simultaneously drive the music and on-screen action,… read more

Video Source: Animusic, LLC

Related:
Animusic's YouTube channel here
Animusic, LLC

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Entertainment/New Media | VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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Another faster-than-light neutrinos challenge

October 1, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica

Cherenkov radiation (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

This just in: a new critique of the CERN OPERA finding of faster-than-light neutrinos. In “New Constraints on Neutrino Velocities,” Cohen and Glashow argue that the high-energy (17.5 GeV) superluminal muon neutrinos would actually lose energy rapidly (down to about 12.5GeV) on the 730km trip, long before arriving in Italy.

But that didn’t happen. Ergo, the neutrino weren’t really traveling faster than light, say Cohen… read more

Topics: Physics/Cosmology

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Approaching the Singularity…

March 3, 2011

star trek all shes got

I’m giving ‘er all she’s got, Captain! — Scotty, as the Enterprise is being sucked into a black hole (the Singularity) 

All she’s got is not good enough! — Kirk 

  

If you must have this t-shirt then click here.

Topics: Singularity/Futures

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