A new study by University of Chicago and Northwestern University researchers that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe.
In our Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.
Current data from NASA’s… read more
A U.N. report published today states that six in ten people (60%) of the world’s population has a cell phone subscription, up from just under 15% in 2002.
Internet use has more than doubled to 23% in 2008, up from 11% in 2002.
The report also ranked countries by how advanced their information and communications technology (ICT) is, with Sweden first and the U.S. at #17.
Tilera Corp. is pioneering a new chip architecture based on MIT research and has begun to ship a 64-core processor, promising dramatic advances in powering devices for the networking and multimedia industries.
Tilera claims they will deliver more than 10 times the performance of current dual-core processors and 40 times the performance of today’s digital signal processors, and can be scaled to much larger grids.
As of May 2013, 70% of American adults ages 18 and older have a high-speed broadband* connection at home, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
Groups with the highest rates of home broadband adoption continue to be college graduates, adults under age 50, and adults living in households earning at least $50,000, as well as whites and adults living in… read more
Mars One says it has received applications from more than 78,000 people in more than 120 countries for the Mars One astronaut selection program, in hopes of becoming a Mars settler in 2023.
Most applications come from the U.S. (17324), followed by China (10241), United Kingdom (3581), Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India.
The most popular candidate (for site visitors) so far is Anders… read more
Winners of the annual $1 million Kavli Prize in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience this year include Nadrian C. Seeman of New York University for structural DNA for use as nanorobots or in a DNA computer, Donald M. Eigler of IBM’s Almaden Research Center for picking up a single atom and moving it precisely to a different location, and Thomas Südhof of the Stanford School of Medicine, Richard H. Scheller of… read more
The University of Hasselt (Belgium) has announced that Belgian and Dutch scientists have successfully replaced a lower jaw with a 3D printed model for a 83 year-old woman, 3Ders.org reports.
According to the researchers, It is the first custom-made implant in the world to replace an entire lower jaw.
Normally it takes a few days to produce a custom implant, but with 3D printing… read more
A bipartisan coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies — including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American Civil Liberties Union — are demanding swift action from Congress in light of the recent revelations about unchecked domestic surveillance, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In an open letter to lawmakers sent today, the groups call for a congressional investigatory committee, similar to… read more
The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon is coming off a $2 million win in November’s DARPA Urban Challenge, and director Matthew Mason discussed what’s next, from the Google Lunar X Prize to super artificial intelligence.
Chipmaker Adapteva wants to make parallel computing available to everyone, using a Kickstarter project to raise at least $750,000 and a stretch goal of $3 million, Ars Technica reports.
Adapteva calls it “Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone,” a 16-core board hitting 13GHz and 26 gigaflops performance, costing $99 each. If the $3 million goal is hit, Adapteva will make a $199 64-core board hitting… read more
How to live forever opens Friday night July 8 in San Francisco at Landmark Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Ave. (check www.liveforevermovie.com for tickets and exact showtimes).
As noted, the film features interviews with centenarians and longevity experts, including Ray Bradbury, Aubrey de Grey, Phyllis Diller, Ray Kurzweil, Jack LaLanne, John Robbins, Willard Scott, Suzanne Somers, Marianne Williamson and Buster Martin.
Meet… read more
The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen — and What to Do, by Dr. Daniel Berleant (388 pages), the first book published by the Lifeboat Foundation, is available free (Kindle version) to KurzweilAI readers on July 8 as a one-day promo.
A non-fiction book verging on science fiction, its imaginative future scenarios include colonizing the planet Mercury (it has water at the poles), GPS-enabled clocks… read more
On November 20, Creative Time will launch an archival disc created by artist Trevor Paglen called The Last Pictures into outer space from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Made of ultra-archival materials, the disc is expected to orbit the earth for billions of years affixed to the exterior of the communications satellite EchoStar XVI.
To create the artifact, Paglen micro-etched one hundred photographs selected to… read more
Science fiction author Charlie Stross announced Friday on his blog that The Rapture of the Nerds: A Tale of The Singularity, Posthumanity, and Awkward Social Situations, a new science fiction novel co-authored by Cory Doctorow, has been published by Tor Books.
The book is available now from Amazon and will soon be available for free download under a Creative… read more
Is the Singularity near?
“Well, some amazing changes that are fantastically big and fantastically fast are coming our way,” says noted futurist Alvin Toffler in the much-anticipated movie, The Singularity Is Near, A True Story About the Future, available today.
The Singularity is Near stars Ramona, played by NCIS star Pauley Perrette, a superintelligent avatar (artificial-intelligence- based, human-like virtual person) created by AI wizard Ray Kurzweil (played… read more