Summary of an IEEE Spectrum report
In the next few weeks, Google will start shipping its Google Glass to developers. More-polished consumer models are expected in 2014.
Details about Glass are still sketchy but here’s what we know:
MIT researchers have developed software for robots that enables them to be more “aware” of their own limitations, such as knowing the whereabouts of an object, or its own location within a room.
Most successful robots today tend to be used either in fixed, carefully controlled environments, such as manufacturing plants, or for performing fairly simple tasks such as vacuuming a room,
But carrying out complicated sequences… read more
The U.S. should create a new agency dedicated to manned exploration of the moon, Mars and other destinations in deep space, says former Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt, Space.com reports.
Schmitt suggests the new agency be called the National Space Exploration Administration.
The new deep-space agency should “stay young, and develop a management structure that is not so hierarchical — that is actually a… read more
Celebrated scientists and development thinkers today warn that civilization is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption, and environmentally malign technologies.
In the face of an “absolutely unprecedented emergency,” say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize — the unofficial Nobel for the environment — society has “no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we… read more
Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas said his department is considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on its drone, CBS DC reports.
“Drone manufacturers are also considering offering police the option of arming these remote-controlled aircraft with (nonlethal for now) weapons like rubber bullets, Tasers, and tear gas,” the ACLU says on their website.
Catherine Crump, staff… read more
Science-fiction novelist Neal Stephenson imagines a 20-kilometer-high steel tower that reaches into the stratosphere.
From that height, planes could save fuel by docking at the tower rather than landing, and space missions could do the same by launching from it.
Stephenson is teaming up with a structural engineer, Keith Hjelmstad at Arizona State University (ASU), to work out how to actually build the tower, New Scientist reports.… read more
A Texas region containing four of the world’s largest wind farms showed an increase in land surface temperature over nine years that researchers have connected to local meteorological effects of the turbines.
The land surface temperature around the west-central Texas wind farms warmed at a rate of .72 degrees Celsius per decade during the study period relative to nearby regions without wind farms, an effect most likely… read more
Hod Lipson, an associate professor and the director of the Creative Machines Lab at Cornell, said “3D printing is worming its way into almost every industry, from entertainment, to food, to bio- and medical-applications,” The New York Times reports.
Dr. Lipson, the co-author of “Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing,” said… read more
In new book, NIU Northern Illinois University Professor David Gunkel examines ethical questions raised by 21st century computers, robots and artificial intelligence.
On the topic of computers, artificial intelligence and robots, he says science fiction is fast becoming “science fact.”
Fictional depictions of artificial intelligence have run the gamut from the loyal Robot in “Lost in Space” to the killer computer HAL in “2001:… read more
The Microsoft cofounder and a colleague say the Singularity is a long way off.
Their main issue: the “complexity brake. As we go deeper and deeper in our understanding of natural systems, we typically find that we require more and more specialized knowledge to characterize them, and we are forced to continuously expand our scientific theories in more and more complex ways…. Without having a scientifically deep understanding of… read more
Why do some nations, such as the United States, become wealthy and powerful, while others remain stuck in poverty? And why do some of those powers, from ancient Rome to the modern Soviet Union, expand and then collapse?
Politics makes the difference, say economists Daron Acemoglu of MIT and James Robinson of Harvard University in their new book, Why Nations Fail. Countries that have what they call “inclusive”… read more
Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences via “socialstructed learning,” an aggregation of microlearning experiences drawn from a rich ecology of content and driven not by grades but by social and intrinsic rewards, suggests Marina Gorbis, Executive Director at the Institute for the Future, in Fast Company.
“Today’s obsession with MOOCs is a reminder of the old forecasting paradigm: In the early stages of technology… read more
Certain black holes can have a complex internal structure that could allow photons, particles, and perhaps even planets to orbit the central singularity without ever getting sucked all the way in, Technology Review Physics arXiv Blog reports.
“Advanced civilizations may live safely inside the supermassive black holes in the galactic nuclei without being visible from the outside,” says Vyacheslav Dokuchaev, Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian… read more
Controversial U.S. businessman’s iron fertilization off west coast of Canada contravenes two UN conventions.
Russ George, a controversial California businessman, dumped about 100 tons of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation reveals.
Lawyers, environmentalists and civil… read more
Brace yourself for a tidal wave of Facebook campaigning before November’s U.S. presidential election. A study of 61 million Facebook users finds that using online social networks to urge people to vote has a much stronger effect on their voting behavior than spamming them with information via television ads or phone calls, Science Now reports.
The study follows a Science paper that tracked how… read more