Google DeepMind’s machine-learning AlphaGo program has defeated South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol in the first match of five historic matches between human and AI, taking place in Seoul.
The second round will take place today (Wednesday March 9 in U.S.) at 11 PM ET (1 PM KST), also covered on YouTube.
Last October, AlphaGo defeated European Go champion Fan Hui 5-0, making it the first… read more
What would happen if we combined synthetic and biological systems, creating an intelligent cyborg rat? How would it perform?
Researchers in China decided to find out by comparing the problem-solving abilities of rats, computers, and rat-computer “cyborgs,” as they reported in an open-access PLOS ONE paper.
Rats: Six rats were trained for a week to run a series of unique mazes. After training, the researchers tested… read more
BRETT (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks) has learned to improve its performance in household chores through deep learning and reinforcement learning to provide moment-to-moment visual and sensory feedback to the software that controls the robot’s movements.
For the past 15 years, Berkeley robotics researcher Pieter Abbeel has been looking for ways to make robots learn. In 2010 he and his students programmed BRETT to… read more
Iowa State University engineers have developed a new flexible, stretchable, and tunable “meta-skin” (metamaterial) “invisibility cloak” that uses rows of small liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from radar over a wide range of frequencies — and possibly at visible or infrared light ranges in the future.
The skin has rows of split ring resonators embedded inside layers of silicone sheets. The… read more
For the first time, researchers have reported decreases in levels of a key molecule in aging human skin, which could lead to developing new anti-aging treatments and screening new compounds.
Scientists have known for some time that major structures in the cell called mitochondria (which generate and control most of the cell’s supply of energy) are somehow involved in aging, but the exact role of the mitochondria… read more
The electric vehicle of the future will be carbon negative (reducing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide) not just carbon neutral (not adding CO2 to the atmosphere), say researchers at Vanderbilt University and George Washington University (GWU).
The trick: replace graphite electrodes in lithium-ion batteries (used in electric vehicles) with carbon nanotubes and carbon nanofibers recovered from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The new technology… read more
A new way to use the chemical reactions of certain enzymes to trigger self-powered mechanical movement has been developed by a team of researchers at Penn State University and the University of Pittsburgh.
These enzyme micropumps could be used for detecting substances, moving particles to build small structures, and delivering medications.
“One potential use is the release of insulin to a diabetes patient from a reservoir at a… read more
EPFL researchers have developed films with conductive tracks just several hundreds of nanometers thick that can be bent and stretched up to four times their original length. They could be used in artificial skin, connected clothing, and on-body sensors.
Instead of bring printed on a board, the tracks are almost as flexible as rubber and can be stretched up to four times their original length and in… read more
Duke Health neuroscientists have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows monkeys to steer a robotic wheelchair with their thoughts.
The BMI uses signals from hundreds of neurons recorded simultaneously in two regions of the monkeys’ brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal — in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes — computers translate their brain… read more
Last month, Meta CEO Meron Gribetz wowed TED with a sneak peak at the company’s new Meta 2 augmented-reality product. Today, Meta announced that the Meta 2 Development Kit is now available for pre-orders.
Meta 2′s Iron-Man-like immersive functionality appears similar to Hololens and Magic Leap, but with a wider 90-degree field of view, 2560 x 1440 high-DPI display, and natural hand-controlled operation.
Meta… read more
Georgia Tech researchers have developed a device fingerprinting technique that could improve the security of the electrical grid and other industrial systems.
“The stakes are extremely high; the systems are very different from home or office computer networks,” said Raheem Beyah, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The networked systems controlling the U.S.… read more
In a finding reminiscent of the bizarre Stanford prison experiment, subjects in an experiment blindly followed a robot in a mock building-fire emergency — even when it led them into a dark room full of furniture and they were told the robot had broken down.
The research was designed to determine whether or not building occupants would trust a robot designed to help them evacuate a high-rise… read more
A Google natural language understanding research group led by Ray Kurzweil is building software systems that can understand natural language at a human level. The goal is to understand and interpret meanings of spoken or written language.
One key to achieving that understanding is establishing context, suggest researchers Chris Tar; Marc Pickett, PhD.; and Brian Strope, PhD., on the Google Research Blog.
For example, take the… read more
Today, March 1, five international futurist organizations will conduct a 24-hour global online conversation about the world’s potential futures, challenges, and opportunities. The objective is to support humanity in thinking about a more positive future.
Already started in New Zealand, the conversation is moving across the world with people entering and leaving the conversation whenever they want. The five organizations (The Millennium Project; the Association of Professional Futurists; “Science,… read more
Duke University researchers have engineered microbes as “swarmbots” designed to only survive in a crowd.
The system could be used as a safeguard to stop genetically modified organisms (created with tools such as CRISPR) from escaping into the surrounding environment.
Collective survival
“Other labs have addressed this issue by making cells rely on unnatural amino acids for survival or by introducing a ‘kill switch’ that… read more