FRINGE series repeat premieres on Science Channel @ 8pm
November 20, 2012
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‘Revolutionary’ eavesdropping technology patent to help governments monitor Internet chats
November 23, 2012
According to law enforcement agencies, the rising popularity of Internet chat services like Skype has made it difficult to eavesdrop on suspects’ communications.
But now, Dennis Chang, president of Sun Valley-based VOIP-Pal, has received a patent for a “legal intercept” technology that Chang says “would allow government agencies to ‘silently record’ VoIP communications,” Slate Future Tense reports.
Voice over IP chat software allows… read more
Nanotech yarn behaves like super-strong muscle
Could one day power robots, micromotors, intelligent textiles
November 16, 2012
New artificial muscles made from nanotech yarns and infused with paraffin wax can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 times more mechanical power than the same size natural muscle, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and their international team from Australia, China, South Korea, Canada and Brazil.
The… read more
Cool or fool? Which of these news stories are fake?
April 1, 2012
OK, we admit it may not always be obvious, but KurzweilAI does not make up its news items. Really. Well … except this time. Your mission: figure out which of these stories are fake or real. (No fair Googling, or clicking “REVEAL” until you answer in Comments below!) — Ed.
1. Bonobos to communicate with humans via robots and the Internet
Using large touchscreen… read more
Behold the Cheetah Robot. The Singularity is nigh!
March 6, 2012
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding Boston Dynamics’ development of a prototype robot called the Cheetah.
The cat-like bot managed to gallop 18 mph on a treadmill, setting a new land speed record for legged robots. (The previous record: 13.1 mph, set at MIT in 1989.)
The company has a prototype human-like robot in the works called the Atlas… read more
By synchronizing 98 tiny cameras in a single device, engineers from Duke University and the University of Arizona have created a prototype camera that could capture up to 50 gigapixels of data (50,000 megapixels) and images with unprecedented detail.
The AWARE-2 camera’s resolution is five times better than 20/20 human vision over a 120 degree horizontal field.
By comparison, most consumer cameras are capable of taking photographs with sizes ranging… read more
Gene mutation associated with ‘Internet addiction,’ German researchers suggest
Gene is associated with nicotine addiction, women more affected
August 30, 2012
Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim found that “problematic” Internet users, especially women, are more often carriers of a variation in the CHRNA4 gene, the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene, which that also plays a major role in nicotine addiction and generation of dopamine.
The T- variant (CC genotype) of the rs1044396 polymorphism on the CHRNA4 gene occurred significantly more frequently*, the… read more
California’s taking the lead on self-driving cars
June 5, 2012
Intrigued by the idea of eliminating human error from driving, a California legislator has introduced a bill to clarify that driverless cars are street legal.
The technology has a supporter in state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained mechanical engineer. Padilla’s Senate Bill 1298 would make it clear under California law that autonomous vehicles can use the public roads.… read more
Princeton researchers have found a simple and economical way to nearly triple the efficiency of organic solar cells, the cheap and flexible plastic devices that many scientists believe could be the future of solar power.
The researchers, led by electrical engineer Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering, were able to increase the efficiency of the solar cells 175 percent by using… read more
Training the brain to improve on new tasks
April 17, 2013
A brain-training task that increases the number of items an individual can remember over a short period of time may boost performance in other problem-solving tasks by enhancing communication between different brain areas.
The new study is one of a growing number of experiments on how working-memory training can measurably improve a range of skills — from multiplying in your head to reading a complex paragraph.
“Working memory… read more
A quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages has been running at Los Alamos National Labs for the last two and a half years, MIT Technology Review reports.
One of the dreams for security experts is the creation of a quantum internet using quantum cryptography that allows perfectly secure communication based on the powerful laws of quantum mechanics.
The researchers created a quantum network based around… read more
Automate or perish
July 9, 2012
Successful businesses will be those that optimize the mix of humans, robots, and algorithms, says Christopher Steiner in Automate This, a book due out next month.
Today, automated trading bots account for nearly three-quarters of U.S. equity trading by volume. Trading houses plow millions into fiber optics and microwave dishes so their algorithms can send trades a millisecond faster than the next guys’.
This month’s Technology Review business… read more
IQ predicted by ability to filter visual motion
May 28, 2013
Individuals whose brains are better at automatically suppressing background motion perform better on IQ tests, according to a new University of Rochester.study.
The test is the first purely sensory assessment to be strongly correlated with IQ and may provide a non-verbal and culturally unbiased tool for scientists seeking to understand neural processes associated with general intelligence.
“Because intelligence is such a broad construct, you can’t… read more
Teaching household robots to manipulate objects more efficiently
New algorithms could help household robots work around their physical shortcomings
February 26, 2013
At this year’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, students in the Learning and Intelligent Systems Group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will present a pair of papers showing how household robots could use a little lateral thinking to compensate for their physical shortcomings.
Many commercial robotic arms perform what roboticists call “pick and place” tasks: The arm picks… read more
FDA OK’s ingestible sensor chip
Chip tracks adherence to oral medications, can report to caregiver
July 31, 2012
Proteus Digital Health, Inc. announced Monday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared its ingestible sensor for marketing as a medical device.
The ingestible sensor (formally referred to as the Ingestion Event Marker or IEM) is part of the Proteus digital health feedback system, an integrated, end-to-end personal health management system designed to help improve patients’ health habits and connections to caregivers.… read more