The world’s first “3D printing photo booth” is set to open for a limited time at the exhibition space EYE OF GYRE in Harajuku, Japan, Spoon & Tamago reports.
From November 24 to January 14, 2013, people with reservations can go and have their portraits taken. Except, instead of a photograph, you’ll receive miniature replicas of yourselves.
Reservations can be madke via… read more
Researchers at BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) in Shenzhen, China, the largest gene-sequencing facility in the world, are searching for the quirks of DNA that may contribute to genius in an ethically controversial study.
They are scouring the genomes of 1,600 U.S. adolescents who signed up for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) in the 1970s, Nature News reports.
Some geneticists say that the… read more
Patients over the age of 65 who begin taking benzodiazepine (a popular drug used to treat anxiety and insomnia) are at an approximately 50% increased risk of developing dementia within 15 years compared to never-users, an open access study published on bmj.com suggests.
The authors say that “considering the extent to which benzodiazepines are prescribed and the number of potential adverse effects, indiscriminate widespread use… read more
Get ready for four-legged bots of all shapes and sizes — and for all sorts of uses — that learn how to maneuver through landscapes with the grace of a cheetah, Fast Company reports.
The most nightmare-inducing characteristic of Big Dog, DARPA’s robotic military mule, might be the way it moves so stiffly, yet unrelentingly, over treacherous battleground. Turns out the repetitive mechanical gait that… read more
An artificially intelligent virtual game bot created by computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has won the BotPrize by convincing a panel of judges that it was more human-like than half the humans it competed against.
The competition, sponsored by 2K Games, was set inside the virtual world of “Unreal Tournament 2004,” a first-person shooter video… read more
Researchers at University of Western Ontario and the Lawson Health Research Institute have found that functional changes within a key brain network occur directly after a 30-minute session of noninvasive, neurofeedback training.
Background
Dysfunction of this cognitive-control network has previously been implicated in a range of brain disorders including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
During neurofeedback, users learn to… read more
Computational Engineers at the University of Southampton have built a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego.
The machine, named “Iridis-Pi” after the University’s Iridis supercomputer, runs off a single 13 Amp mains socket and uses MPI (Message Passing Interface) to communicate between nodes using Ethernet.
The whole system cost under £2,500 (excluding switches) and… read more
A team led by Princeton‘s Associate Professor of Physics Jason Petta has developed a new method that could eventually allow engineers to build a working quantum computer consisting of millions of quantum bits (qubits).
Quantum computers take advantage of the strange behaviors of subatomic particles like electrons. By harnessing electrons as they spin, scientists could use the particles to form the basis for a… read more
NASA Langley Research Center posted Thursday (but has not announced) a new video on NASA research on LENR (low energy nuclear reactions), entitled “Method for Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Polaritons to Initiate & Sustain LENR.”
The research focuses on “another way of producing energy-efficient nuclear power,” says NASA Senior Research Scientist Joseph Zawodny, featured in the video (posted on YouTube by KurzweilAI). “This other form of nuclear power releases… read more
Digital artist Salvatore Iaconesi, an engineer, artist, hacker and 2012 TED fellow who teaches interaction and digital design at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, hacked his medical records to put them online on his site artisopensource.net/cure in a global search for the best treatments, New Scientist reports.
What happened?
It’s been incredible. I have been able to become an expert in… read more
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University, and the University of Crete in Greece have found a new way to switch magnetism that is at least 1000 times faster than currently used in magnetic memory technologies.
Magnetic switching is used to encode information in hard drives, magnetic random access memory and other computing devices. The discovery, reported in the April 4 issue… read more
A new, minimally invasive treatment that creates microscopic holes in tumors without harming healthy tissue is a promising treatment for challenging cancers, suggests a preliminary study being presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology‘s 38th Annual Scientific Meeting in New Orleans.
“Irreversible electroporation (or IRE) is a new way to attack cancer, using microsecond electrical pulses to kill cancer at the cellular level… read more
A Future Day event was held at Terasem Island in Second Life on March 1, with speakers Natasha Vita-More, Martine Rothblatt, Howard Bloom, Giulio Prisco, Adam A. Ford, and Ben Goertzel (via audio) and about 50 participants.
One of the projects discussed at the event was a Future Day film with positive and solar visions of the future (mostly interviews), for release at Future Day 2013… read more
Today’s new iPad introduction was Apple’s most important event of the year.
I iPad is the future of Apple and potentially the future of the personal computer.
Today’s new iPad continued two important trends for Apple:
The iPad maintained its lead as the best tablet on the market in terms of hardware, software, and ecosystem, the retina display — unmatched by the competition… read more
Researchers are developing a method to replace missing teeth with new bioengineered teeth generated from a person’s own gum cells.
Current implant-based methods of whole tooth replacement fail to reproduce a natural root structure and as a consequence of the friction from eating and other jaw movement, loss of jaw bone can occur around the implant.
Research towards producing bioengineered teeth (bioteeth) has largely focused on generating… read more