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Are you ready for computers as comedians?

January 7, 2013

As verbal interaction between humans and computers becomes more prominent in daily life — from Siri, Apple’s voice-activated assistant technology, to speech-based search engines to fully automated call centers — demand has grown for “social computers” that can communicate with humans in a natural way.

Teaching computers to grapple with humor is a key part of this equation, author Alex Stone writes in The New York Times Sunday Review.… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Computers/Infotech/UI

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Toyota Motor Corp and Lexus to reveal autonomous research vehicle at CES

January 7, 2013

CESLexusResearch001

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) will reveal an advanced active safety research vehicle at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) today (Jan. 7).

Lexus (a Toyota sales division} plans to explore the use of autonomous technologies and high-level driver assistance systems related to TMC’s  Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) research and development, which includes vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications technology.

Also highlighted at CES will be the new 2013 Lexus LS, equipped with the… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics

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Billions and billions of planets

January 4, 2013

billions_of_planets

How many planets are in our galaxy?

Billions and billions of them at least. That’s the conclusion of a new study by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology, which provides yet more evidence that planetary systems are the cosmic norm.

The team made their estimate while analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32 — planets that are representative, they say, of the vast majority… read more

Topics: Space

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Promising compound restores memory loss and reverses symptoms of Alzheimer’s

January 4, 2013

Alzheimer's disease brain comparison (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

New research in the FASEB Journal by NIH scientists suggests that a small molecule called TFP5 rescues plaques and tangles by blocking an overactive brain signal, thereby restoring memory in mice with Alzheimer’s — without obvious toxic side effects.

“We hope that clinical trial studies in AD patients yield an extended and a better quality of life, as observed in mice upon TFP5 treatment,” said Harish C.… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Reducing Internet and telecom greenhouse gases

January 4, 2013

Internet_traffic

The information communications and technology (ICT) industry, which delivers Internet, video, voice and other cloud services, produces more than 830 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually — about 2 percent of global CO2 emissions — the same proportion as the aviation industry produces. This is expected to double by 2020.

Now researchers from the Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) and Bell Labs are reporting new models of emissions and… read more

Topics: Energy | Environment/Climate | Internet/Telecom

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Murder by Internet

Ubiquitous Internet connections will allow death by device and massive over-the-air theft by 2014
January 4, 2013

(Credit: iStockphoto)

New cyberthreats that will emerge in 2014 include the use of Internet-connected devices to carry out physical crimes, including murders, and cybercriminals leveraging mobile-device Near Field Communications (NFC) to wreak havoc with banking and e-commerce, predicts IID (Internet Identity, a provider of technology and services that help organizations secure their Internet presence,

With nearly every device, from healthcare to transportation, being controlled or communicated with in… read more

Topics: Internet/Telecom | Social/Ethical/Legal | Survival/Defense

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NASA mulls plan to drag asteroid into moon’s orbit

January 3, 2013

asteroid

NASA is mulling over a plan to build a robotic spacecraft to grab a small asteroid and place it in high lunar orbit, according to researchers with the Keck Institute for Space Studies in California.

The mission would cost about $2.6 billion and could be completed by the 2020s, New Scientist reports.

The Obama administration has said it also wants to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid. One… read more

Topics: Space

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Electric stimulation of brain releases powerful, opiate-like painkiller

The benefits of morphine without the addiction
January 3, 2013

decrease_uopioid_receptor.

Researchers used electricity on certain regions in the brain of a patient with chronic, severe facial pain to release an opiate-like substance that’s considered one of the body’s most powerful painkillers.

The findings help explain what happens in the brain that decreases pain during the brief sessions of electricity, says Alexandre DaSilva, the senior researcher in the study from the University of Michigan School of… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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How to lose 50 years of aging in 16 days

January 3, 2013

acs_gold_nanoparticle_hairs

Attention seniors: French scientists have developed a process that permanently dyes white hair without harmful chemicals.

Philippe Walter and colleagues soaked white hairs in a solution containing fluorescent gold nanoparticles.

The hairs turned pale yellow and then darkened to a deep brown. The color remained even after repeated washings.

Using an electron microscope, the scientists confirmed that the particles were forming inside the hairs’ central core cortex.… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

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The slower you grow, the longer you live

Fish study may also apply to humans
January 3, 2013

Gasterosteus_aculeatus

New research from the University of Glasgow suggests that lifespan is affected by the rate at which bodies grow early in life: manipulating growth rates in stickleback fish can extend their lifespan by nearly a third or reduce it by 15 percent.

A team from the University’s Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine altered the growth rate of 240 fish by exposing… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Human Enhancement

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Why you should go paperless in 2013

January 3, 2013

573px-Tablet

Are you still printing things out? Really?

Amazingly, the average office worker still uses about 10,000 sheets of paper per year, the EPA says.

To make a new push for a really paperless office, the “Paperless Coalition,” which includes Google Drive, HelloFax, Manilla, HelloSign, Expensify, Xero and Fujitsu ScanSnap, has launched a… read more

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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How to watch chemo killing liver tumors in real time

Immediate feedback shows if chemotherapy worked, or if additional treatment is needed
January 3, 2013

Specialized DPCBCT scans of a liver tumor in a 73 y.o. man before and after chemoembolization (second and fourth column from left) match up closely with MRI scans taken over a month later (first and third columns). (Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine)

Using two successive pairs of specialized CT scans, a team of Johns Hopkins and Dutch radiologists has produced real-time images of liver tumors dying from direct injection of anticancer drugs into the tumors and their surrounding blood vessels.

Within a minute, the images showed whether the targeted chemotherapy did or did not choke off the tumors’ blood supply and saved patients a month of worry… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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Acrobatic space rovers to explore moons and asteroids

An autonomous system for exploring the solar system's smaller members, such as moons and asteroids, could bring us closer to a human mission to Mars
January 2, 2013

probos surveyer2

Stanford researchers in collaboration with NASA JPL and MIT have designed a robotic platform that involves a mother spacecraft deploying one or several spiked, roughly spherical rovers to the Martian moon Phobos.

Measuring about half a meter wide, each rover would hop, tumble and bound across the cratered, lopsided moon, relaying information about its origins, as well as its soil and other surface materials.

Developed by… read more

Topics: Space

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Better than human

Imagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do?
January 2, 2013

rethink_baxter

It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that — in slow motion — is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century, says Wired maverick Kevin Kelley.

Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Social/Ethical/Legal

Comments (106)

Google Glass update

January 2, 2013

google_glass

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:

  • The lightweight browband, which looks like an ordinary pair of reading glasses minus the lenses, connects to an earpiece that has much the same electronics you’d

… read more

Topics: VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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