Getting a master’s degree might cost just $100 from education startup Udacity, says Google Fellow and Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun.
However, “It’s pretty obvious that degrees will go away,” Thrun says. “The idea of a degree is that you spend a fixed time right after high school to educate yourself for the rest of your career. But careers change so much over a lifetime now that this model isn’t valid… read more
The quest to harness a broader spectrum of sunlight’s energy to produce electricity has taken a radically new turn, with the proposal of a “solar energy funnel” that takes advantage of materials under elastic strain.
“We’re trying to use elastic strains to produce unprecedented properties,” says Ju Li, an MIT professor. In this case, the “funnel” is a metaphor: Electrons and their counterparts, holes… read more
Analysts at Deutsche Bank have predicted that the global solar PV sector will transition from a subsidized market to a sustainable market within a year, citing the arrival of “grid parity” in a number of key markets, unexpectedly strong demand and rebounding margins, reports Renew Economy.
The Deutsche Bank team said key markets such as India, China and the U.S. are experiencing strong demand and solar… read more
A group of scientists led by researchers from the University of Rochester and North Carolina State University have for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos — nearly massless particles that travel at almost the speed of light.
The coded message was sent at .1 bit/sec. over a distance of 1035 m, including 240 meters of stone, and said simply, “Neutrino.”… read more
An estimated 670 million Indians were affected by this week’s grid outage (see “How Power Outages in India May One Day Be Avoided“). But it would be a mistake to think that India is uniquely vulnerable to large-scale grid failures, Technology Review reports.
The growing complexity and reliance on the electric grid in both developed and fast-growing countries is making stability tougher to achieve.… read more
Google’s ambitious book-scanning program is foundering in the courts. Now a Harvard-led group is launching its own sweeping effort to put our literary heritage online, MIT Technology Review reports.
Robert Darnton. A distinguished historian, prize-winning author, and director of Harvard’s library system, has an ardent desire to see a universal library established online, a library that would, as he puts it, “make all knowledge available… read more
Meet FastRunner, a bioinspired robot that thinks it’s an ostrich, being built at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. It’s expected to be the world’s fastest robotic biped, at 22 mph.
Impressive, but no Boston Dynamics Cheetah, at 28.3 mph (on a treadmill) — beating out Usain Bolt’s 27.79 mph.
But FastRunner may soon negotiate more complex environments — ones that Cheetah may fear to tread, thanks to… read more
University of Illinois scientists have mapped the physical architecture of intelligence in the brain in one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses so far of the brain structures vital to general intelligence and to specific aspects of intellectual functioning, such as verbal comprehension and working memory.
“We found that general intelligence depends on a remarkably circumscribed neural system,” said Neuroscience professor Aron Barbey of the … read more
Exercise clears the mind. It gets the blood pumping and more oxygen is delivered to the brain. But Dartmouth’s David Bucci thinks there is much more going on.
“In the last several years there have been data suggesting that neurobiological changes are happening — [there are] very brain-specific mechanisms at work here,” says Bucci, an associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
From his… read more
Scientists and engineers at the U.S Army’s Picatinny Arsenal are developing a device that can shoot lightning bolts down laser beams to destroy its target.
The Laser-Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC) is designed to take out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them.
“Light travels more slowly in gases and solids than it does in a vacuum,” explained George Fischer,… read more
Google Ventures is launching a new initiative to fuel the development of Google Glass called Glass Collective, in partnership with venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Forbes reports.
The three firms hope to fund a community of developers to make Google Glass the next major computing platform.
Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz said Glass would become a platform… read more
Gene Dolgoff has developed a converter called 3-D Vision that he claims will instantly transform any 2-D video content — from TV to video games — into 3-D, using algorithms that present stereoscopic image pairs and give the illusion of depth, PandoDaily reports.
His crowdsourced Fundable 3-D Vision project (for design of the box) has reached more than half of its $10,000 goal in only four… read more
Bionic Vision Australia researchers have successfully performed the first implantation of an early prototype bionic eye with 24 electrodes.
Dianne Ashworth has profound vision loss due to retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited condition. She has now received what she calls a “pre-bionic eye” implant that enables her to experience some vision.
Her implant was switched on last month at the Bionics Institute, while researchers held their breaths in… read more
Attention men: The day may be coming soon when you can take your own birth control pill with no side effects, according to a study done by a group of scientists that includes a Texas A&M University researcher.
Working on mice, the team found that a compound called JQ1 acts as an inhibitor to sperm production and also sperm mobility.
“Both of these are needed for… read more
HP Labs researchers may have figured out a way to create a chip that generates neuron-like spikes (sharp signal pulses), using a combination of memristors and capacitors to create a spiking output pattern, Ars Technica reports.
Neurons encode information in the pattern and timing of spikes. The researchers used a simplified model of neurons based on sodium-potassium ion channels to turn the neuron on and off.… read more