A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a galaxy about 3.6 billion light-years away has wowed astronomers around the world — the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.
At 3:47 a.m. EDT, April 27, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) triggered on an eruption, designated GRB 130427A, of high-energy light in the constellation Leo.
The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) recorded one gamma ray… read more
Watson has the inside track on the “Jeopardy!” contest Monday Feb. 14, when the IBM computer system called “Watson” faces off against past “Jeopardy!” champs, says Ray Kurzweil. “But if it doesn’t win, it will come close, and it will come back and win in the very near future. Because it’s only going to get better. And humans are not getting better.”
Based on his calculations of the… read more
The focus of artificial intelligence today is no longer on understanding and replicating human intelligence but the development of systems to augment human abilities.
Promising applications of the “new A.I.” include:
In this Wired News Radio interview, Ray Kurzweil says A.I.: Artificial Intelligence offers a good glimpse of things to come.
The show can be listened to via download or stream.
Kubrick diehards have been playing an educated guessing game about A.I. … And in recent months, a younger, more Web-savvy set has been engaged in an elaborate interactive game that’s actually a marketing effort for the movie ….
The smallest implantable battery in the world may soon be powering bionic neurons. The small size allows doctors to use minimally invasive techniques when implanting the bionic neurons, reducing surgical trauma and the risk of infection.
Recharging is done wirelessly by an external electrical field, so implants no longer have to be surgically removed and replaced.
The battery may power implantables for stroke victims and people suffering from… read more
Aaron, an AI-based program that creates original paintings on your computer’s screen, has passed the art world’s Turing Test, says its creator, Harold Cohen, artist and University of California at San Diego art professor.
“Aaron’s output has been hung in major museums all around the world,” he said. “Since most of that happened before anybody was aware of how powerful the computer was, I have to assume… read more
This headless, two-armed robot may be tomorrow’s factory worker.
Its name is FRIDA (Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-arm Assembly), and it’s a creation of ABB, the Swiss power and automation giant, which introduced it early this month at the Hannover trade show, Europe’s largest industrial fair.
Designed for assembly applications, FRIDA is capable of using its human-like arms to grasp and manipulate electronic components and other small parts.… read more
University of Western Ontario researchers have found that abdominal fat makes a hormone that both stimulates hunger and increases the number of fat cells, in a potentially vicious cycle.
It was previously thought that only the brain made Neuropeptide Y (NPY), the most potent appetite-stimulating hormone known, but in obese rats, NPY was produced locally by abdominal fat. NPY stimulates the replication of fat cell precursor cells, which then… read more
Humans’ closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, have metacognition — knowing what one knows, according to new research by scientists at Georgia State University and the University at Buffalo.
“The demonstration of metacognition in nonhuman primates has important implications regarding the emergence of self-reflective mind during humans’ cognitive evolution,” the research team noted.
Metacognition is the ability to recognize one’s own cognitive states. For example, a game show… read more
Stephen Hawking declared at a scientific conference in Dublin that he had been wrong in a controversial assertion he made 30 years ago about black holes.
He had said information about what had been swallowed by a black hole could never be retrieved from it. This would have been a violation of quantum theory, which says that information is preserved.
“I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but… read more
Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), collaborating with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, have demonstrated a new way of achieving negative refraction in a metamaterial — as large as -700, more than a 100 times larger than most previously reported.
“This work may bring the science and technology of negative refraction into an astoundingly miniaturized scale, confining the negatively… read more
“Imagine a Web, circa 2030, that will offer a panoply of virtual environments incorporating all of our senses, and in which there will be no clear distinction between real and simulated people.” That’s part of Ray Kurzweil’s imaginative view of the future in PC Magazine’s special “20th Anniversary of PCs” issue.
Among Kurzweil’s other forecasts for the next 30 years:
The defining political conflict of the 21st century is shaping up to be the battle over the future of technology. Fortunately, technological progress doesn’t just have opponents; it also has boosters.
The rise of neo-Luddism is calling forth self-conscious defenders of technological progress. Growing numbers of extropians, transhumanists, futurists and others are entering the intellectual fray to do battle against the neo-Luddite activists who oppose biotechnology, nanotechnology, and new… read more