Building a supercomputer on the moon would be a mammoth technical undertaking, but a University of Southern California graduate student thinks there’s a very good reason for doing it: help alleviate a coming deep-space network traffic jam that’s had NASA scientists worried for several years now.
Ouliang Chang floated his lunar supercomputer idea a few weeks ago at a space conference in Pasadena, California, … read more
The Internet will play an expanded role in tonight’s presidential debate.
YouTube has teamed up with ABC News and Yahoo News to stream the debate.
And as a sign of just how pervasive and crucial social media has become, in some states elected officials are only one degree of “friend” separation from nearly every Facebook account holder in that state, says JD Schlough, a… read more
Ray Kurzweil will speak Tuesday Oct. 2 at 5 p.m. PDT at the DEMO conference at the Hyatt Santa Clara in Santa Clara, California on “how we are making exponential gains in reverse-engineering the human brain, how these insights are going to fuel an AI revolution, and the impact of that revolution on business and society.”
The conference will be streamed live here through Oct. 3.
Kurzweil’s… read more
Scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Sussex are embarking on an ambitious project to produce the first accurate computer models of a honeybee brain in a bid to advance our understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how animals think.
The team will build models of the systems in the brain that govern a honeybee’s vision and sense of smell. Using this information, the researchers… read more
Using a newly discovered cell technology, Georgetown University Medical Center researchers were able to identify an effective therapy for a patient with a rare type of lung tumor. The single case study provides a snapshot of the new technology’s promising potential, but the researchers caution that it could be years before validation studies are completed and regulatory approval is received for its broader use.
The patient in the… read more
An experimental treatment for blindness, developed from a patient’s skin cells, improved the vision of blind mice in a study conducted by Columbia ophthalmologists and stem cell researchers.
The findings suggest that induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — which are derived from adult human skin cells but have embryonic properties — could soon be used to restore vision in people with macular degeneration and other… read more
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers says liquid air can compete with batteries and hydrogen to store excess energy generated from renewables, BBC News reports.
IMechE says “wrong-time” electricity generated by wind farms at night can be used to chill air to a cryogenic state at a distant location. When demand increases, the air can be warmed to drive a turbine.
Google’s vision of how a smartphone can become a trusted, all-knowing assistant is rolling out to consumers in the form of Google Now.
It’s a feature of the newest iteration of Android, Jelly Bean, which is so far available on only a handful of smartphones, and suggests that Google has ambitions to go well beyond what Siri has shown so far, Technology Review reports.… read more
Scientists have altered the genes of a dairy cow to produce milk that’s rich in a protein used in numerous food products and lacking in a component that causes allergies in humans.
Using a process called RNA-interference that turns certain genes on or off, scientists from New Zealand produced a cow whose milk had increased casein, a protein used to make cheese and other foods, and almost no… read more
Trying to keep an image we’ve just seen in memory can leave us blind to things we are “looking” at, according to a new study by neuroscientists.
It’s been known for some time that when our brains are focused on a task, we can fail to see other things that are in plain sight. It’s called ”inattentional blindness.”
Here’s an example: count the number of basketball passes… read more
“Do you want to be an Asteroid Miner? Well, here’s your chance!” — an email we just received.
“We’re looking for passionate college students for paid coop positions to help us mine asteroids this spring and summer,” it reads. “If you love space and want to contribute directly to the development of the next generation of space exploration technologies, we want to hear from you (or from anyone you… read more
EPFL scientists in the Laboratory of Photonic Devices are developing a prototype of a pair of augmented-reality glasses that are similar to Google Glass.
A mini-projector on the frames projects a holographic image on the lens.
One technical challenges is to allow the user to simultaneously see the information displayed on the lenses — which are too close to the eye for… read more
A new study from MIT neuroscientists sheds light on a neural circuit that makes us likelier to remember what we’re seeing when our brains are in a more attentive state.
The team of neuroscientists found that this circuit depends on a type of brain cell long thought to play a supporting role, at most, in neural processing. When the brain is attentive, those cells, called… 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
Surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medicine have successfully created a new ear for a woman who lost one of her ears to an aggressive form of skin cancer.
The reconstruction required six operations over a period of 20 months, beginning in January 2011. It is one of the most complicated ear reconstructions ever performed at Johns Hopkins, according to surgeons involved in the case.… read more