Queen Mary University of London researchers have developed a Google Play app called Phoney based on a mind-reading card trick, part of a research exploration into what can be achieved when human intelligence is replaced or assisted by machine intelligence.
The app arranges a deck of playing cards in such a way that a specific card picked by an audience member can be… read more
Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a way to double the useful bandwidth in wireless communications by enabling full-duplex functionality in the same frequency band (channel).
“Full-duplex” refers to the ability to transmit and receive signals simultaneously, as in cell-phone conversations.
The new innovation is the creation of a magnetic-free radio wave “circulator” that could be… read more
IBM today (Nov. 14) announced that the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded IBM contracts valued at $325 million to develop and deliver “the world’s most advanced ‘data-centric’ supercomputing systems” at Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to advance innovation and discovery in science, engineering and national security.”
The world is generating more than 2.5 billion gigabytes of “big data” every day, according to IBM’s 2013 annual report, requiring… read more
A group of researchers from Austria have sent twisted beams of light across the rooftops of Vienna — the first time that twisted light has been transmitted over a large distance outdoors.
Twisted light allows for transmitting a huge amount of data by twisting the light into a corkscrew shape, so that the rotation allows for encoding data on additional channels, for both classical and quantum communications. The light… read more
University of Washington electrical engineers have developed a way to automatically track people across moving and still cameras by using an algorithm that trains the networked cameras to learn one another’s differences. The cameras first identify a person in a video frame, then follow that same person across multiple camera views.
“Tracking humans automatically across cameras in a three-dimensional space is new,” said lead researcher Jenq-Neng Hwang,… read more
Using 17 genomes, researchers were unable to find rare protein-altering variants significantly associated with extreme longevity, according to a study published November 12, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hinco Gierman from Stanford University and colleagues.
Supercentenarians are the world’s oldest people, living beyond 110 years of age. Seventy-four are alive worldwide; 22 live in the U.S. The authors of this study performed whole-genome sequencing on 17 supercentenarians to… read more
An international team of researchers has combined semiconductor nanorods and carbon nanotubes to create a wireless, light-sensitive, flexible film that could potentially act in the place of a damaged retina.
When they tested it with a chick retina that normally doesn’t respond to light, they found that the film absorbed light, sparking neuronal activity.
Patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), for example, could potentially benefit from such a… read more
UPDATE: full coverage (SPACE.com)
The Philae lander has separated from the Rosetta orbiter, according to ESA, and is now on its way to becoming the first spacecraft to touch down on a comet (Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko), with confirmation expected in a one-hour window centered on 16:02 GMT (11:02 AM EST) today (Wed. Nov. 12). The first image from the surface is expected some two hours later.… read more
University of Michigan (UM) researchers have developed chains of self-assembling particles that could serve as electrically activated muscles that could move microbots (microscopic robots).
These microbots could come in handy in medicine, manufacturing, and other areas. But there are several challenges, like building the microbots and making them mobile.
For the mobile part, Michael Solomon, a UM professor of chemical engineering, and his group started with particles with… read more
Imagine a battery made up of billions of nanoscale batteries — the ultimate miniaturization of energy storage.
That’s what researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have invented, using a structure based on a nanopore: a tiny hole in a ceramic sheet that holds electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end.
The researchers note in a paper in Nature Nanotechnology that such a… read more
New technology allows you to print electronic devices in the same way your inkjet printer prints a document or photo. Now researchers at Palo Alto Research Center have pushed this technique to another level by building a portable X-ray imager and small mechanical devices.
“It’s a demonstration of how far this technology can go,” said Tina Ng of the Palo Alto Research Center, who will describe these devices at… read more
British researchers have developed a new glass material that could allow computers to transfer information via light, significantly increasing computer processing speeds and power in the future.
The research by the University of Surrey, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and the University of Southampton, has found it is possible to change the electronic properties of amorphous chalcogenides.
This is a glass material used in… read more
A video has been posted by Book TV of a talk by Nick Bostrom, a professor, Oxford University, about his book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, where he posits a future in which machines are more intelligent than humans and questions whether intelligent machines will try to save or destroy us.
He spoke at an event at University of California, Berkeley, hosted by the Machine… read more
University of Arizona (UA) astrophysicists are taking the special effects in the movie Interstellar a step further, generating what happens when matter flowing into a black hole crosses the event horizon, the point of no return, and then disappears.
To do that, the astrophysicists are using UA’s new supercomputer — nicknamed El Gato — combining knowledge from mathematical equations and astronomical observations to generate visualizations of an… read more
A novel 3D printing process called Selective Inhibition Sintering (SIS) promises to allow manufacturing of consumer 3D printers* that can print parts made of high-performance metals, which high-cost industrial 3D printers can already do.
The new process, developed at the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies at USC, is based on existing low-cost inkjet printing technology. It differs from traditional research in powder sintering* (a process of… read more