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Monday November 19, 2012 Daily edition   News and Blog Headlines The Last Pictures launches with EchoStar XVI satellite Stanford physicists take first step toward quantum cryptography The library of Utopia This is your brain on freestyle rap These bots were made for walking: cells power biological machines Google Fiber installations kick off Inside Ingress, Google’s new augmented-reality game Roaming robot may explore mysterious Moon caverns IBM simulates 530 billon neurons, 100 trillion synapses on world’s fastest supercomputer Latest News The Last Pictures launches with EchoStar XVI satellite November 19, 2012   On November 20, Creative Time will launch an archival disc created by artist Trevor Paglen called The Last Pictures into outer space from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Made of ultra-archival materials, the disc is expected to orbit the earth for billions of years affixed to the exterior of the communications satellite EchoStar XVI. To create the … more… Stanford physicists take first step toward quantum cryptography November 19, 2012   Quantum mechanics promises the potential to create absolutely secure telecommunications networks by harnessing a fundamental phenomenon of quantum particles. Now, a team of Stanford physicists has demonstrated a crucial first step in creating a quantum telecommunications device that could be built and implemented using existing infrastructure. The work done by the Stanford research group of … more… The library of Utopia November 19, 2012   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, … more… This is your brain on freestyle rap November 19, 2012   Researchers in the voice, speech, and language branch of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain activity of rappers when they are “freestyling” — spontaneously improvising lyrics in real time. Published online in the November … more… These bots were made for walking: cells power biological machines November 19, 2012   They’re soft, biocompatible, about 7 millimeters long — and, incredibly, able to walk by themselves. Miniature “bio-bots” developed at the University of Illinois are making tracks in synthetic biology. Designing non-electronic biological machines has been a riddle that scientists at the interface of biology and engineering have struggled to solve. The walking bio-bots demonstrate the … more… Google Fiber installations kick off November 19, 2012   After months of building a brand new Fiber infrastructure, Google is starting to connect homes in Kansas City, Google Fiber Blog reports, offering some tips on what to expect.   Inside Ingress, Google’s new augmented-reality game November 19, 2012   “What is the Niantic Project?” asked a teaser video. Now we know the answer: the Niantic Project is a game called Ingress, CNET reports. Ingress is a world in which two shadowy sides are vying for dominance: the Enlightened, who are trying to establish portals around the world that will let them control people’s minds, and … more… Roaming robot may explore mysterious Moon caverns November 19, 2012   William ‘Red’ Whittaker often spends his Sundays lowering a robot into a recently blown up coal mine pit near his cattle ranch in Pennsylvania (see video below). By 2015, he hopes that his robot, or something like it, will be rappelling down a much deeper hole, on the Moon, Nature News reports. “This is authentic … more… IBM simulates 530 billon neurons, 100 trillion synapses on world’s fastest supercomputer November 19, 2012   IBM Research – Almaden presented at Supercomputing 2012 last week the next milestone toward fulfilling the ultimate vision of the DARPA’s cognitive computing program, called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE), according to Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha, Manager, Cognitive Computing, IBM Research – Almaden. Announced in 2008, DARPA’s SyNAPSE program calls for developing electronic neuromorphic … more… New VIDEOS   Enabling end-users to program new skills on their robot   Bluetooth gloves provide hands-free smartphone control   CTRL+CONSOLE looks to take editing to the touchscreen New books The Last Pictures author Trevor Paglen   Human civilizations’ longest lasting artifacts are not the great Pyramids of Giza, nor the cave paintings at Lascaux, but the communications satellites that circle our planet. In a stationary orbit above the equator, the satellites that broadcast our TV signals, route our phone calls, and process our credit card transactions experience no atmospheric drag. Their … more… Latest Kurzweil Collection posts Head in the cloud   Source: The Wall Street Journal — November 16, 2012 | Ronald Bailey Our increasing knowledge of neuroscience may eventually allows us to replicate our brains online. Ronald Bailey reviews Jesse J. Prinz’s Beyond Human Nature and Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind. Will our increased understanding of how our brains work allow us to transcend human nature? Yes indeed, say the authors of Beyond Human Nature … more… Read full article here Visit KurzweilAI.net You are currently subscribed to the KurzweilAI.net newsletter as *|EMAIL|* To unsubscribe, please click here. To change your email preferences, please click here. *|LIST:ADDRESS|*.