Russian Military Report Claims Russian Soldiers Have Learned Telepathy From Dolphins

Elite Russian soldiers can crash computers, treat wounded troops, and read foreign-language documents locked inside a safe using the power of their minds, a report in the Defense Ministry’s official magazine claims.
Using "parapsychology," a catch-all term for any psychic ability, soldiers can detect ambushes, burn crystals, eavesdrop, and disrupt radio waves, according to a report by reserve colonel Nikolai Poroskov.


www.businessinsider.de

Inside the Pentagon’s Effort to Build a Killer Robot

Time

The Los Alamos National Laboratory sits at the top of a mountain range in the high desert of northern New Mexico. It is a long, steep drive to get there from the capital city of Santa Fe, through the Tesuque Indian Reservation, over the Rio Grande, and into the Santa Fe National Forest. I am headed to the laboratory of Dr. Garrett T. Kenyon, whose program falls under the rubric of synthetic cognition, an attempt to build an artificial brain.

Nuclear-Powered Transponder for Cyborg Insect

Spectrum

10 December 2009—This week at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), in Baltimore, Md., Cornell University engineers presented research that shows progress in powering cybernetic organisms with a radioactive fuel source.
Electrical engineering associate professor Amit Lal and graduate student Steven Tin presented a prototype microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transmitter—an RF-emitting device powered by a radioactive source with a half-life of 12 years, meaning that it could operate autonomously for decades. The researchers think the new RFID transmitter, which produces a 5-milliwatt, 10-microsecond-long, 100-megahertz radio-frequency pulse, could lead to the widespread use of radioisotope power sources.

Chinese firm makes world's first 3D blood vessel bio-printer

Times of India

BEIJING: A Chinese biotechnological company announced that it has developed the world's first 3D blood vessel bio-printer, which makes it possible to produce personalized functional organs, the media reported.


Sichuan Revotek, based in Chengdu, said the significant breakthrough has been achieved through its self-developed stem cell bio-ink technology, 3D bio-printer and cloud computing platform, the China Daily reported.

A small, modular, efficient fusion plant

MIT


It’s an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power plants are just 30 years away — and always will be.
But now, finally, the joke may no longer be true: Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor — and it’s one that might be realized in as little as a decade, they say. The era of practical fusion power, which could offer a nearly inexhaustible energy resource, may be coming near.

Wearable tech that uses your body to transmit the signal

Fortune

First there were mobile devices such as your smartphone—rechargeable computers made for the pocket or purse.

Then there came wearables such as smart watches, glasses, or apparel—sensor-laden devices worn on the body itself, but still separate from it.

Now, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego led by professor Patrick Mercier have developed a new wireless communication technique that involves sending magnetic signals through the human body. The next stop: Technology that uses you, the user, to function

AI robot that learns new words in real-time tells human creators it will keep them in a “people zoo”

Glitch News

Androids are being developed that have an uncanny resemblance to people. A pinnacle example is an android crafted by roboticist David Hanson that resembles the famous and deceased science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. What makes android Dick so remarkable isn’t so much his appearance as it is his ability to hold an intelligent conversation.

Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram

Nature

A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.

In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed¹ that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.

Facebook’s Human-Powered Assistant May Just Supercharge AI GettyImages-565258861 Rights Managed

Wired

Face it: Siri sucks. So often, she has no clue what you’re saying. And when she does, there’s a pretty good chance she’ll respond with nothing more than a page filled with Internet links.

New record energy efficiency for artificial photosynthesis

Gizmag

As the world moves towards developing new avenues of renewable energy, the efficiencies of producing fuels such as hydrogen must increase to the point that they rival or exceed those of conventional energy sources to make them a viable alternative. Now researchers at Monash University in Melbourne claim to have created a solar-powered device that produces hydrogen at a world-record 22 percent efficiency, which is a significant step towards making cheap, efficient hydrogen production a reality

Carbon nanofibres made from CO2 in the air

BBC

Scientists in the US have found a way to take carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and make carbon nanofibres, a valuable manufacturing material.

Their solar-powered system runs a small current through a tank filled with a hot, molten salt; the fluid absorbs atmospheric CO2 and tiny carbon fibres slowly form at one of the electrodes.
It currently produces 10g per hour.
The team says it can be "scaled up" and could have an impact on CO2 emissions, but other researchers are unsure.
Nonetheless, the approach offers a much cheaper way of making carbon nanofibres than existing methods, according to Prof Stuart Licht of George Washington University.

Magnetic Wormhole Created in Lab

Scientific american

Ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, physicists have crafted a wormhole that tunnels a magnetic field through space.

"This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible," said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. "From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension."

IBM has built a digital rat brain that could power tomorrow’s smartphones

Quartz

In August 2014, IBM announced that it had built a “brain-inspired” computer chip—essentially a computer that was wired like an organic brain, rather than a traditional computer. These chips are designed to work like neurons—the brain’s nerve cells. Wired reported on Aug. 17 that the team working on the brain chips recently hit a new milestone—a system has about 48 million digital neurons, which is roughly as many as found in the brain of a rodent.

Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds

Digital Nature Group

We present a method of rendering aerial and volumetric graphics using femtosecond lasers. A high-intensity laser excites a physical matter to emit light at an arbitrary 3D position. Popular applications can then be explored especially since plasma induced by a femtosecond laser is safer than that generated by a nanosecond laser. There are two methods of rendering graphics with a femtosecond laser in air: Producing holograms using spatial light modulation technology, and scanning of a laser beam by a galvano mirror. The holograms and workspace of the system proposed here occupy a volume of up to 1 cm^3; however, this size is scalable depending on the optical devices and their setup. This paper provides details of the principles, system setup, and experimental evaluation, and discussions on scalability, design space, and applications of this system.

3D holograms that can be touched and felt

RT

Immersive, highly visual, 3D environments are now on the horizon after British scientists managed to recreate mid-air sensory experiences by controlling sound waves to project 3-D haptic holograms that can be seen and felt.

A team from the University of Bristol’s Interaction and Graphics research group, using the UltraHaptics, a system for creating haptic feedback in mid-air, were successful in testing several shapes, including spheres and pyramids.

LG Display Unveils Incredible New Flexible Televisions

IFL Science

LG Display continues to be the leading pioneer in flexible technology - debuting its new flexible TV panel at an event in Korea this week.
18 inches wide, the screen offers high definition viewing and 1 million megapixels – but can be rolled up into a 3 cm radius without damage to the screen or technology.
The screen was made possible by its OLED, or organic light emitting diode, technology, which allows it to be lighter, thinner and more flexible than standard LCD screens.
At an event in Korea earlier this week, LG demonstrated its newest flexible display screens, which are 55 inches wide and paper-thin at 0.97 mm thick, and weigh just 1.9 kg – all the while still offering high definition. Attachable to surfaces via magnets, the new screen can be fitted to curved walls.

Robots evolve faster when you kill them

TechRadar

Computer scientists have discovered that robots evolve faster and more efficiently after a mass extinction.
The team at the University of Texas, Austin used a simulated mass extinction modelled on real-life disasters, and found that it hastens evolution in artificial intelligence.
The simulation involved connecting neural networks to simulated robot legs with the aim to make a robot evolve to the point it was walking stably.

Disney ups investments in mind-reading tech

Cnet

Few people actually focus on the videos they watch online. That might even be for the best. What would it say about us if we gave our complete attention to cat GIFs on Twitter, Chuck Norris memes on Imgur or dancing babies on Vine?
But distraction, it turns out, is bad for advertisers. An AOL-commissioned study by global marketing firm Nielsen last year confirmed as much, finding that "distracted video viewing dramatically impacts advertising effectiveness." Such results just might explain why the Walt Disney Co. keeps investing in technology to get inside people's heads.

MIT claims to have found a “language universal” that ties all languages together

Arstechnica

Language takes an astonishing variety of forms across the world—to such a huge extent that a long-standing debate rages around the question of whether all languages have even a single property in common. Well, there’s a new candidate for the elusive title of “language universal” according to a paper in this week’s issue of PNAS. All languages, the authors say, self-organise in such a way that related concepts stay as close together as possible within a sentence, making it easier to piece together the overall meaning.

The evolution machine: Mother robot makes each child better than the last

Gizmag

It was only last month that futurists Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warned about the dangers of intelligent machines, and a new research project led by the University of Cambridge won't do much to put their minds at ease. Scientists have created a mother robot that can not only build its own children robots, but mimic the process of natural selection to improve their capabilities with each generation.
The process begins with a robotic arm and a set of five plastic cubes with motors inside. Each cube features a unique "genome" made up of a combination of between one and five genes. This genome gives each cube its own set of attributes, relating to its shape, construction and motor commands.

Will Humans Ever Live Under the Sea?

Motherboard

A wise crab named Sebastian once dispensed some sage advice about the virtues of ocean living. “Up on the shore they work all day, out in the Sun they slave away,” he pointed out, “while we devotin’ full time to floatin’ under the sea.”
This sales pitch for the undersea lifestyle is undeniably attractive, and it will probably be stuck in your head all day now. It is also part of a much larger, cross-cultural obsession that humans have with underwater civilizations, which dates at least as far back as ancient Greece.
Much like outer space, the isolation and foreign nature of subocean habitats lends itself naturally to grand themes of humanity’s place in the natural world, and our drive to settle exotic and unexplored frontiers.

See Through Walls by the Glow of Your Wi-Fi

IEEE Spectrum

It used to be that a bad guy besieged by police could just shoot out the lights and hide in the dark. As if it weren’t enough that today’s cornered malefactors have to worry about night vision goggles, tomorrow’s thugs may also have to worry about the soft radio glow of wireless routers and mobile communications towers.

U.S. Sets Goal for Faster Supercomputers. Much, Much Faster.

NewYork Times

President Obama has announced an ambitious plan to build the world’s fastest computer, a machine capable of speeds far beyond technology’s current reach, in a bid to enlarge the frontiers of fields including medicine, biology and astronomy.

By 2025, the government will aim to create a machine capable of performing a quintillion operations a second, or one exaflop, roughly 30 times faster than today’s fastest computer.

How to control someone else's arm with your brain

Ted

Greg Gage is on a mission to make brain science accessible to all. In this fun, kind of creepy demo, the neuroscientist and TED Senior Fellow uses a simple, inexpensive DIY kit to take away the free will of an audience member. It’s not a parlor trick; it actually works. You have to see it to believe it.

Bionics man offers a taste of our cyborg future

NewScientist

Tell me about your bionic legs…
I have a company that produces what I’m wearing: the BiOM Ankle System. For the first time in history we’ve normalised walking speed and its energy cost. In other words, if you simply measure a user’s speed and metabolic energy expenditure, you can’t tell whether they have bionic legs or biological legs.

How I gave up alternating current

Ars Technica

The walls are buzzing. I know this because I have a magnet implanted in my hand and whenever I reach near an outlet I can feel them. I can feel fortresses of industry miles away burning prehistoric hydrocarbons by the megaton. I can feel the searing pain and loss of consciousness from when I was shocked by exposed house wiring as a boy. I can feel the deep cut of the power bill when I was living near the poverty line. I can feel the cold uncertainty of the first time the power went out due to a storm when I was a child. How long before the delicate veil of civilization turns to savagery with no light nor heat nor refrigeration?

Here’s That Lexus Hoverboard Finally in Action

Wired

After a month of teasers and speculation, Lexus has finally shown off its real, live, working hoverboard. It may not be Back to the Future, but it’s still a mighty satisfying ride.
As it turns out, the future is hard; professional skateboarder Ross McGouran has plenty of spills on the way to mastering even basic moves. That’s perhaps not surprising, given that riding the Lexus hoverboard is basically like straddling a maglev train. As we explained in June, the Lexus hoverboard relies on superconductors and magnets, which work against gravity to lift board and rider above the ground. That cool-looking steam coming off of the sides isn’t decorative; it’s liquid nitrogen, cooling the superconductors to -321 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which they become superconducting.

A new hunt for ET could well find AI on non-Earthlike worlds

NewScientist

AS WE discover planets across our galaxy – and perhaps beyond – it is right that the search for alien entities should be stepped up. Breakthrough Listen, a $100-million project led by the Russian billionaire and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, is set to reinvigorate the hunt for ET.

Asimov's Yeast Vats May Be the Real Future of Food

Gizmodo

Isaac Asimov and other classic sci-fi writers envisioned a future in which great vats of yeast or bacteria could feed humanity. We’re not there yet, but today’s startups are using yeast cultures to produce milk, egg whites, and even coffee. And if you’re not sure about yeast-brewed egg whites, you can always try lab-grown cultures of beef, produced by a company whose other line of work is “bioprinted leather.”

Graphene Roll-Ups Make Friction Disappear, Could Revolutionize Machine Engineering

Txchnologist

Chalk another amazing ability up for the supermaterial graphene. It seems the atom-thick sheets of linked carbon atoms can virtually eliminate friction.
The simulation above depicts the graphene-lubricant discovery–blue graphene sheets roll up to encase gold nanodiamonds as a surface of black diamond-like carbon slides over. Once the graphene wraps into so-called nanoscrolls around the nanodiamonds, the sheets make friction disappear.

The first machine that can jump on water

Ars Technica

 We’ve made machines that can float on water and machines that can walk on water, but until now, robots or automata that can leap suddenly into the air from the surface of a pond have eluded us. But a group of engineers, led by a researcher at the Seoul National University, have just created a machine that can jump on water. Rather impressively so, in fact.

Has the time come for floating cities?

Guardian

Until the late 1980s, nestled behind the Yan Ma Tei breakwater in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay, you could find tens of thousands of boat-dwellers who formed a bustling, floating district. The residents were members of the Tanka community, and their ancestors were fishermen who retreated from warfare on land to live permanently in their vessels. Until the mid-20th century, these traditional outcasts were forbidden even to step ashore.
The typhoon shelter was famous for its restaurants' cuisine – including Under Bridge Spicy Crab – and it was a nightlife hub, alive with mahjong games and hired singers. Shops on sampan (flat boats) catered to the floating district's needs.

New Wind Turbines Are Designed To Look Like Trees

Business Insider

A lot of people moan about how wind turbines make the countryside look bad. Clean, renewable energy often comes at a price. Enter "turbine trees" — one company's way of tackling the issue of aesthetics in sustainability.
Designer NewWind R&D has created a "silent" turbine called the Tree Vent that is supposed to blend into the landscapes which house it. It's a 36ft-tall structure made of steel with 72 artificial leaves.

'Impossible' rocket drive works and could get to Moon in four hours

Telegraph

Interplanetary travel could be a step closer after scientists confirmed that an electromagnetic propulsion drive, which is fast enough to get to the Moon in four hours, actually works.

The EM Drive was developed by the British inventor Roger Shawyer nearly 15 years ago but was ridiculed at the time as being scientifically impossible.

It produces thrust by using solar power to generate multiple microwaves that move back and forth in an enclosed chamber. This means that until something fails or wears down, theoretically the engine could keep running forever without the need for rocket fuel.

Planetary Resources takes a giant step toward space mining

interesting engineering

Forty six years ago, Neil Armstrong took that one small step for a man; here in 2015, that journey has taken some epic strides. The New Horizons mission is gathering unprecedented data from Pluto and other Kuiper Belt Objects – And as if that could be topped – Planetary Resources takes a giant step toward space mining.

This Amazing Tree Grows 40 Different Kinds of Fruit Fruit Tree

Great Ideas

This is going to blow your mind.

In a video profiling artist and Syracuse University professor Sam Van Aken, viewers are introduced to his extremely interesting hobby.

The four-minute National Geographic feature shows Aken using his “chip grafting” method, which involves slicing a section of a branch and inserting a bud from a desired fruit tree, taping the wound until it’s able to take on the task of growing separate fruits by itself. After a year-long wait, the tree would offer up 40 varieties of stone fruits

Musk, Hawking, and Chomsky warn of impending robot wars fueled by AI

The Verge

Leading artificial intelligence researchers have warned that an "AI arms race" could be disastrous for humanity, and are urging the UN to consider a ban on "offensive autonomous weapons." An open letter published by the Future of Life Institute (FLI) and signed by high-profile figures including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Noam Chomsky, warns that weapons that automatically "select and engage targets without human intervention" could become the "Kalashnikovs of tomorrow," fueling war, terrorism, and global instability.

Cells with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?!?

Cnet

Researchers from the University of St. Andrews figure out a way to attach laser lights to cells to make them easier to keep track of. Because they don't make name tags that tiny.

Underwater Greenhouses Offer Creative Solution To Food Crisis

Popsci

There actually is an octopus in this garden.

For the past few years, from May-September, a few small transparent enclosures pop up on the seafloor off the coast of Italy.

The structures are underwater greenhouses, anchored 20 feet below the surface of the water, filled with air and small amounts of crops. Unlike land-based gardens, there are no pests—the only animals seen in this garden are some seahorses, crabs, and, yes, octopuses.

First biometric social network

Neurogadget

As Beta Testing has begun on the worlds first biometric social network, what can be expected from this new platform? Will users someday be able to “send” a feeling to a friend? The answer is: YES.

What we think, how we feel, and our general opinions about what we are experiencing are registered in our brains, transmitted to our body, and displayed through our biometrics.

Physicist in Omaha Is Still Working on a Warp Drive in His Garage

Motherboard

When David Pares works in his garage at night, he has to do it by flashlight. That’s because he just doesn’t have the power for lights with what he says he’s building in there: the first-ever working warp motor, the holy grail of sci-fi technology.

US arms maker Raytheon 3D-prints guided missile parts

RT

US arms producer Raytheon says it has manufactured most parts of a guided missile through 3D-printing. The company is working on adding complex electronic circuitry to the list of things that can be fabricated this way.

Hacking the nervous system

Mosaic Science

One nerve connects your vital organs, sensing and shaping your health. If we learn to control it, the future of medicine will be electric.

New molecular transistor can control single electrons

Gizmag

Researchers from Germany, Japan and the United States have managed to create a tiny, reliable transistor assembled from a single molecule and a dozen additional atoms. The transistor reportedly operates so precisely that it can control the flow of single electrons, paving the way for the next generation of nanomaterials and miniaturized electronics

A robot just passed the self-awareness test

Techradar

Roboticists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have built a trio of robots that were put through the classic 'wise men puzzle' test of self-awareness - and one of them passed.
In the puzzle, a fictional king is choosing a new advisor and gathers the three wisest people in the land. He promises the contest will be fair, then puts either a blue or white hat on each of their heads and tells them all that the first person to stand up and correctly deduce the colour of their own hat will become his new advisor.

Selmer Bringsjord set up a similar situation for the three robots - two were prevented from talking, then all three were asked which one was still able to speak. All attempt to say "I don't know", but only one succeeds - and when it hears its own voice, it understands that it was not silenced, saying "Sorry, I know now!"

However, as we can assume that all three robots were coded the same, technically, all three have passed this self-awareness test.

Massless particle with promise for next-generation electronics found

Phys

An international team led by Princeton University scientists has discovered Weyl fermions, an elusive massless particle theorized 85 years ago. The particle could give rise to faster and more efficient electronics because of its unusual ability to behave as matter and antimatter inside a crystal, according to new research.

The researchers report in the journal Science July 16 the first observation of Weyl fermions, which, if applied to next-generation electronics, could allow for a nearly free and efficient flow of electricity in electronics, and thus greater power, especially for computers, the researchers suggest.

Sandisk Wireless USB

Techradar

With sales of PCs declining and users increasingly turning to mobile devices to stay connected, productive and entertained, traditional memory-maker SanDisk has been transforming itself to stay relevant. That transformation began with the SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive, and this year the product got slimmer and lasts longer with the Connect Wireless Stick.

Large Hadron Collider discovers new pentaquark particle

BBC

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of a new particle called the pentaquark.

It was first predicted to exist in the 1960s but, much like the Higgs boson particle before it, the pentaquark eluded science for decades until its detection at the LHC

Electronics Shot Monitors Brain

Txchnologist

This shot could make you into a cyborg.

Researchers are developing flexible electronics that they can load into a syringe and inject into the body. They envision the mesh of electrodes one day being injected into the brain to “mobilize and monitor neural cells” or into other living tissue to stimulate and record cellular functions.

3-D printers poised to have major implications for food manufacturing

Phys

The use of 3D printers has the potential to revolutionize the way food is manufactured within the next 10 to 20 years, impacting everything from how military personnel get food on the battlefield to how long it takes to get a meal from the computer to your table, according to a July 12th symposium at IFT15: Where Science Feeds Innovation hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) in Chicago.