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.

Scientists use Wi-Fi signals to power camera without battery

Indian Express

Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have used Wi-Fi signals to power a battery-free camera five metres away, an advance that brings the idea of Internet of things closer to reality.
Internet of things is the concept that almost every object could be fitted with a chip that broadcasts data such as its location or whether some other parameter such as temperature or pressure is dangerously high or low. However, for the Internet of things to become a reality engineers have to solve one potential problem: how to power these numerous tiny machines.

Seasteading Institute aims to build floating city by 2020

Gizmag

An organization in which Paypal founder Peter Thiel is an investor is aiming to build a floating city-state by 2020. The Seasteading Institute says semi-independent floating cities would provide an opportunity to try out new modes of government and could also tackle a number of other problems.The Seasteading Institute says the development of floating cities is the first step in fulfilling what it calls the "8 Great Moral Imperatives," which include feeding the hungry, enriching the poor, curing the sick, cleaning the atmosphere, restoring the oceans, living in balance with nature, powering civilization sustainably and and putting an end to fighting.

Boeing patents laser-powered fusion-fission jet engine for airplanes, spacecraft

Ars Technica

Assume the brace position. Boeing has received a patent for, I kid you not, a laser-powered fusion-fission jet propulsion system. Boeing envisions that this system could replace both rocket and turbofan engines, powering everything from spacecraft to missiles to airplanes.
The patent, US 9,068,562, combines inertial confinement fusion, fission, and a turbine that generates electricity. It sounds completely crazy—and it is completely unrealistic given our current mastery of fusion, or lack thereof—but, in the future perhaps, this could be a rather ingenious solution.

Airbus' all-electric E-Fan aircraft crosses the English Channel

The Verge

This adorable little two-seater isn't about to replace Airbus' airliners, but the E-Fan — a light aircraft powered by lithium-ion batteries and two electric motors — just set a notable aviation milestone by crossing the English Channel. The 36-minute event took place earlier today, departing from Lydd, England and arriving in Calais, France.

IBM has created the most powerful computer chip yet

Business Insider

IBM has created a fully functional version of the most powerful computer chip yet, Ars Technica reports.

The chip has transistor gates that are only 7 nanometers (nm) wide. To give an idea of how small that is, a strand of DNA is about 2.5 nanometers in diameter.

The lowered nanometer count is a big deal as in general a smaller “nm” number, means manufacturers can fit more transistors, which are tiny switches that act as the building blocks of processors, onto the chip thus increasing its power and performance

Centimeter-accurate GPS system could transform virtual reality and mobile devices

Phys

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones and other technologies, making global positioning and orientation far more precise than what is currently available on a mobile device.

Atmospheric Drinking Water Generator

Time

Called the Atmospheric Water Generation Unit, the generator-powered device can produce up to 450 gallons of clean water a day for as little as eight cents a gallon. (It needs about 310 watt-hours of energy to make a liter — just over a quart — of drinking water.) Available in either ground or vehicle configurations, the units are no lightweights, weighing in at about 1100 and 175 pounds, respectively. Prices start at $18,000 for the Gen-40 vehicle model and $30,000 for the larger, Gen-350 ground unit 

Mind-Reading Program Can Now Translate Your Thoughts Into Text

Big Think

Technology has gotten so advanced that speaking into your phone can allow for text to display on the screen. Technology can alsoreconstruct video based on a person's thoughts and even anticipate your moves while you drive. A new program, a brain-to-text system, can now translate brain activity into written words.

In a recent study, published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, seven patients had electrode sheets placed on their brains that collected neural data while they read passages aloud from the Gettysburg Address, JFK’s inaugural speech, and Humpty Dumpty.

White Noise Device Helps You Focus

Interesting engineering

For most people, it is very difficult to get focused at work while there is a lot of background noise going on like their colleagues talking or telephones ringing. In order to solve this, the French designers Nicolas Schmitt and Hélène Casado have created “Joe”, a small gadget that blocks these noises so those around it won’t get distracted

Gold Nanoparticles Can Remote Control the Brain

Smithsonian

For the Guardian, Mo Costandi describes two proposed treatments that use gold nanoparticles to switch nerve cells on. A group of researchers at the University of Chicago, led by Francisco Benzanilla, created gold nanorods that will attach to specific molecules embedded in nerve cell membranes. A gentle pulse of infrared light warms the nanorods which in turn causes the neurons to fire. They’ve tested the system using dorsal root ganglion [DRG] neurons, which cluster in the spinal cord and are important for relaying information about pain and touch

These are the projects Elon Musk is funding to prevent killer AI

The Verge

Elon Musk has donated millions to the Future of Life Institute, and now the organization is putting that money to use by funding research into keeping artificial intelligence "robust and beneficial" — i.e. not something that will turn on humanity Skynet style. The institute announced this week that it will be issuing grants to 37 research teams, whittled down from an applicant least of around 300. The teams are taking on the killer AI issue from different angles, including teaching AI to learn what humans want, aligning robots' interests with our own, and keeping AI under human control.

Airbnb Needs to Be Better at Search Than Google ( AI )

Wired

This weekend, tens of millions of Americans are heading off to the beach, the lake, the mountains, or wherever the barbecues and beers await. And for many holiday travelers these days, that means scouring Airbnb to find that perfect oceanfront cottage that sleeps eight, comes with a washer, dryer, Wi-Fi, and free parking on the premises.
But what most people won’t realize when they nestle into their respective crash pads this July 4th is just how complex that search process really is.

Lexus says it's made a hoverboard

The Verge

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but a company has created a working, honest-to-god-it's-real hoverboard. It's called "Slide," and it's made by Lexus.
There's not much information about it aside from a microsite, a promotional video, and a few photos of the thing. The marketing stunt is part of a broader art-meets-technology type of campaign currently being run by the company. The Slide site says the board creates "frictionless movement" using magnetic levitation. Inside the board you'd find magnets, it says, some of which are liquid nitrogen-cooled superconducting.

This 2000-Year-Old Pigment Can Eliminate The Third Dimension

IO9

You'll see Han purple on the famous terracotta warriors surrounding the tomb of the first emperor of China, or on ancient pottery and other works of art. Where you won't see it is on anything made between 220 A.D. and 1992, because after the pigment disappeared it took 1700 years to re-discover it. Elisabeth FitzHugh, a conservator at the Smithsonian, pinned down the chemical composition of the pigment and announced it was a barium copper silicate. (The paper describing the discovery is a fun read. It starts by pointing out the inferiority of other ancient purple pigments, which tended to be closer to red than purple. It also stresses that Tyrian purple, made from sea snails, was a textile dye, not a pigment, and that it could range anywhere from "reddish-blue to purplish-violet." Take that, Phoenicians!) 

DARPA: We Are Engineering the Organisms That Will Terraform Mars

Motherboard

It’s no secret that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is investing heavily in genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Whether that excites or terrifies you depends on how you feel about the military engineering totally new life forms. If you’re in the excitement camp, however, here’s a nugget for you: DARPA believes that it's on the way to creating organisms capable of terraforming Mars into a planet that looks more like Earth

Space Tech Makes Everything Better, Even Wind Farms

Wired

The history of innovation is full of happy accidents. The World Wide Web? Came from particle physicists at CERN who wanted easier internal communication. Wi-Fi? Invented by radio astronomers in Australia trying to detect pulses of radio waves from exploding black holes. And it took a failed space mission to fix the one of the biggest problems in green energy: The awful grinding noise of a wind farm at work.

China’s Troubling Robot Revolution

NewYorkTimes

OVER the last decade, China has become, in the eyes of much of the world, a job-eating monster, consuming entire industries with its seemingly limitless supply of low-wage workers. But the reality is that China is now shifting its appetite to robots, a transition that will have significant consequences for China’s economy — and the world’s.

Google’s artificial-intelligence bot says the purpose of living is 'to live forever'

Businessinsider

This week, Google released a research paper chronicling one of its latest forays into artificial intelligence.

Researchers at the company programmed an advanced type of “chatbot” that learns how to respond in conversations based on examples from a training set of dialogue.

And the bot doesn’t just answer by spitting out canned answers in response to certain words; it can form new answers from new questions.

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence

Wait but Why

Imagine taking a time machine back to 1750—a time when the world was in a permanent power outage, long-distance communication meant either yelling loudly or firing a cannon in the air, and all transportation ran on hay. When you get there, you retrieve a dude, bring him to 2015, and then walk him around and watch him react to everything. It’s impossible for us to understand what it would be like for him to see shiny capsules racing by on a highway, talk to people who had been on the other side of the ocean earlier in the day, watch sports that were being played 1,000 miles away, hear a musical performance that happened 50 years ago, and play with my magical wizard rectangle that he could use to capture a real-life image or record a living moment, generate a map with a paranormal moving blue dot that shows him where he is, look at someone’s face and chat with them even though they’re on the other side of the country, and worlds of other inconceivable sorcery.

Are the robots about to rise? Google's new director of engineering thinks so…

Guardian

It's hard to know where to start with Ray Kurzweil. With the fact that he takes 150 pills a day and is intravenously injected on a weekly basis with a dizzying list of vitamins, dietary supplements, and substances that sound about as scientifically effective as face cream: coenzyme Q10, phosphatidycholine, glutathione..

Scientists build toy car propelled by evaporating water

Guardian

Machines that harness the power of evaporating water have been created by scientists in the US.
Researchers at Columbia University in New York have built a miniature car that draws on the process to propel itself along, as well as an evaporation-driven generator that powers a flashing LED lamp.
The inventions pave the way for a new generation of renewable devices that extract energy from natural evaporation and transform it into something useful. Ozgur Sahin, who led the research, said the machines were cheap and could draw energy from water as it evaporates continuously from the surfaces of lakes and oceans.
“Water wants to evaporate. It has a desire to evaporate. If you make a surface wet, it will dry up, that’s the natural course,” Sahin said. “What we did was find a way to channel that desire into doing some useful work.”

The story of the invention that could revolutionize batteries

Quartz

The world has been clamoring for a super-battery.

Since about 2010, a critical mass of national leaders, policy professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs, thinkers and writers have all but demanded a transformation of the humble lithium-ion cell. Only batteries that can store a lot more energy for a lower price, they have said, will allow for affordable electric cars, cheaper and more widely available electricity, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In the process, a lot of gazillionaires will be created.

A Chip That Mimics Human Organs Is the Design of the Year

Wired

Earlier this year, Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of design and architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, added an intriguing object to the museum’s permanent collection. It was a clear plastic chip, no bigger than a thumb drive, and it could soon change the way scientists develop and test life-saving medicines.

Single-catalyst water splitter from Stanford produces clean-burning hydrogen 24/7

Stanford University scientists have invented a low-cost water splitter that uses a single catalyst to produce both hydrogen and oxygen gas 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The device, described in a study published June 23 in Nature Communications, could provide a renewable source of clean-burning hydrogen fuel for transportation and industry.

The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change Forever

The renewable-energy boom is here. Trillions of dollars will be invested over the next 25 years, driving some of the most profound changes yet in how humans get their electricity. That's according to a new forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that plots out global power markets to 2040¹.
Here are six massive shifts coming soon to power markets near you:

Fearful memories haunt mouse descendants

Certain fears can be inherited through the generations, a provocative study of mice reports1. The authors suggest that a similar phenomenon could influence anxiety and addiction in humans. But some researchers are sceptical of the findings because a biological mechanism that explains the phenomenon has not been identified.

According to convention, the genetic sequences contained in DNA are the only way to transmit biological information across generations. Random DNA mutations, when beneficial, enable organisms to adapt to changing conditions, but this process typically occurs slowly over many generations

Nature

Scientists Start $150 Billion Program to Cut Clean-Energy Costs

Scientists and economists including BP Plc’s former chief executive officer, John Browne, are inviting governments to join a $150 billion program that aims to make clean energy cheaper than coal.

The 10-year plan, known as the Global Apollo Programme to Combat Climate Change, will fund research into renewables, power storage and smart-grid technologies to make them cheaper than fossil fuels. It aims to create an international task force of scientists, entrepreneurs and policymakers.

“There is a looming catastrophe that can be avoided,” David King, an Apollo founder and former chief scientific adviser to the U.K. government, said in London. “What we need to do is create clean energy that is less costly than fossil energy, and once we get to that point, we’re winning all battles.”

Bloomberg

Scientists show future events decide what happens in the past

An experiment by Australian scientists has proven that what happens to particles in the past is only decided when they are observed and measured in the future. Until such time, reality is just an abstraction.

Quantum physics is a weird world. It studies subatomic particles, which are the essential building blocks of reality. All matter, including ourselves are made up of them. But, the laws governing the tiny microscopic world seem to be different to those dictating how larger objects behave in our own macroscopic reality.
Quantum laws tend to contradict common sense. At that level, one thing can be two different things simultaneously and be at two different places at the same time. Two particles can be entangled and, when one changes its state, the other will also do so immediately, even if they are at opposite ends of the universe – seemingly acting faster than the speed of light.
Particles can also tunnel through solid objects, which should normally be impenetrable barriers, like a ghost passing through a wall. And now scientists have proven that, what is happening to a particle now, isn't governed by what has happened to it in the past, but by what state it is in the future – effectively meaning that, at a subatomic level, time can go backwards.

Digitaljournal

Russia's Microwave gun can disable Drones & Warheads

The Russian military has created a “microwave gun” capable of disabling drones known as unmanned aerial vehicles and the warheads in airborne projectiles, a spokesman for the Kremlin-owned United Instrument Manufacturing Corp. said Monday. Officials scheduled a private demonstration of the device’s capabilities at the Russian Defense Ministry’s Army-2015 expo, set to run Tuesday to Friday.

Inceptionism: Going Deeper into Neural Networks

Artificial Neural Networks have spurred remarkable recent progress in image classification and speech recognition. But even though these are very useful tools based on well-known mathematical methods, we actually understand surprisingly little of why certain models work and others don’t. So let’s take a look at some simple techniques for peeking inside these networks

3D Printed Steel Constructions

3d printed metalbridge

Designed to span a historic canal of Amsterdam, this cutting-edge structure will bridge traditional and automatic construction techniques using continuous extrusion technology to generate three-dimensionally-complex, self-supporting steel space frames. Imagine for a moment a pair of robots scaling the very structures they are building as they build them, walking themselves out over a bridge from both sides to meet in the middle