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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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 

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