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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
The future of robotics
Looking forward to living in a world where a robot could clean up your messy room or help perform medical procedures?
Listen to (or download) this Science Today interview with UC Berkeley robotics expert Ken Goldberg, who discusses the collaborative effort to train robots to work with humans.
ucresearchEver thought of what human curiosity might look like in a form expressed other than words or drawings? Designers Brian W Brush and Yong Ju Lee did just that when they began creating what they now call ‘Filament Mind’, where your curious searches and questions are linked with the library that ends up displaying these searches in varying colors. Education and design just had another baby, and this is it. I can Imagine this being used across more libraries, I think a lot of people might enjoy this (kids especially) and see it as an addition to the wonderful world of libraries and the awe they already come with when we open those books up.
Designers Brian W Brush and Yong Ju Lee of E/B Office New York created an extensive fibre-optic installation for the Teton County Library grand opening in Wyoming that visualises library searches in flashes of coloured light. Dubbed Filament Mind, the installation, which opened at the end of January, uses over eight kilometres of fibre-optic cables and 44 LED illuminators to collect, categorise, and render searches from libraries all across the state of Wyoming into glowing bursts of colour.
Visualisations begin when a person uses specific words while searching online library catalogues. Subjects including social sciences, arts, languages, history, and philosophy have been categorized by the Dewey Decimal System into 904 text labels, so that when a person uses any one of those labels in their search, it’s filtered through the categories and the corresponding fibre optic cable lights up. If a person clicks on one of the results of their search, another cable will light up. There’s also a donor mode in which the entire display flashes with all the different colours of light, as a way to thank the private donors that made the project possible.
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Filament Mind may live at the Teton County Library, but it lights up the searches from all the libraries in the state as a reminder of the continuous search for knowledge taking place at different libraries.
ikenbot
The 4 hardest computing problems on earth
America’s most powerful supercomputer runs calculations so quickly it makes your laptop look like an abacus. The machine, called Titan, is located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is also the fastest supercomputer the world. It can process more than 17 petaflops of data per second — that’s roughly 20,000 trillion simultaneous calculations. Though Titan has the strength of 500,000 laptops, computer scientists are hungry for more. Already, they are dreaming of a machine that could manage an exaflop of data, which would require about 50 times more processing power than Titan. So-called exascale computing could let researchers answer some of the toughest scientific problems.
Virtual climate
Building better climate models is becoming more important, as scientists work to predict the potential effects of a warming planet. But the best supercomputers today fall short of researchers’ goals. If you think of the globe as an image, the best supercomputers can only render pixels the size of 14 square kilometers. An exascale computer could bring that down to one square kilometer. The effect? Scientists could see the impact of minutely detailed climate factors such as individual cloud formations and ocean eddies.Digital cells
Much of the future of pharmaceuticals is in algorithms, not petri dishes. Researchers will develop drugs based on programs that predict how chemicals will interact with the body. In this approach to solving problems in biology, chemistry, and materials sciences, scientists model the movement of individual atoms or molecules, factoring in the various forces exerted on them.Future fuel
With Titan, scientists can model the chemical reactions for combustion of relatively simple fuels like alcohol and butanol. But because gasoline and biodiesels are complex fuels — the molecules inside are longer and thus trickier to model — more and more powerful supercomputers will be required to parse them.Inside supernovae
More powerful supercomputers could shine a light on some of the most foreign phenomena in the universe. For example, scientists in the future may be able to model the awesome forces that interact when a star explodes. Running programs that includes all the sciences at play would require an exaflop of data. With that much power, the next generation of supercomputers could bring the mysteries of deep space closer to home.Source: cnn.com
“Every Galaxy Has Counterparts in Other Universes” - David Deutsch
Legendary Oxford physicist David Deutsch is best known for his contributions to quantum physics, quantum computing, and a leading proponent of the multiverse (or “many worlds”) interpretation of quantum theory — the astounding idea that our universe is constantly spawning countless numbers of worlds.
In his book The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch laid the groundwork for an all-encompassing Theory of Everything by tying together four mutually supporting strands of reality: First: Hugh Everett’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, “the first and most important of the four strands”; second: Karl Popper’s epistemology, especially its requiring a realist interpretation of scientific theories, and its emphasis on being falsifiable; third: Alan Turing’s theory of computation, replaced by Deutsch’s universal quantum computer; and fourth: Richard Dawkins’neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and the modern evolutionary synthesis.
“The quantum theory of parallel universes is not the problem, it is the solution. It is not some troublesome, optional interpretation emerging from arcane theoretical considerations,” says David Deutsch. “It is the explanation, the only one that is tenable, of a remarkable and counter-intuitive reality. Everything in our universe — including you and me, every atom and every galaxy — has counterparts in these other universes.”
“Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense,” Deutsch wrote about the most mind-bending aspects of particle physics, including the tendency of matter to exist in more than one place at a time.
In the TED Conference video filmed at Oxford University, Deutsch will force you to reconsider your place in the world, and about our species’ significance in the universe. Far from being simply “chemical scum,” quoting Stephen Hawking, we have the ability to gain knowledge, the importance of which, he says, is that we are always equipped to solve problems (including global warming). The brain contains the tools we need: knowledge, reason and creativity. It’s a thrilling, and much needed, profoundly optimistic argument.
Meet your next surgeon: Dr. Robot
[…] Advances in surgery usually attempt to ameliorate surgery’s essential nature: cutting someone to cure him. The less severe the tissue damage, the faster the patient heals — less time in recovery, less money spent recovering from the wounds. In health care this is known as “lowering the downstream costs,” and it is what is driving hospitals to invest $2 million a pop for surgical machines.
Surgeons — a particularly exacting bunch — have adopted robotics in droves. While physician buy-in is crucial, patients are also driving demand. Last year the Journal for Healthcare Quality reported that 41% of hospital websites advertised robotic surgery; of these, 37% did so on their homepage. Hospitals with robots are pulling in more and more patients, and in some cases, the existence of the robot actually increases the number of surgeries performed.
A study conducted by the American Cancer Society found that the number of radical prostatectomies has “risen substantially” in the past decade, and patients travel great distances to be operated on with a robot. Today, four out of five prostatectomies are performed with a robot. The result is an industry at an inflection point. Robots have arrived, and hospitals, doctors, and patients are scrambling to adapt to this new technology. […]
A digital globe created by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As a geography buff, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these once they become commercially viable.
Source: New York Times
Inflatable module to be added to space station.
NASA has announced a US$17.8 million contract to Bigelow Aerospace to provide an expandable module to the International Space Station. NASA says the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module will demonstrate the benefits of this space habitat technology for future exploration and commercial space endeavors.
“The International Space Station is a unique laboratory that enables important discoveries that benefit humanity and vastly increase understanding of how humans can live and work in space for long periods,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. “This partnership agreement for the use of expandable habitats represents a step forward in cutting-edge technology that can allow humans to thrive in space safely and affordably, and heralds important progress in U.S. commercial space innovation.”Further details are due to be released at a conference this Wednesday.
(via 8bitfuture)
In the late sixties General Electric developed a walking truck, officially called the Cybernetic Anthropmorophous Machine, C.A.M was strong enough to brush aside a jeep yet sensitive enough to gently manipulate a lightbulb with its “feet” without breaking it.
Optogenetics
Optogenetics is the amazing field that combines optics and genetics in order to control events in living cells. First predicted by Francis Crick (yes, THAT Crick) in 1999, a breakthrough came in 2005 when researchers found that mammalian neurons could be targeted and manipulated through this process (Fancy!). Optogenetics depends on manipulating channelrhodopsin, a type of chemical pathway in cells that has the unique ability of being controllable with light. It allows for them to be activated or suppressed when differently colored lights are directed at points on the membrane, changing their chemical balance. One of the most significant results of this is that scientists can selectively fire individual or groups of neurons in the brain with a high degree of accuracy. Sparking a mini-revolution in neurosciences, optogenetics allows the study of specific brain functions, including behavior. Since exploding in 2006, researchers have discovered methods to control the ability for mice to awake from a nap, the speed of eye movements in nonhuman primates, changing of social behaviors (such as angry to friendly) and possibly to teach new cells in the eye to see. The latter is one of the first movements towards therapeutic uses, aiming to improve or return sight to those whose primary sight cells (cones and rods) are dead. Tests on rodents seem to indicate that optogenetics will allow for possible therapies for human brain disorders, but it is unknown if some practices will scale to the complexity of the human brain.
Guest article written by Andrew Kays (ThePublicScience.tumblr.com)
Vincent Fournier
In this series The Man Machine Vincent Fournier documents current robotic technologies from all over the world. In his works, he is interested in how fiction is become reality. As he states,
“My work was fed with the world of childhood, with some sort of buried memory where reality and fiction are becoming confused, even merge somehow, a world in which things don’t even have a name yet. I remember stories which could have existed, stories in which the truth is dangerously flirting with the false, all together serious and absurd, amusing and disquieting, past or future.”
His photographs focus on narrative. We can see this in the robots playing with children or the robots sitting in an office. Immediately we create a story of a robot living a very human life. Yet at the same time the settings and environments show a futuristic world that is also recognizable as our own. As Fournier states, ”What I find extremely appealing is the aesthetic world of science, machines, geometric patterns.” These scenes look futuristic, yet they are now. To see more of his works. click here.
diy:
The ‘e-volo’ multicopter is a prototype personal transport vehicle, steerable via joystock and powered by sixteen propellers to hover in the air. a team of german professionals— physicist Thomas Senkel, programmer Stephan Wolf, and designer Philipp Halisch, as well as Alexander Zosel— have just completed the first prototype and test flight of the craft, which they imagine for use towards entertainment purposes, aerial photography and inspection, and short-distance travel.
A great inspiration for designing your own vehicle and becoming a Transport Engineer.
IBM: Computers Will See, Hear, Taste, Smell and Touch in 5 Years
Today’s PCs and smartphones can do a lot — from telling you the weather in Zimbabwe in milliseconds, to buying your morning coffee. But ask them to show you what a piece of fabric feels like, or to detect the odor of a great-smelling soup, and they’re lost.
That will change in the next five years, says IBM. Computers at that time will be much more aware of the world around them, and be able to understand it. The company’s annual “5 in 5” list, in which IBM predicts the five trends in computing that will arrive in five years’ time, reads exactly like a list of the five human senses — predicting computers with sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
The five senses are really all part of one grand concept: cognitive computing, which involves machines experiencing the world more like a human would. For example, a cognizant computer wouldn’t see a painting as merely a set of data points describing color, pigment and brush stroke; rather, it would truly see the object holistically as a painting, and be able to know what that means.
(via ikenbot)
Artist/programmer/designer Marcin Ignac used software to track, measure, and visualize his computer use every day for 2.5 years. The result: This beautiful, simple look at one of the most prominent aspects of daily life in the 21st century. Each line is a single day, with colors representing which app was being used at the time of day. (So, for example, your line might be red during this time, signaling that you’re using your browser.) The black sections are times when he had his computer off—meaning that blacked-out section in every day is probably night.
MIT Builds Tiny Robot Precursor to Actual Transformers
A tiny robot capable of bending and flexing into a huge range of shapes could pave the way for real-life Transformers.
The milli-motein — so called because it is essentially a millimetre-scale motorised device inspired by the natural complex folding of biological protein molecules — uses watchmaking techniques to reorganise itself into different forms.
“It’s effectively a one-dimensional robot that can be made in a continuous strip, without conventionally moving parts, and then folded into arbitrary shapes,” said Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, in a press release.
To power the little robot the team also invented a new system called an electropermanent motor, which pairs a powerful magnet with a weaker one. The direction of the weaker magnet’s magnetic field can be changed electronically meaning the operation of the more powerful magnet can be cancelled or boosted as necessary and with a far smaller energy requirement than if the motor was powering the stronger magnet directly as energy is only needed to change shape, not to hold it.
“This result brings us closer to the idea of programmable matter — where computer programs and materials merge to form a new kind of matter whose shape and function can be programmed — not unlike biology,” said Hod Lipson, an engineering professor at Cornell University, in the press release. “Many people are excited today to learn about 3D printing and its ability to fabricate any shape; Gershenfeld’s group is already thinking about the next episode, where we don’t just control the shape of objects, but also their behaviour.”
Perfecting a cheap and resilient modular chain which can reconfigure itself as needed would allow for a flexible robot workforce as well as the possibility of a one robot/near-infinite object creation product model.
