The future is coming, and there’s not much we can do to stop it. Every day we’re inundated with new technologies, new ideas, and new possibilities. Some are thrilling, some are fun, and some are downright scary, but they’re all things that we and our children will be living with. As we’ve trolled the net looking for interesting things to share with you we’ve run across some mind-blowing articles that didn’t really mean much on their own, but we’ve collected them all in one place and they’re pretty cool. Strap on your jet pack and get ready… this month, we’re taking you on a whirlwind tour of your future…
3D printing has come a long way in the past few years. These printers are able to make houses, foods, and even body parts! Tara breaks down some of the recent mindblowing developments in 3D printing, including how we’re starting to print human organs!
Solar Roadways is a project to develop solar panels that are strong enough to be walked on, biked on, driven on and parked on. What’s more, they contain heating elements designed to melt snow and, if that wasn’t enough, they’re embedded with LEDs to display warnings and traffic messages.
People with severe injuries to their spinal cord currently have little or no prospect of recovery and remain confined to their wheelchairs. Now, all that could change with a new treatment that stimulates the spinal cord using electric impulses. The hope is that the technique will help paraplegic patients learn to walk again.
UConn professor emerita Susan Anderson and her research partner, husband Michael Anderson of the University of Hartford, a UConn alumnus, are teaching machines how to behave ethically.
More Video Craziness With da Vinci Surgical Robots
It’s worth mentioning, I think, that had a human not been in the loop here, the robot could almost certainly gotten that wishbone out much, much faster. In fact, I personally challenge robots everywhere to perform the fastest flawless game of Operation ever and post it on YouTube. Aaaaand, GO!
Brain-inspired Microchips Simulate One Million Neurons In Real Time
By modeling a circuit board on the human brain, Stanford bioengineers have developed microchips that are 9,000 times faster than a typical PC. Called Neurogrid, these energy-efficient circuits could eventually power autonomous robots and advanced prosthetic limbs. Bioengineers are smart to take inspiration from the human brain. It’s a highly efficient information processor capable of crunching 100 million instructions per second (MIPS). Astoundingly, it only uses about 20 watts to power its 100 billion neurons. Today, our best supercomputers require a million watts to simulate a million neurons in real time (measured in terraflops). A standard desktop computer requires about 40,000 times more power to run and operates about 9,000 times slower.
Today, we can measure the position of an object with unprecedented accuracy, but the uncertainty principle places fundamental limits on our ability to measure. Noise that results from of the quantum nature of the fields used to make measurements imposes what is called the ‘standard quantum limit.’ This background noise keeps us from knowing an object’s exact location, but a recent study provides a solution for rerouting some of that noise away from the measurement.
New technique lets scientists monitor small worm’s entire nervous system
Researchers have created an imaging system that reveals neural activity throughout the brains of living animals. This technique, the first that can generate 3-D movies of entire brains at the millisecond timescale, could help scientists discover how neuronal networks process sensory information and generate behavior.
Engineer invents a way to beam power to medical chips deep inside the body
Researchers have invented a way to wirelessly beam power to programmable devices deep inside the body. These medical chips could be as small as a grain of rice. They would sit alongside nerves, muscles and other tissues. The chips could be programmed for a wide variety of medical tasks. The wireless power recharging would enable them to be implanted once and repowered as need be. This is a platform technology to enable a new therapeutic category — ‘electroceutical’ devices.
Mini-satellites send high-definition views of Earth
Imagine being able to monitor deforestation tree by tree – and act accordingly. Or, as a farmer, remotely monitoring the health and yield of crops on a daily basis over huge swathes of land. Perhaps as an aid agency, effortlessly estimating the flow of human traffic across borders over the course of a week. And for business retail analysts, estimating the footfall of a retail chain by counting the sheer number of vehicles in its car parking lots across a region. These are just some of the countless possibilities conceivable when our world is observed from on-high every day or week, rather than the years it can currently take to completely update our planet’s imagery on services such as Google Earth.
New manufacturing methods for ‘soft’ machines, robots
Researchers have developed a technique that might be used to produce ‘soft machines’ made of elastic materials and liquid metals for potential applications in robotics, medical devices and consumer electronics. Such an elastic technology could make possible robots that have sensory skin and stretchable garments that people might wear to interact with computers or for therapeutic purposes.
Should the Higgs boson have caused our universe to collapse? Findings puzzle cosmologists
British cosmologists are puzzled: they predict that the universe should not have lasted for more than a second. This startling conclusion is the result of combining the latest observations of the sky with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson
How Companies Learn Your Secrets
Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”
Robots Programmed to Behave ‘Morally’?
Can a robot love? Can it think? How about kill? These questions have been endlessly explored in sci-fi novels, but lately it’s been a topic of international diplomacy. The United Nations probed present-day robot ethics last month at the four-day Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meeting in Geneva. The meeting brought together experts and government officials to talk about the opportunities and dangers of killer robots. No international agreement was reached, but the discussion made clear that autonomous robot technology moves much faster than the policies governing it. Meanwhile, here in B.C., robotics experts are investigating the ethical implications inherent to firsthand interactions between humans and robots.
Robots on TV: AI goes back to baby basics
A robot toddler could have much to teach artificial intelligence (AI) researchers and psychologists alike, by providing a simplified non-human model for early child development. Sensorimotor theories of cognition argue that body posture and position affect perception. In one experiment, toddlers were presented with an object that was always in the same place – to their left, for example. If their attention was then drawn to that location when the object was absent and a keyword was spoken, the toddlers later associated the keyword with the object, and did so wherever it was presented to them – whether to their right or left.
Weave a cell phone into your shirt? Engineers envision an electronic switch just three atoms thick
Researchers believe they’ve discovered a crystal that can form a monolayer three atoms thick. Computer simulations show that this crystal, molybdenum ditelluride, can act like a switch: its crystal lattice can be mechanically pulled and pushed, back and forth, between two different atomic structures — one that conducts electricity well, the other that does not. The team hopes experimental scientists will make this semiconductor crystal and use it to fashion flexible electronics.
Monkey controls limb movements of ‘avatar’ using its mind
In the movie Avatar, humans operate the bodies of a human-hybrid species, called Na’vi, with their minds. Now, researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, have carried out a similar technique in monkeys – using neural devices that allowed an alert monkey to control the mind of one that was temporarily paralyzed. The research team, including Ziv Williams of the Department of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, says the findings provide proof of concept that such strategies could be used in the rehabilitation of patients who are paralyzed.
FDA panel debates technique that would create embryos with three genetic parents
The provocative notion of genetically modified babies met the very real world of federal regulation Tuesday, as a government advisory committee began debating a new technique that combines DNA from three people to create embryos free of certain inherited diseases. The two-day meeting of the Food and Drug Administration panel is focused on a procedure that scientists think could help women who carry DNA mutations for conditions such as blindness and epilepsy. The process would let them have children without passing on those defects. The debate over whether the technique — nicknamed “three-parent IVF” — should be allowed to proceed to human tests underscores how quickly the science of reproductive medicine is evolving. Scientists argue that this technology, like cloning and embryonic stem cell research, has huge potential to help people. But it is also highly sensitive, touching ethical and political nerves.
The Extreme Science of Flyboarding
Flyboarding is captivating in its tricks and its physics, with hundreds of horsepower shooting out of your feet, but can it become a viable competitive sport? Doc North reports on the science and gives it a try for himself.
Google: Yes, we “Read” your Gmail
While Google Inc. (GOOG) insists its actions are perfectly legal, what the world’s top internet firm is doing with your email may come as a shocking surprise for some. Google in a court filing this week wrote: “All users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing. Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their emails are processed by the recipient’s [email provider] in the course of delivery. Indeed, ‘a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”
Meet the woman who did everything in her power to hide her pregnancy from big data
Janet Vertesi, assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University, had an idea: would it be possible to hide her pregnancy from big data? Thinking about technology—the way we use it and the way it uses us—is her professional life’s work. Pregnant women, she knew, are a marketing gold mine; a pregnant woman’s marketing data is worth 15 times as much as the average person’s. Could Vertesi, a self-declared “conscientious objector” of Google ever since 2012, when they announced to users that they’d be able to read every email and chat, navigate all the human and consumer interactions having a baby would require and keep big data from ever finding out?
Corn-eating worm evolves to feed on GMO corn designed to kill it
A voracious crop-destroying pest has evolved to feed upon the very GMO product that was designed to eliminate it. Wired.com reported that the triumph over corn rootworms was one of biotech’s great success stories, saving billions of dollars in crops each year. So-called Bt corn — named for the Bacillus thuringiensis gene, which killed rootworms, corn borers and other pests — currently makes up more than three quarters of the total corn grown in the U.S., a lack of crop diversity that could spell disaster if the resistant cornworms spread.
How to erase a memory –- and restore it: Researchers reactivate memories in rats
Researchers have erased and reactivated memories in rats, profoundly altering the animals’ reaction to past events. The study is the first to show the ability to selectively remove a memory and predictably reactivate it by stimulating nerves in the brain at frequencies that are known to weaken and strengthen the connections between nerve cells, called synapses.
Building heart tissue that beats: Engineered tissue closely mimics natural heart muscle
When a heart gets damaged, such as during a major heart attack, there’s no easy fix. But scientists working on a way to repair the vital organ have now engineered tissue that closely mimics natural heart muscle that beats, not only in a lab dish but also when implanted into animals.
In 100 Years, What Will The Internet Look Like?
We can’t predict the future with 100 percent accuracy, whether it’s 10 years or 100 years from now. But we can look at where today’s technology is heading for a glimpse at what the Internet may be like in the future. Cars will work like laptops on wheels; you’ll be emailing tangible objects, using DNA to authenticate digital documents and searching the Web with your brain, among other things. At the pace of technology moves, it’s likely you’ll see some of these innovations come to life.
Robots are awesome, but beware: They’re after your jobs! Here’s a look at the work robots are doing today, that once required a human touch.
Amazing video shows bio-engineered ‘bulletproof’ human skin reinforced with spider silk
Human skin can stop a bullet – with a little help from genetically modified goats. The skin is mixed with goat ‘milk’ from goats ‘tweaked’ to produce the same protein found in spider silk. Woven spider silk is four times stronger than Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests. The ‘silk’ is layered with bio-engineered human skin grown in laboratory, and can withstand a direct impact from a bullet – although not one fired at full speed, yet.
World’s only robot rock band takes the stage at international android exhibition
Other bands may cover their arms in tattoos, spikes and 1980s haircuts, but they will still not be able to beat these guys when it comes to being metal. German metal band Compressorhead are made up of three 5ft tall robots, and brought down the house when they took the stage at the Robot Ball exhibition at ARTPLAY Center for Design in Moscow this weekend.
New Computer Programming Language Imitates The Human Brain
For nearly 70 years, computer scientists have depended upon the Von Neumann architecture. The computer that you’re working on right now still uses this paradigm — an electronic digital system driven by processors and consisting of various processing units, including an arithmetic logic unit, a control unit, memory, and input/output mechanisms. These separate units store and process information sequentially, and they use programming languages designed specifically for those architectures. But the human brain, which most certainly must be a kind of computer, works a lot differently. It’s a massively parallel, massively redundant “computer” capable of generating approximately 1016 processes per second. It’s doubtful that it’s as serialized as the Von Neumann model. Nor is it driven by a proprietary programming language (though, as many cognitive scientists would argue, it’s likely driven by biologically encoded algorithms). Instead, the brain’s neurons and synapses store and process information in a highly distributed, parallel way.
IBM’s “neurosynaptic” chips are the closest thing to a synthetic brain yet
While the comparison between the computer and the human brain is one that has been made for over half a century, the way each one processes information could not be more different. Now, IBM researchers have designed a revolutionary chip that, for the first time, actuallymimics the functioning of a human brain. Are we finally on the verge of true artificial intelligence?
Your T-shirt’s ringing: Printable tiny flexible cell phones for clothes?
A new version of ‘spaser’ technology being investigated could mean that mobile phones become so small, efficient, and flexible they could be printed on clothing. A spaser is effectively a nanoscale laser or nanolaser. It emits a beam of light through the vibration of free electrons, rather than the space-consuming electromagnetic wave emission process of a traditional laser.
Researchers have for the first time used electrical pulses delivered from a cochlear implant to deliver gene therapy, thereby successfully regrowing auditory nerves. The research also heralds a possible new way of treating a range of neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, and psychiatric conditions such as depression through this novel way of delivering gene therapy.
Advances in bionic technology are changing lives, and wearable robots are making it possible for paralysed people to walk. Phil Torres takes us to Colorado to meet one woman who is standing tall despite a devastating disability. Amanda Boxel was injured in a skiing accident 21 years ago that left her paralysed from the waist down. Now, with the help of Ekso Bionics, she can stand and walk again using a battery-powered exoskeleton that was originally designed for the military. Kosta Grammatis takes us to Maryland to meet a young man who surprised the world by inventing a test that predicts cancer. Sixteen-year-old Jack Andraka invented a cancer screening test which uses strips to test blood for high levels of mesothelin, a protein overproduced in people with pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancers. This test can catch cancers in their earliest stages where chance for survival is 100 percent.
Electrode Experiment Allows Paralyzed Man To Stand
A young man paralyzed by an injury to his spinal cord has regained the ability to stand for short periods, take steps with help and move his legs and feet at will, with the help of an electrical stimulator implanted in his lower back. The device is experimental and not available to other patients, and because it has been studied in only one person it is not known whether it would work as well in other people with different types of spinal injury.
Robot Surgeon Enters Through Belly Button
Tiny medical robots capable of operating inside an astronaut’s body could someday provide emergency surgery in space without the mess. A fist-sized robot is scheduled for its first zero-gravity test in the next several months, one small step toward enabling robotic medical attention for humans stuck on deep-space missions lasting for months. The compact robot is the product of Virtual Incision and researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, according to New Scientist. It’s designed to slip inside a person’s body through a small belly button incision — not unlike the dreaded robotic “bug” from “The Matrix” — and inflate the patient’s abdominal cavity with an inert gas to create room to work. Two arms tipped with multiple tools can perforate gastric ulcers, cauterize and suture wounds, or perform emergency appendectomies.
Living organ regenerated for first time: Thymus rebuilt in mice
Scientists have succeeded in regenerating a living organ for the first time. Researchers rebuilt the thymus — an organ in the body located next to the heart that produces important immune cells. The advance could pave the way for new therapies for people with damaged immune systems and genetic conditions that affect thymus development. The team reactivated a natural mechanism that shuts down with age to rejuvenate the thymus in very old mice. After treatment, the regenerated organ had a similar structure to that found in a young mouse.
Stick-on electronic health monitoring patches
Wearing a fitness tracker on your wrist or clipped to your belt is so 2013. Engineers have demonstrated thin, soft stick-on patches that stretch and move with the skin and incorporate off-the-shelf electronics for sophisticated wireless health monitoring. The patches stick to the skin like a temporary tattoo and incorporate a unique microfluidic construction with wires folded like origami to allow the patch to bend and flex.
Don’t Worry, Doctor Robonaut Is Here to Help
Robots are notoriously horrible at being generalists. The most efficient and effective robots have been purpose-built to do one specific task very, very well. This is why we have Roombas and not Rosies, and it’s why robotic telemedicine platforms look (and let’s be honest here) kind of scary, all things considered. But, at least part of the reason that humans (as a species) are so successful is that we are generalists. And our fantasy is to be able to create robots that are generalists too, able to bring that trademark robot intelligence and speed and precision to bear on whatever task we might require. This is certainly not the easiest route to take, but under some very specific circumstances, it might be the best one, which is why NASA’s Robonaut is learning to be a doctor.
Gunshot victims to be suspended between life and death
Doctors will try to save the lives of 10 patients with knife or gunshot wounds by placing them in suspended animation, buying time to fix their injuries. NEITHER dead or alive, knife-wound or gunshot victims will be cooled down and placed in suspended animation later this month, as a groundbreaking emergency technique is tested out for the first time. Surgeons are now on call at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to perform the operation, which will buy doctors time to fix injuries that would otherwise be lethal. “We are suspending life, but we don’t like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction,” says Samuel Tisherman, a surgeon at the hospital, who is leading the trial. “So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation.”
In the future, everything will learn
This year, IBM researchers are exploring the idea that everything will learn – driven by a new era of cognitive systems where machines will learn, reason and engage with us in a more natural and personalized way. These innovations are beginning to emerge enabled by cloud computing, big data analytics and learning technologies all coming together.
Immortality for Humans by 2045
The man behind the 2045 Initiative, described as a nonprofit organization, is a Russian named Dmitry Itskov. The ambitious timeline he’s laid out involves creating different avatars. First a robotic copy that’s controlled remotely through a brain interface. Then one in which a human brain can be transplanted at the end of life. The next could house an artificial human brain, and finally we’d have holographic avatars containing our intelligence much like the movie “Surrogates.” Gizmag’s Dario Borghino wisely warned that “one must be careful not to believe that improbable technological advances automatically become more likely simply by looking further away in the future.” And in the grand scheme of things, 2045 is not that far away.
The Future Of Drones: Technology Vs. Privacy
Will the skies of the future be filled with buzzing drones? Small commercial drones available to anyone are already up. They’re monitoring farmers’ fields, wildlife and our border and are used by photographers to capture spectacular vistas. Some say drones will replace ground delivery of many of our packages. One enthusiast predicts one in five persons will own one. But the fact that many of these unmanned flying vehicles has a camera raises privacy issues that Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein says may soon need to be addressed through regulation. Morley Safer explores the new world of commercial drones and talks to Feinstein and others about it for a 60 Minutes story to be broadcast Sunday, March 16 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Electric ‘thinking cap’ controls learning speed
Caffeine-fueled cram sessions are routine occurrences on any college campus. But what if there was a better, safer way to learn new or difficult material more quickly? What if “thinking caps” were real? Scientists have now shown that it is possible to selectively manipulate our ability to learn through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain, and that this effect can be enhanced or depressed depending on the direction of the current.
Firefighting Robot Prepares To Walk Through Flames
The ultimate Navy Seal may end up being a humanoid robot that can carry heavy equipment, interact with officers and head straight into a face-melting fire without hesitation. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot, SAFFiR for short, has been in the works for several years as a safety tool for Navy ships. Recently the advanced bot was brought out for a collaborative demonstration with researchers from Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania, according to the lab.
Superhero Vision Coming in Graphene Contact Lenses?
It sounds like something from a spy thriller movie: putting on contact lenses that give you infrared vision without the need for a bulky contraption that covers your face. But now, thanks to research at the University of Michigan, such a contact lens is a real possibility. The Michigan researchers turned to the optical capabilities of graphene to create their infrared contact lens. IBM last year demonstrated some of the photoconductivity mechanisms of graphene that make it an attractive infrared detector.
New materials developed that are as light as aerogel, yet 10,000 times stronger
Imagine materials strong enough to use in building airplanes or motor cars, yet are literally lighter than air. Soon, that may not be so hard to do because a team of researchers from MIT and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed new ultra-lightweight materials that are as light as aerogel, but 10,000 times stiffer, and may one day revolutionize aerospace and automotive designs.
This is what robot strippers look like
The robot apocalypse may just start in a strip club. At the CeBIT expo in Hanover, German software developer Tobit put together a booth that features two pole dancing robots, egged on by a fellow robot DJ with a megaphone for a head. The two ladybots move and twist in time to the music, though the actual performance is surprisingly tame. This isn’t the first time Tobit has brought the robots to the show, but this year featured updated models. “We changed them a little bit to make them more interesting,” a Tobit representative told RuptlyTV. According to the BBC, you can pick up a bot of your own for $39,500.
Record-breaking inflatable wind turbine floats 1000 feet above Alaska
Conventional wind turbines, which are based on land and are mounted on top of tall masts, are probably the most recognizable form of wind energy harvesting devices, and wind farms are already a viable method of producing clean renewable energy. But tower-mounted wind turbines do have a few limitations, as winds nearer to the ground can sometimes be inconsistent, with slow or gusty wind conditions affecting the power output from them. And while ground-based wind turbines remain a practical system for generating clean electricity, the future of low cost wind power for remote areas might be found in high altitude wind turbines (HAWTs), which are deployed high above the Earth, where they can take advantage of stronger and more consistent winds.
