Your Services are No Longer Needed - Meet the Robot Bio David Brooks David Brooks has been an op-ed columnist for The New York Times since 2003. Previously, he was an editor at The Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, and a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic. Andrew McAfee Andrew McAfee is a principal research scientist at MIT and cofounder of the Initiative on the Digital Economy at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. ZOOM IN: Learn more with related books and additional materials. For related Britannica content, please search on Britannica's Web site, at www.britannica.com.
New Bone Grown from Monkey's Own Skin Cells Researchers have been able to grow new bone using a monkey's own skin cells. The US study is the first time such a development has been shown in an animal that is similar to humans. Professor Martin Pera, program leader of the ARC Stem Cells Australia, says the work, published today in Cell Reports, is "another step towards the development of safe stem cell therapies for human disease". PHOTOS: Funniest-Faced Monkeys The study uses induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which are derived from adult skin cells and can be reprogrammed to work as other cells. Pera says pluripotent stem cells can be used to make any type of healthy human tissue and therefore have great potential for treatment of disease. However, he adds, knowledge of whether stem cell therapies will be safe and effective in a clinical setting is limited. Previous work in this field has relied on scientists giving human iPSC products to immunodeficient mice, she says. Monkey Math and Other Number-Crunching Critters
▶ RoboEarth: Connecting robots world-wide At its core, RoboEarth is a World Wide Web for robots: a giant network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other about their behavior and their environment. Bringing a new meaning to the phrase “experience is the best teacher”, the goal of RoboEarth is to allow robotic systems to benefit from the experience of other robots, paving the way for rapid advances in machine cognition and behaviour, and ultimately, for more subtle and sophisticated human-machine interaction. RoboEarth offers a complete Cloud Robotics infrastructure, which includes everything needed to close the loop from robot to RoboEarth to robot. To close the loop, the RoboEarth Collaborators have implemented components for a ROS compatible, robot-unspecific, high-level operating system as well as components for robot-specific, low level controllers accessible via a Hardware Abstraction Layer. Would you like to put a link to this lecture on your homepage?
Eavesdropping on Bees Reveals State of the Environment Researchers have translated the “conversations” honeybees have with each other, to the point that scientists can now eavesdrop on such communications to learn from bee wisdom, a study finds. Honeybees, via their waggle dances, share detailed information about the environment, so scientists may now monitor wide sections of a given landscape without even breaking a sweat. Details about the research are published in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology. Photos: Animals Live in Democracies Too “In the past two decades, the European Union has spent €41 billion ($56.17 billion) on agri-environment schemes, which aim to improve the rural landscape health and are required for all EU-member states,” co-author Margaret Couvillon of the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of Sussex said in a press release. “However, there is little evidence evaluating these schemes,” she continued. Photos: Faces of Bees, Flies and Friends How Killer Bees Kill
Dean Kamen's DARPA-Funded Prosthetic Arm Gets FDA Approval For eight years now, the DEKA prosthetic arm -- a DARPA-funded project aimed at improving the lives of amputees -- has been moving slowly toward FDA approval. Now, right on schedule, the mind-controlled, robotic prosthetic has been approved up by the Food and Drug Administration. Nicknamed the "Luke" arm by its creators, the DEKA arm now has the distinction of being the first FDA-approved arm that can move multiple joints at once by receiving commands from electromyograms, or EMG, electrodes on remaining parts of the arm. In a study from 2012, the arm was also succesfully "mind-controlled" through the use of neural implants. The company won't start producing the arm and delivering it to amputees until they find a manufacturer, but this looks like a major milestone in the field of prosthetics.
Hacker-Themed Video Game Debuts Hacker-themed video game "Watch Dogs" makes its hotly anticipated debut on Tuesday in a world grappling with real-life fears about privacy in the Internet era. France-based Ubisoft's new title features a protagonist who controls the world around him by hacking into systems and has generated intense buzz for eerie parallels with the storm about US surveillance. Games typically use weapons ranging from guns and swords to lasers to special powers to defeat enemies, overcome obstacles or simply score points. Hackers' Playbook: Common Tactics: Photos "We knew we had a relevant topic," Canadian Ubisoft developer Dominic Guay told AFP as the game was previewed at the E3 video game trade show last year. Set in Chicago, the game centers on Aiden Pearce, who uses his smartphone to access the city's Central Operating System, which controls everything from power grids and traffic management technology to bank accounts and phone networks. Hackers Target Cards; Here Are Safer Ways To Pay
Tech's Star Material Is Now Recyclable It’s the key material found in superglue and airplane wings. It once coated the Apollo 8 capsule for reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. And it currently insulates the electronics in your smartphone. Cured thermosets are heat-resistant polymers that are often more rigid than bone and virtually impossible to break down. Researchers at IBM announced the first recyclable thermoset in a paper published in Science. “This is the first example of a recyclable thermoset, to our knowledge,” says Jeannette M. Of Computers and Chemistry Garcia first stumbled across her new polymer by accident. Determined to figure out what she had made, Garcia enlisted help from the brains at IBM. Garcia and her team used classic chemistry techniques, along with advanced computer models, to work backward from her final product and find the mechanism behind her surprise reaction. More Thermoset for Your Buck? Industrial Prejudices “Industry is always resistant to change,” Long says.
Quantum Teleportation Feat Brings Ultrafast Computer Networks Step Closer To Reality No one's getting beamed up anytime soon, but teleportation may have taken a big step closer to reality. Researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands say they have succeeded in accurately transferring information from one quantum bit to another quantum bit located 3 meters away -- without the information traveling through the intervening space. A quantum bit (qubit) is analogous to a conventional computer bit -- though unlike a conventional bit, a qubit can represent more than two possible values. The feat is considered a critical step toward the development of a network of so-called quantum computers. These ultrafast computers -- still theoretical at this point -- would be able to solve problems beyond the reach of even the most powerful computers available today, the New York Times reported. In addition, quantum computers would allow data transfer to be completely secure, according to a written statement released by the university. Take a seat, Scotty.
Hosting a Seastead: the mission to find a home for the world's first floating city The Seasteading Institute, which is looking to establish a floating city by 2020, has commenced diplomatic discussions with several counties to find a host nation for its proposed floating community, also known as a seastead. Although the institute declined to say which counties it was talking to while discussions were ongoing, it did confirm that those contacted were from a list of 20 that includes Ghana, Columbia, Hong Kong, Panama and Singapore. The organisation assessed all nations with coastlines to establish a shortlist of countries that could provide safe waters for the floating city to exist in. It eliminated all countries in hurricane or cyclone zones, as well as those in polar regions where extreme weather or frozen seas pose a threat. It also cut any countries where piracy is a problem, as well as those with politically volatile or dangerous environments. “Countries are so enormous that it is hard for an individual to make much difference.
Military's 'Iron Man' Suit Debuts This Month A prototype of the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS, will be available later this month, and a more complete version should be ready between 2016 and 2018, according to Battelle, a science and technology research institute headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. "How do you protect against direct action engagement?" said John Folkerts, vice president for the special operations market group at Battelle. To protect troops in combat, soldiers must have access to better armor, better protection and better communication, Folkerts told Live Science. Soft Exoskeleton Flexes Its Artificial Muscles In addition to the TALOS, Battelle is helping develop other innovative technologies such as robotic underwater vehicles, digital "heads-up" displays and a de-icing aircarft coating. Ironman suit In Greek mythology, "Talos" was a giant man (or maybe bull) made of bronze that guarded the island of Crete by running around it and flinging stones at invaders. Heads-Up Displays
Highpants Laser Alters Fruit Flies' Minds, Makes Them Dance We must admit, we did not see this one coming: A team of Austrian scientists has developed a laser system that causes fruit flies to dance. Dubbed FlyMAD (short for Fly Mind Altering Device), the system uses cameras to track fruit flies in flight and hit them with specially calibrated laser beams. The system is so precise that it can not only target individual fruit flies, it can hone in on specific parts of the flies’ bodies. Feminine Appeal Can Be a Curse (for Fruit Flies) The mind of a fruit fly, it turns out, is not terribly complex. The researchers at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna were able to trigger dancing and singing responses in the flies, behavior correlated with a persistent state of courtship. Flies Use Fighter Pilot Maneuver to Avoid Swatting Lasers, dancing and perpetual courtship behavior? via DVICE Credit: Wikimedia Commons