Lifeboat Foundation

As moviemaking becomes as much a science as an art, the moviemakers need ever-better ways to gauge audience reactions. Did they enjoy it? How much… exactly? At minute 42? A system from Caltech and Disney Research uses a facial expression tracking neural network to learn and predict how members of the audience react, perhaps setting the stage for a new generation of Nielsen ratings.

The research project, just presented at IEEE’s Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Hawaii, demonstrates a new method by which facial expressions in a theater can be reliably and relatively simply tracked in real time.

It uses what’s called a factorized variational autoencoder — the math of it I am not even going to try to explain, but it’s better than existing methods at capturing the essence of complex things like faces in motion.

Continue reading “This facial recognition system tracks how you’re enjoying a movie” »

Body organs such as kidneys, livers and hearts are incredibly complex tissues. Each is made up of many different cell types, plus other components that give the organs their structure and allow them to function as we need them to.

For 3D printed organs to work, they must mimic what happens naturally – both in terms of arrangement and serving a biological need. For example, a kidney must process and excrete waste in the form of urine.

Our latest paper shows a new technique for 3D printing of cells and other biological materials as part of a single production process. It’s another step towards being able to print complex, living structures.

Continue reading “The Next Pharmaceutical Revolution Could Be 3D Bioprinted” »

For every month in space, astronauts can lose 2.5 percent of their bone density. This is quite troublesome, as it will likely compound with the natural process of aging that also reduces bone density. However, a new therapy could be a fantastic solution to this issue, along with many other bone-weakening conditions.

Researchers from University College London have discovered that stem cells found in human amniotic fluid could be used in a treatment to strengthen brittle bones. The research, published in Scientific Reports, shows the treatment resulted in 79 percent fewer fractures in mice with brittle bone disease. Out of a total 324 mice, 168 were treated, while 156 served as the control group. Eight weeks after the mice were treated both the test group and the control group were evaluated for fractures.

Every control mouse exhibited fractures. Conversely, fractures in the experimental group decreased between 69 and 89 percent, leading to the 79 percent decrease in the fracture rate across all tested bones. Pascale Guillot, the study leader, found that the treatment was not resulting in new bone formation, but instead helping to fortify existing bone tissue.

Continue reading “New Stem Cell Therapy Could Help Treat Osteoporosis and Restore Bones” »

Exponential Fever. The business world is currently gripped by exponential fever. The concept came to prominence with Moore’s law — the doubling every 18–24 months of the amount of computer power available for $1,000. The phenomenon has since been replicated in many fields of science and technology. We now see the speed, functionality and performance of a range of technologies growing at an exponential rate – encompassing everything from data storage capacity and video download speed to the time taken to map a genome and the cost of producing a laboratory grown hamburger.

New Pretenders. A wave of new economy businesses has now brought exponential thinking to bear in transforming assumptions about how an industry works. For example, AirBnB handles roughly 90 times more bedroom listings per employee than the average hotel group, while Tangerine Bank can service seven times more customers than a typical competitor. In automotive, by adopting 3D printing, Local Motors can develop a new car model 1,000 times cheaper than traditional manufacturers, with each car coming ‘off the line’ 5 to 22 times faster. In response, businesses in literally every sector are pursuing exponential improvement in everything from new product development and order fulfillment through to professional productivity and the rate of revenue growth.

Stepping Up. For law firms, the transformation of other sectors and their accompanying legal frameworks creates a massive growth opportunity, coupled with the potential to bring similar approach to rethinking the way law firms operate. While some might be hesitant about applying these disruptive technologies internally, there is a clear opportunity to be captured from helping clients respond to these developments and from the creation of the industries of the future. To help bring to life the possibilities within legal, we highlight seven scenarios that illustrate how exponential change could transform law firms over the next 5 to 10 years.

Rise of the ‘Exponential Circle’. Our continuing programme of research on the future of law firms suggests that we will see exponential growth for those firms who can both master the legal implications of these technologies for their clients and become adept at their application within the firm. By 2025, we could indeed have witnessed the emergence of an Exponential Circle of law firms who have reached ‘escape velocity’ and left the rest behind.

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Will go down in history as a woman who broke stereotypes at every stage of her life. She leaves behind a legacy parallel to Marie Curie.

Stanford engineers have developed a 4D camera with an extra-wide field of view. They believe this camera can be better than current options for close-up robotic vision and augmented reality.

The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science – are giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction. Disease, ageing and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end.

They may enable us to enjoy greater “morphological freedom” – we could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering. Or advance our cognitive capacities. We could use brain-computer interfaces to link us to advanced artificial intelligence (AI).

Nanobots could roam our bloodstream to monitor our health and enhance our emotional propensities for joy, love or other emotions. Advances in one area often raise new possibilities in others, and this “convergence” may bring about radical changes to our world in the near-future.

Continue reading “Opinion: Super-intelligence and eternal life—transhumanism’s faithful follow it blindly into a future for the elite” »

Slovakian company AeroMobil promises to start delivering this flying car in 2020.