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Nov 12, 2016

Modular Exoskeletons

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI

WeaRobot wants to democratize robotic exoskeletons. They want to make modular exoskeletons, so that is more affordable. The exoskeleton can boost the mobility joint by joint. Just supporting the movement of one knee or one elbow or assembling all modules for a full body exoskeleton. This is targeted at enhancing mobility and function for the growing elderly population.

WeaRobot is breaking apart robotic exoskeletons to make them more affordable and adaptable.

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Nov 11, 2016

How Virtual Reality Is Helping Veterans Overcome PTSD — By Tishin Donkersley | Tech.Co

Posted by in categories: health, virtual reality

“According to the US Department of Veteran’s Affairs about 11 out of every 100 veterans who served in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom have PTSD in a given year as well as about 12 out of every 100 veterans who served in Desert Storm.”

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Nov 11, 2016

IMAX To Spend Millions To Spread Virtual Reality — By Jonathan Varian | Fortune

Posted by in categories: media & arts, virtual reality

France, Paris, La Defense, Dome Imax, Grande Arche

“The big-screen cinema company said Thursday that it and several partner companies created a $50 million investment fund focused on virtual reality media projects like films and video games.”

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Nov 11, 2016

BBC to debut virtual reality film The Turning Forest | BBC News

Posted by in categories: media & arts, virtual reality

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“The fairy tale will be made available for free on Daydream, Google’s mobile virtual reality product.”

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Nov 11, 2016

Bitcoin users relax: Quantum computing no match for SHA-2 encryption

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, encryption, quantum physics

Worried about security for your bitcoin in the face of quantum computing? According to computer researchers, there’s no reason to be.

Source: https://hacked.com/breathe-easy-bitcoiners-quantum-computing…encryption

Quantum mech

Some people assume that once quantum computing comes along modern encryption technologies will be outpowered. But experts are starting to posit that hash functions and asymmetric encryption could defend not only against modern computers, but also against quantum attackers from the future.

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Nov 11, 2016

Forget about the election for a minute: There’s a rare supermoon coming

Posted by in category: space

This could cause earthquakes because of the moons mass pulls of the mass of our planet.


There’s a rare supermoon coming this weekend, and no matter how devastated or thrilled you are by the latest election results, you don’t want to miss it.

In the wee hours of Sunday night and Monday morning, the moon will come closer to the Earth than it has in nearly 70 years.

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Nov 11, 2016

Pill Packing 100 Billion Designer Bacteria Could Be Tested Next Year

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Bacteria are among the oldest life forms on Earth and exist nearly everywhere; in the soil, water, deep in the earth’s crust and in our own bodies. Actually, there are at least as many bacterial cells in the human body as human cells.

Bacteria tend to get a bad rap, but now, armed with new research on the bacterial world (or microbiome) in our bodies, we are starting to understand how important a role microorganisms play in our health (good as well as bad).

And beyond merely understanding the relationship between our bodies and the microorganisms inhabiting it, we’re on the cusp of significantly altering that relationship.

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Nov 11, 2016

Engineering Fusion Energy By 2025

Posted by in categories: engineering, nuclear energy, particle physics

2016-11-10-1478793217-7952831-PlasmaintheSTARTsphericaltokamakCulham.jpeg Tokamak Energy.

The world needs abundant, clean energy. Nuclear fusion — with no CO2 emissions, no risk of meltdown and no long-lived radioactive waste — is the obvious solution, but it is very hard to achieve.

The challenge is that fusion only happens in stars, where the huge gravitational force creates pressures and temperatures so intense that usually repulsive particles will collide and fuse; hence “fusion”. On Earth we need to create similar conditions, holding a hot, electrically-charged plasma at high enough pressure for long enough for fusion reactions to occur. The scientific and engineering challenges behind putting a star in a box are large, to say the least. Without proper confinement of the plasma, the reaction would stop. The plasma must be isolated from the walls of the reactor — a feat that can be performed most effectively by magnets. The most advanced machine for this purpose is the ‘tokamak’.

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Nov 11, 2016

Telegram announces first winners of million dollar bot comp

Posted by in categories: finance, mobile phones, robotics/AI, security

Telegram has announced the first winners of its bot competition. The BotPrize was announced in April and will see $1 million awarded to developers of the best Telegram bots submitted. The first winners come from the worlds of photo-editing, productivity, games, dating and finance.

Telegram is a messaging service with a focus on speed and security. Launched in 2013, it is cloud-based, meaning that user content syncs instantly across the platforms on which the service can be used, including PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

The firm’s BotPrize will help to increase the number of bots available on the service and accelerate the speed with which the number is increased. For the uninitiated, bots are effectively apps in themselves with which users can interact via messaging. They typically run inside messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or, in this instance, Telegram.

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Nov 11, 2016

Magnetic material lets ice slide right off

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, transportation

For most people, icy conditions mean a slippery pavement or trying to chip the car out of a freezing glaze, but icing can also bring down aircraft, snap power lines, and cause a surprising amount of structural damage. Now scientists at the University of Houston (UH) have come up with a surprising solution – and it involves magnets.

The problem with icing is that when droplets of freezing or supercooled water strike a surface, they wet or adhere to it, so more and more droplets can join the party. To de-ice a surface, you need to either melt the ice, break it off, dissolve it, or alter the surface so the ice can’t stick to it in the first place.

According to Hadi Ghasemi from the UH Department of Mechanical Engineering, “icephobic” surfaces that are non-wetting or liquid infused have shown promise in the past, but suffer from high freezing temperatures, high ice adhesion strength, and high cost.

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