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Oct 7, 2016

Verizon trials drones as flying cell towers to plug holes in internet coverage

Posted by in categories: drones, internet, robotics/AI

Verizon has joined the likes of Facebook, Google and fellow telecommunications giant AT&T in exploring the potential of internet-connected unmanned aircraft. While its vision involves expanding 4G coverage across the US, it has an immediate focus on shoring up communications for first responders in emergency situations, and recently carried out trials to that effect.

Verizon has dubbed the initiative Airborne LTE Operations (ALO) and says it has actually been in the pipeline for around two years. The company has been working to integrate internet connectivity into unmanned aerial vehicles and hook them up to its 4G network, daisy chaining coverage and beaming it down to unconnected areas in the process. This is similar to how Facebook hopes its Aquila drones will work.

Verizon recently teamed up with company American Aerospace Technologies to see how using drones as gliding cell towers could have an impact in disaster relief scenarios. In a simulated mission in New Jersey, the team set a drone with a 17-foot (5.2 m) wingspan in flight to put the onboard technologies through their paces.

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Oct 7, 2016

Panasonic just unveiled a new invisible television

Posted by in categories: electronics, futurism

Since the arrival of flat-screen TVs, there’s not been a whole lot to get excited about in the world of televisions — how many ways can you improve on a big slab of glass, after all? Well, how about by making it almost invisible when you’re not using it?

That’s the thinking behind a new prototype from Panasonic that’s just been shown off at the CEATEC electronics expo in Japan this week. When switched on, it’s just like a normal TV. When switched off, it’s as transparent as glass, meaning you can see the wall or shelving behind.

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Oct 7, 2016

Physicists just created the world’s first time crystal

Posted by in categories: energy, physics

Just last month, physicists made the best case yet for why time crystals — hypothetical structures that have movement without energy — could technically exist as physical objects.

And now, four years after they were first proposed, scientists have managed to add a fourth dimension — the movement of time — to a crystal for the first time, giving it the ability to act as a kind of perpetual ‘time-keeper’.

First proposed by Nobel-Prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek back in 2012, time crystals are hypothetical structures that appear to have movement even at their lowest energy state, known as a ground state.

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Oct 7, 2016

Scientists just developed the world’s smallest transistor

Posted by in category: computing

Scientists have succeeded in creating the world’s smallest transistor, producing a switch with a working 1-nanometre gate. If you want to know how incredibly tiny that is, a human hair is around 80,000 to 100,000 nanometres wide.

Unlike regular transistors, the researchers’ new prototype isn’t made out of silicon – and the smaller size means we can still improve performance in integrated circuits by populating them with greater amounts of incredibly small components.

And it could help us keep Moore’s Law alive too.

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Oct 7, 2016

New method to detect ageing cells – and aid rejuvenation therapies — developed

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

A great new biomarker for senescent cells is available and will allow researchers to more measure levels of aged cells easier and faster. Great news for gerontologists wishing to demonstrate changes to aged cell populations after therapies.


Scientists have discovered a new way to look for ageing cells across a wide range of biological materials; the new method will boost understanding of cellular development and ageing as well as the causes of diverse diseases.

Frustrated by the limitations of commercially available biomarkers — researchers led by The University of Manchester’s Professor Paul Townsend and senior author of the resulting paper, and honorary professor at Manchester, Professor Vassilis Gorgoulis, have developed a universally applicable method to assess senescence across biomedicine, from cancer research to gerontology.

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Oct 7, 2016

Google puts some numbers on its artificial intelligence progress

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

You often hear people say we’re in the early days of artificial intelligence, probably the most important tech theme of the next century. It’s important to put real measurements on improvements to the technology. Google tried to do just that at a press event in San Francisco this morning. Here are the top lines:

• Image recognition has improved to 93.9% accuracy from 89.6% in 2014. It’s also more detailed; it can detect colors and analyze the content in images with more than one subject.

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Oct 7, 2016

Bob the Hipster Knight

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

Amazing Stories has resumed publishing original science fiction, and they just happened to have led with a story of mine. Amazing Stories was the first SF magazine, dating to 1926, and was edited by Hugo Gernsback (as in “Hugo Awards”). My story contains speculation about human-AI interaction, and the future of user interfaces (disguised as comedy).

Posting this with Eric Klien’s permission, as it’s self-promotional.


Never trust an app in the form of a woman you don’t know, even if you are a hipster knight. A Gernsback Contest winning short story.

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Oct 7, 2016

The Robot That Cooks And Cleans For You

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

This robot can cook for you – and clean up afterwards.

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Oct 7, 2016

Science Bitch

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, science

It’s Friday Bitches, grab your favorite robot and have a drink…

Via Cyberpunk.

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Oct 7, 2016

Why Our Brain Cells Die: A Breakthrough in Fighting Neurodegenerative Diseases

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

In Brief.

  • Every year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke.
  • A team of scientists has discovered a common mechanism chain leading to brain cell death which involves proteins eating away at a cell’s DNA.

A team of scientists has discovered that, despite having varied causes and symptoms, most brain diseases all share a common mechanism chain leading to brain cell death. The process, aptly named parthanatos after an enzyme called PARP and the Greek god of death, involves proteins eating away at the cell’s DNA.

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