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AI in the News: Interesting News Stories about AI
AITopics > AI in the News
AI in the News is a AAAI service to alert readers to current news articles in the field of AI that appear in various online news sources. An AI program—NewsFinder—crawls the web looking for AI-related news articles. The collection of articles is first filtered to select only those that mention at least one of many key terms related to AI. Then duplicate articles are detected using a semantic similarity metric, and filtered out. Finally, each article is classified using a bank of support vector machines, one for each of the 19 major topics in AITopics; articles matching no topics are also filtered out of the collection. The resulting collection is published on this web page, in the AI-Alert email list, and in our various topic-oriented and aggregate RSS feeds.
Details about NewsFinder can be found on the NewsFinder page.
All News Stories - August 15, 2011
- August 15, 2011: Building, Launching, and Landing a Rover (All Before Going to College). Popular Science. "Usually high-school rocket clubs launch an egg and try to have it land safely. But our teacher suggested that we do something harder: enter a competition to build a Mars rover that could be deployed from a rocket. The goal was to launch a robot 1,000 feet in the air, have it land safely on the ground, and then drive it about 30 feet. Our idea was that when the rocket reaches its highest point, the robot spills out and the parachute unfurls."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Sneak Preview: Military's Maple-Seed-Inspired Drone, Plus More to Come at UAV Show Next Week. Popular Science. "After years of development and military funding setbacks, defense contractor Lockheed Martin is finally ready to debut its maple seed-inspired drone. The one-winged, one-foot-long SAMARAI drone just flew a test flight for the Associated Press ahead of its official unveiling at an unmanned vehicle conference next week. The asymmetric UAV is modeled after maple seeds, called samara, that fly off trees and twirl through the air with the utmost efficiency. Originally, the SAMARAI was envisioned as a seed-sized drone that could deliver a 2-gram payload and send back streaming video, but that has since changed to a much bigger, whining drone."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Friendly Humanoid Robot Asimo (May Be) Tapped for Japanese Nuclear Cleanup Work [Updated]. Popular Science. "" "Although Honda hopes that ASIMO will someday be a helper to people, at this point the robot is solely a research and design project," a Honda spokeswoman said. A couple camera-toting robots have been tooling around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where radiation levels are still making it unsafe for human workers. Honda is aiming to redesign Asimo, its 4-foot-tall humanoid robot, so it can join workers at Fukushima Daiichi, according to Japanese media. It’s not clear what Asimo would be doing inside the Fukushima plant, but it would likely go into radiation hotspots where it remains dangerous for humans to enter."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Blackest Planet Ever Found, Absorbs Nearly 100% of Light That Reaches It. Popular Science. "Kepler has found the darkest known planet in universe--a Jupiter-sized exoplanet some 750 light-years away that is so black that it reflects just one percent of the light that reaches it. TrES-2b is so black that it’s darker than coal, or any other planet or moon that we’ve yet discovered. But TrES-2b is not completely black. And it turns out that heat is the main culprit behind this darkest of dark planets."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Willow Garage Introduces Discount PR2 SE, a One-Armed Personal Robot for the Rest of Us. Popular Science. "Willow Garage’s PR2 has provided a unique, open source robotics platform to all kinds of labs and institutions that otherwise wouldn’t have access to a complex robotics system--but not to that many. For all the absolutely cool things you can do with PR2, the $400,000 price tag is prohibitive--only about two dozen commercial and academic labs have their own PR2s. So, in an attempt to make their robot more accessible, Willow Garage is introducing the PR2 SE this week, a pared-down version of the same robot costing a mere $285,000. So how do you cut more than a hundred grand off a $400,000 robot?"(info)
- August 11, 2011: London Cops are Testing out Facial Recognition Tech to Identify Rioters. Popular Science. "Police in London likely aren’t relishing their jobs this week, but Scotland Yard is getting a chance to test drive facial recognition technology that’s under consideration for use during the 2012 Olympic Games. The AP has learned that police there are feeding images into the newly upgraded program, and the results are somewhat promising. But not more promising than simply disseminating photographs to the general public, which is still far cheaper and more effective than using the nascent facial recognition technology. Well, that and the fact that facial recognition technology is about the biggest, scariest Big Brother-ish technology taking shape out there right now."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Why Baccarat, the Game of Princes and Spies, Has Become a Target for High-Tech Cheaters. Popular Science. "Over the past year, casinos around the world have lost millions of dollars to baccarat cheats. Between the antics of the globe-trotting Cutters syndicate, the Chinese nationals who hacked auto-shuffler machines in Macau, and the South Korean duo who hid a card-switching device up a sleeve at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, baccarat has attracted some very shrewd con men and women. To understand why, it helps to know a bit more about the rules of the game. In the most common variant of "punto banco" baccarat, the game requires a gambler to make just one decision: whether to bet that the value of a "player" or "banker" hand of 2 or 3 cards will end up totalling closest to 9, with face cards counting as zero and aces as 1."(info)
- August 11, 2011: U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Wants a Master Kill-Switch for Social Networks. Popular Science. "In addition to arresting some 1,100 people and nearly tripling the number of police officers in London, police forces have been attempting to use technology to rein in the looting and rioting in the various English cities. The thing is, the looters and rioters are much better at using technology than the authorities, often using social media--including Twitter, Facebook, and the very popular (more so than here in North America) BlackBerry Messenger--to coordinate looting and stay a few steps ahead of the police. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has a distinctly, well, almost Chinese response to that: shut 'em all down. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."(info)
- August 15, 2011: Big Storms Slipping Toward Earth’s Poles. Wired. "By Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica Mid-latitude storm tracks are major weather patterns that account for the majority of precipitation in the globe s middle latitudes, which includes most of the heavily populated areas of North America, Eurasia, and Australia. Apart from being meteorologically important, they’re also major players on the climate scene—clouds in these regions are responsible for reflecting much of the incoming solar radiation that is bounced back to space before penetrating Earth’s atmosphere. However, analysis of 25 years worth of data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project now indicates that this shift is probably already taking place. The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (or ISCCP) operates a network of geostationary and polar orbiting satellites that have been collecting data on clouds since 1983."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Hacked Fat-Burning Cycle Makes Bacteria Pump Biofuel. Wired. "In yesterday s Nature, researchers proposed a clever way of doing this: take the biochemical pathway that normally burns fat and run it in reverse. But actually getting bacteria (the authors worked with E. coli) to do this isn t necessarily easy. These two carbon molecules end up attached to a co-factor in a molecule called acetyl-Coenzyme A. If oxygen is present, acetyl-CoA gets handed over to a process that produces a number of ATP molecules as acetyl-CoA is converted into water and carbon dioxide (the CoA is recycled)."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Social Network Equality Helps Hyraxes Live Longer. Wired. "A study of social networks in rock hyraxes has tweaked a conventional wisdom of the Facebook age: that a large network leads to better health and longer life. Among hyraxes, a small herbivorous mammal that lives in colonies across Africa and the Middle East, one s network size matters less than its hierarchies. Hyraxes that live in more egalitarian groups, in which the social ties are spread more evenly, survive longer, said Amiyaal Ilany, a Tel Aviv University zoologist. Barocas et al./PLoS OneThe hyraxes, which are highly social and can live up to 12 years, proved to have communities of variable character."(info)
- August 10, 2011: How to Tow a Building-Sized Iceberg. Wired. "By Mark Brown, Wired UK French engineer Georges Mougin has a big idea. He wants to go to Antarctica, tie a big rope around a six-million-ton iceberg, drag it back to Africa and melt it into fresh, drinkable water. Using 3D computer simulations and declassified satellite data, his “IceDream” team believes that towing a drifting mountain of fresh water to Africa is absolutely possible. Mougin shelved the outlandish idea and put the dream on pause."(info)
- August 09, 2011: Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Friday, But Watch Wednesday Morn. Wired. "To catch the best view of a prolific meteor shower, scrap your plans tonight and get to bed for an early morning tomorrow. The Perseid meteor shower sprinkles Earth with cometary dust every year from July to August. But there s a problem: The full moon waxes this weekend. The bright light will obscure most cometary debris that happens to streak through Earth s thick atmosphere as meteors."(info)
- August 11, 2011: China and the rise of the driverless car - iProgrammer. GoogleNews. "While Google makes headlines with its driverless car and even manages to lobby Nevada to legalize driverless cars on the public road - China quietly pushes ahead on its own. China Daily reports that on the 14th of July a Hongqui HQ3 travelled 286km in three hours 20 minutes without a driver at the wheel on an expressway linking Changsha and Wuhan, the capitals of Hunan and Hubei provinces A Hongqui HQ3 of the type used in the project The project is being developed by the National University of Defense Technology. Unlike Google's the Chinese driverless car uses computer vision to navigate aided by laser range finders. China is late into the driverless car race and members of the team are aware of the doubt that surrounds the project because of the speed that they have been able to ... well.. it has to be said.. get up to speed."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Researcher Teaches Computers to Detect Spam More Accurately - PCWorld. GoogleNews. "Researcher Teaches Computers to Detect Spam More Accurately Without spam detection many of us would spend hours managing the daily load of e-mails. Nina Balcan develops machine learning methods that could be used to develop personalized automatic programs for deciding whether an e-mail is spam or not. The results of Balcan's research can be broadly used to solve many data mining problems, she said; spam detection is just one of many possible applications. With so-called supervised learning, the user teaches the computer by feeding it with information on which e-mails are spam and which are not."(info)
- August 15, 2011: Examining SAP Supplier InfoNet (Part 2) - Spend Matters. GoogleNews. "When building Supplier InfoNet, SAP's stealth development initiative that launched the application did not take advantage of much off-the-shelf SAP technology (outside of BI) such as the classification engine in Spend Performance Management. Rather, they built their own solutions from scratch -- as an example, in the case of classifications, InfoNet leverages machine learning technology and adaptive matching as part of a content factory that processes the inbound customer files to be loaded into the application. For example, a company might not want to treat "Marriot" as a single entity, but rather might care to look at individual franchises. David Charpie, VP and Global Business Incubator at SAP shared with Spend Matters that their philosophy is "not to solve matching or KPI definitions at a corporate basis."(info)
- August 08, 2011: ai-one Acquires Machine Learning Startup - TMC Net. GoogleNews. "Education Featured Article ai-one Acquires Machine Learning Startup Auto-Semantics has been acquired by ai-one. Artificial intelligence services to corporate IT departments are provided by the local start-up, Auto-Semantics. ai-one has carried out a series of joint-ventures and acquisitions, the latest being the acquisition of Auto-Semantics. The company’s top position within the emerging market for machine learning technologies is therefore consolidated."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Researcher teaches computers to detect spam more accurately - CSO Magazine. GoogleNews. "Researcher teaches computers to detect spam more accurately Without spam detection many of us would spend hours managing the daily load of e-mails. Nina Balcan develops machine learning methods that could be used to develop personalized automatic programs for deciding whether an e-mail is spam or not. The results of Balcan's research can be broadly used to solve many data mining problems, she said; spam detection is just one of many possible applications. With so-called supervised learning, the user teaches the computer by feeding it with information on which e-mails are spam and which are not."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Filtering 'Bad' Traffic: For Best Results, Get Beyond Good and Evil - ClickZ News. GoogleNews. "In platforms like AdWords, we've been handed wonderful tools to get very granular in excluding certain keyword phrases and display network sources (and other segments) that are almost certainly bad bets to convert for the target market. From this simple principle inevitably grew overkill. And instead of seeing Google's machine-learning capabilities in keyword match typing and display network placement (expanded broad match in search and automatic matching in the display network) as broadly positive developments with some negative elements that require hand-tweaking, some marketers have chosen to outright reject them and see only negative aspects. Because you artificially create a narrower universe, but forget just how narrow you made it (and why), when it comes time to look for creative ways to expand that finite volume (like when the client asks for more, more, more), the "out of the box" means of boosting volume you come up with turn out to be worse than some good potential traffic that was right under your nose."(info)
- August 15, 2011: Back Issues: Survey shows strong robotics use in packaging - Packaging World. GoogleNews. "Since early 2010, the Robotics Industry Association (RIA) has gleefully reported a strong growth in robotics sales, after weathering a 25% slump in 2009. In April of this year, the RIA declared of first-quarter 2011 sales: North American robotics companies enjoyed their best quarter since 2007. Reflecting on strong 2010 sales, which totaled 13,174 robots and sales of $845.6 million, RIA president Jeff Burnstein said, It was a great year for the robotics industry, not just in North America, but worldwide. But how does this play out on the plant floor of Packaging Worlds readers? The largest segment of respondents identified themselves as being in the food industry, at 23.8%, with the next largest segment, at 11.4%, identifying themselves as being involved in healthcare (pharmaceutical or medical device), and 10.1% in consumer products."(info)
- August 14, 2011: Robots on the rise - San Francisco Chronicle. GoogleNews. "Technical manuals and popular fiction helped thrust robots into the popular imagination in the late 1970s, cast in the twin archetypes of mechanical monsters or tin sidekicks. But for technical, financial and other reasons, the grand promise - or grave threat - of the rise of robots never came to pass. ) Several decades later, Ryan Calo, a legal privacy expert at Stanford, believes we're finally on the precipice of a genuine robot revolution. Subscribe to the San Francisco Chronicle and receive access to the Chronicle for iPad App and a gift: Sunday + a $15 gift card Fri-Sun + a $15 gift card Mon-Sun + a $25 gift card Robots on the rise Articles Technical manuals and popular fiction helped thrust robots into the popular imagination in the late 1970s, cast in the twin archetypes of mechanical monsters or tin sidekicks."(info)
- August 14, 2011: Montgomery Fest brings out competitive best in robotics fans - Chicago Sun-Times. GoogleNews. "Montgomery Fest brings out competitive best in robotics fans Adam VanBoekel (center) Alan Cabiness (left) and Ryan Harrison all of Oswego East High School, position their robot before a timed competition Saturday afternoon at Montgomery Fest. | Michael R. Schmidt~For Sun-Tim Article Extras Updated: August 13, 2011 6:21PM Emma Hastings did some fancy dancing, complete with quick hops and twirls, moments after seeing robots making moves at Montgomery Fest on Saturday. “… It was cool!” Emma is referring to the team called Gear It Forward, which combines students from Oswego High School and Oswego East High School. “The purpose of the competition is to basically spread science and technology to students,” said Adam Van Boekel, 16, an Oswego East High junior."(info)
- August 11, 2011: RobotWorx Celebrates 19 Years in the Robotics Industry - Benzinga. GoogleNews. "RobotWorx Celebrates 19 Years in the Robotics Industry RobotWorx Celebrates 19 Years in the Robotics Industry A testament to the resurging North American manufacturing and robotics technology market, robot integrator RobotWorx recently celebrated a record 19th year. Marion, OH (PRWEB) August 11, 2011 August 4, 2011 marked industrial robot integrator RobotWorx' 19th anniversary. The Marion, Ohio, robotics company began as a small consulting firm in 1992 and has quickly developed into a leader in the robot integration field. This past year was no exception."(info)
- August 10, 2011: Smartphones of the Future: How They Will Look, What They Will Do. PCWorld. "The mobile world is rapidly changing: Smartphones have gone from portable messaging and email devices to streaming-video machines that surf the Web at blazing speed and have cameras that rival point-and-shoots (and they also happen to make calls). What will smartphones look like in five years? According to Ramon Llamas, a senior research analyst at IDC Mobile Devices Technology and Trends, smartphones will stay around the 3.7-inch to 4.3-inch display size. Other phone manufacturers have toyed around with dual-screen phones, too: Some concept designs have a regular LCD or OLED display on one side and an electronic-ink display on the other."(info)
- August 09, 2011: What's right-brain can't be wrong. Guardian. "What would a right-brain dictionary look like? Paul Ruddy, Montreal, Canada • For starters, it wouldn't have entries on evolution or global climate change. Margaret Wilkes, Perth, Western Australia • Assuming the right is wrong, their dictionary would list propaganda lies in alphabetical order, for right-brained are verbally able. Bill Coote, Canberra, Australia Leaves and other make-up Do any animals use artificial means to make themselves look more attractive?"(info)
- August 15, 2011: Wire robot yanks your golf game into shape. NewScientist. "IS YOUR golf game lacking a finishing touch? Never fear: a robotic aid made from wires could pull your game into shape. The final stage of a hole of golf occurs on the green, when a player attempts to tap the ball into a 10-centimetre-wide hole using a flat-faced club called a putter. To do this consistently well, players must adopt a steady stance while ensuring the putter's flat face is directed at the hole during their swing's follow-through."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Robot 'Mission Impossible' wins video prize. NewScientist. "You could call it Mission Impossible: Robot Library Heist. An army of flying, rolling, and climbing robots have been taught to work together to find and snatch a book from a high shelf. A "hand-bot" then fires a grappling hook-like device up to the ceiling and scales the bookshelf. It's a simple demonstration, but in the future Dorigo says the robots could be tasked with more difficult and important tasks."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Electronic 'tattoos' to monitor vital signs. NewScientist. "Conventional technology is too bulky or obtrusive, but rub-on electronics that stick to the skin like a temporary tattoo could revolutionise medical monitoring. To avoid restricting movement, Rogers's team have given their new "epidermal electronics" the flexibility, elasticity and density of skin. This patch can then be applied to the skin like a temporary tattoo: it is placed on the skin, rubbed with a wet finger to dissolve the protective sheet and left to dry. In a preliminary study, the group put patches on the throats of volunteers."(info)
- August 10, 2011: One day in the robot house. NewScientist. "Living happily alongside domestic droids is not as simple as it seems – they need to learn what we want AS I walk across the wood-tiled floor of an IKEA-furnished living room, my footsteps appear in real time as shimmering blue footfalls on a computerised map of the room. In one corner, a robot with a single purple eye stands, brooding. This is my first taste of the technology that twelve British volunteers will experience as they live with a selection of domestic robots in a semi-detached house in Hatfield, UK, over the next few months. Lead researcher Kerstin Dautenhahn and her colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire, also in Hatfield, have an advantage over others attempting to assess domestic robots: they have bought a regular house to ground their research in the realities of domestic life."(info)
- August 09, 2011: London unrest: UK's first networked riots. NewScientist. "They are being called the UK's first networked riots. The behaviour of rioters in London and other UK cities over the past few days has been facilitated by social media such as Twitter, the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) network and Sony's Playstation Network, but studies of previous riots suggest that deep psychological forces are also at play. Meanwhile, much has been made of BBM being a secure network that is being used by looters to spread the word about which areas to target next. If the looters are counting on secrecy, they are going to be disappointed: BBM uses internet packet transmission protocols sent over the 3G mobile network, and messages are eminently traceable."(info)
- August 09, 2011: Smart software spots swaying risk of a crushing crowd. NewScientist. "A CROWD crush at the Love Parade music festival in Duisburg, Germany, last year killed 21 people and injured over 500 others. A new system aims to detect congestion hotspots, guiding security to disperse a crowd before tragedy can strike. Barbara Krausz at the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems in Sankt Augustin, Germany, developed the system based on one simple observation: when people become trapped in a highly congested area, they sway slowly from side to side in an effort to keep their balance. The system highlights such areas in red, allowing event organisers to quickly investigate the problem."(info)
- August 08, 2011: Black gold holds a charge for green cars. NewScientist. "If it works, this black sludge will transform the rechargeable battery, doubling the range of electric cars and making petroleum obsolete. Today's electric cars are handicapped by batteries that are heavy, expensive and a waste of space. That's the purpose of the secret sauce in the bottle, nicknamed "Cambridge crude" by Yet-Ming Chiang and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who developed it. This in turn forces electrons to flow in an external wire linking the electrodes, creating a current."(info)
- August 15, 2011: Better brain maps. Kurzweilai. "Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a new technique that provides rapid access to brain landmarks formerly only available at autopsy. Better brain maps will result in speeding up efforts to understand how the healthy brain works and potentially aiding in future diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders, the researchers said. It makes it possible for scientists to map myelination, the degree to which branches of brain cells are covered by a white sheath known as myelin, which speeds up long-distance signaling. Data on many subjects, acquired through many different analytical techniques, including myelination mapping, will help the resulting maps cover the range of anatomic variation present in humans."(info)
- August 15, 2011: New tool may yield smaller, faster optoelectronics. Kurzweilai. "Steering a beam of virtual particles has enabled a team of scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF) Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center of the University of California, Berkeley, to manipulate ultra-small-scale particles in real time. The researchers manipulated a blended stream of light and plasma, known as a plasmonic Airy beam. When the beam first strikes a metal surface (typically a grating structure), it stirs up small waves of electrons at the metal-insulator interface. They follow the curved trajectory of the Airy beams."(info)
- August 15, 2011: Study builds on plausible scenario for origin of life on Earth. Kurzweilai. "A relatively simple combination of naturally occurring sugars and amino acids formed on Earth before any life existed offers a plausible route to RNA, researchers at the University of California, Merced, have found. Biological molecules, such as RNA and proteins, can exist as enantiomers. Enantiomers are two molecules that are identical except for the three dimensional arrangement of the atoms that make it up. In biological systems, only one hand or enantiomer of the basic molecules that make up DNA, RNA, proteins, and sugars is used."(info)
- August 12, 2011: How to predict reaction time 4 times more accurately. Kurzweilai. "Researchers at the Stanford School of Engineering have discovered how the brain plans for and executes movements in reaction to a go signal. Their model allows us to predict with four times greater accuracy what the reaction time of any single arm motion is going to be, based on the neural activity observed prior to movement. The researchers then concentrated on the dorsal pre-motor cortical area, which shows high levels of activity during the period of time when arm movement planning takes place. Upon the go signal, the brain accelerates this neural firing until it crosses a threshold initiating the motion."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Physicists entangle 2 atoms using microwaves for the first time. Kurzweilai. "Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have entangled two separated ions (electrically charged atoms) by manipulating them with microwaves instead of the usual laser beams. The research suggests it may be possible to replace an exotic room-sized quantum computing laser park with miniaturized, commercial microwave technology similar to that used in smart phones. The team is the first to position microwave sources just 30 micrometers away from the ions to create the conditions enabling entanglement, the quantum phenomenon expected to be crucial for transporting information and correcting errors in quantum computers. Scientists manipulate and entangle the ions using microwaves fed into wires on the trap from the three thick electrodes at the lower right (credit: Y. Colombe/NIST) The scientists entangled the ions by adapting a technique they first developed with lasers."(info)
- August 10, 2011: ‘Anonymous’ plans to ‘destroy’ Facebook on Nov. 5. Kurzweilai. "A user named Anonymous has issued a YouTube press release announcing a plan dubbed Operation Facebook to destroy Facebook on Nov. 5. Facebook knows more about you than your family, has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world, the announcement says. If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook for the sake of your own privacy. Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world."(info)
- August 10, 2011: First direct biological evidence found for genetic contribution to intelligence. Kurzweilai. "Scientists at The University of Edinburgh, U.K., have found.the first direct biological evidence for a genetic contribution to people’s intelligence. The team studied two types of intelligence in more than 3,500 people from Scotland, England and Norway. They found that 40 to 50 percent of people’s differences in knowledge and problem solving skills could be traced to their genes. The study examined more than half a million genetic markers on every person’s DNA."(info)
- August 08, 2011: Breakthrough in photonic chip research paves way for ultrafast information sharing. Kurzweilai. "Researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego have discovered a way to prevent light signals on a silicon chip from reflecting backwards and interfering with its operation. Otherwise, the light beams would interfere with lasers and other photonic components on the chip and make the chip unstable. The breakthrough marks a significant achievement in the development of integrated photonic chips that could replace electronic chips as the backbone of information technology. Lab versions of photonic chips are already supporting data transfer rates of 10 gigabits per second, and in just five years, photonic chips could achieve data transfer rates of over 40 Gbps an order of magnitude higher than the speed of today s networks."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Willow Garage slashes price, arm with PR2 SE robot. Engadget. "Looking to build your own Bakebot using Willow Garage's PR2 robot development platform but can't quite scrape together the necessary $400k? Show full PR text Willow Garage Announces Availability of New PR2 Robot for $200,000 Availability of One-Armed PR2 SE Expands Market for Personal Robot Platform MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Willow Garage announced today the availability of a modified PR2 robot, the world's most advanced personal robot platform. In response to a burgeoning PR2 community Willow Garage is now offering its personal robot platform with a single arm for $285,000. With the added 30% discount offered to individuals with a proven track record in contributions to the open source community, this integrated hardware and software platform becomes affordable for researchers receiving grants from such new programs as the NSF National Robotics Initiative."(info)
- August 11, 2011: NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction And Fantasy Novels: Parsing The Results : Monkey See : NPR. NPR. "As you review the list in search of your favorite book or series, it may help to keep in mind that, despite its rather grandiose name, the Top 100 Science Fiction/Fantasy Novels of All Time Summer Readers' Survey isn't, of course, a measure of literary quality, or boldness of ideas, or richness of detail — it's a popularity contest. (It'll also help to keep in mind that Young Adult books were kept out of the running, which explains the absence of Rowling, Pullman, Narnia, Earthsea, and many more. ) Given the overwhelming response — over 60,000 votes — the truly popular titles would have been very difficult to unseat: For your favorite book to qualify for #1, it would have to have garnered more than the 29,701(! Your personal list of the "best" science-fiction and fantasy books may look nothing like this one."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Sex on Six Legs : NPR. NPR. "CHAPTER 1If You re So Smart,Why Aren t You Rich?Learning on Six LegsTHE FAMOUS eighteenth-century naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre meticulously examined the mason bees of his native France, marveling at the tiny clay cells they constructed as cradles for their helpless larvae. Later scientists were equally condescending, noting with belittling superiority that although quite a few kinds of insects can perform remarkable tasks, they cannot learn from experience the way we humans can. While grisly in certain respects, the wasp s behavior undeniably requires two of the prerequisites for intelligence: learning and memory. The caterpillars and butterflies the wasps use as prey are also capable of learning, and they can also develop preferences for particular foods, depending on the type of plant on which their mother laid her eggs."(info)
- August 15, 2011: Google agrees to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. LATimes. "Google Inc. is looking to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion in what would be the company's largest acquisition to date. Motorola Mobility is one of the biggest hardware supporters for Google's Android mobile operating system, making both smartphones and a tablet computer, called the Xoom, that run on the software. Google said that its $12.5-billion price would be a premium of 63% over the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday and that the proposed purchase was unanimously approved by the boards of directors at both tech firms. In the proposed deal, Motorola Mobility would remain a licensee of Android and Android would remain open and available for use by other hardware manufacturers at no cost, as it is now."(info)
- August 13, 2011: HTML5 apps vs. native apps: Amazon, Box.net choose both [Video]. LATimes. "HTML5 or native apps? The debate between native apps and Web apps is one we've covered on the Technology blog, and even a bit on our sister blog Company Town. Amazon's release of Kindle Cloud Reader, an HTML5 app that looks and works a lot like Amazon's Kindle app for the iPad, is an example of a Web app done right. Cloud Reader offers one difference that justifies Amazon building it; users can buy books from within the app, something they can't do in the iOS app."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Facebook tweaks game platform to increase 'virality'. LATimes. "A day after Google Inc. rolled out games for its Google+ social network, Facebook announced several tweaks to its game platform, including one major concession to reverse an earlier decision on posting game-related feeds after game publishers loudly complained. To Facebooks' 200 million players, the changes may seem minor. The site now presents bookmarks for games more prominently on users' pages and features a slightly larger window for games. Facebook also serves up a ticker of friends' gaming activities when users fire up a game, so players can see what games their friends are playing."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Sprint pulls plug on 4G version of BlackBerry PlayBook [Updated]. LATimes. "Sprint has reportedly backed out of plans to sell a version of Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that runs on its 4G WiMax cellular network. The reasoning behind pulling the plug on the WiMax PlayBook 4G? Officials at Sprint and RIM weren't available for comment Friday about the issue, but a Sprint spokeswoman told the Journal that the whole deal has no impact on our relationship with RIM. RIM has had a rough time companywide lately, and its PlayBook has experienced slow sales and a small recall."(info)
- August 12, 2011: British riots: Police use facial-recognition technology. LATimes. "Britain's police are using facial-recognition technology to help them track down those who have taken part in the riots that struck London this week. The facial-recognition technology, which belongs to London's Metropolitan Police agency, Scotland Yard, was first going to be used at the Summer Olympic Games of 2012, which are set to take place in London, according to the Associated Press. But the civil unrest that began as a protest in the neighborhood of Tottenham in response to police fatally shooting 29-year-old Mark Duggan last week, and quickly and violently spread to other parts of the city, was enough for law enforcement to put the technology into practice ahead of schedule, Chief Constable Andy Trotter of the British Transport Police told the AP. Officers have been sending photographs of suspects to Scotland Yard to be run through the agency's face-matching software, but Trotter said the technology wasn't a major part of how police would identify those who took part in the riots, the AP report said."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Elevator Labs: an L.A. start-up building L.A. start-ups. LATimes. "Elevator Labs is one of a growing numbers of start-ups in Los Angeles hoping to raise the profile of L.A.'s tech scene. Rather, Elevator Labs is in business of building start-ups. With $20 million in funding to feed Elevator Labs, the new firm is an incubator looking to start L.A. companies based off of ideas thought up by its founders, two former Virgin Digital executives, Zack Zalon and Brendon Cassidy. Hello music is the first but we have other projects coming and we're working to build, incubate, fund and execute and launch L.A. companies."(info)
- August 10, 2011: Neato XV-11 Update: Your Vacuum Just Got Smarter. IEEE Spectrum. "Tweet The Neato Robotics XV-11 robot vacuum comes with a USB port for downloadable updates. It's a robot, and one of the great things about robots is that you can teach them new stuff and make them smarter. While it's one thing to talk about firmware updates and new features in the abstract (which we hear a lot), it's quite another to put time and energy into developing them, and it's something else entirely to then offer said upgrades to your customers for free. This is what Neato has decided to do with the 2.1 version of their vacuuming software."(info)
- August 09, 2011: $500 RC Truck Is an IED Detecting Robot That (Should Be) Affordable for Everyone. IEEE Spectrum. "Tweet Robots like iRobot PackBots are great tools for (among other things) detecting IEDs, and they've managed to save the lives of countless soldiers, often by sacrificing themselves. Take the RC truck in the above picture. It's pretty fancy, as RC trucks go, with a top speed of 60 mph and costing several hundred dollars. The system was shipped to Afghanistan by the brother of a soldier stationed there, who used it scout for IEDs from the distant safety of an armored Humvee."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Professors receive grant to fund seminar on policy, food - Indiana Daily Student. GoogleNews. "Two IU faculty members were awarded a $172,000 grant to support their upcoming seminar on food, “Food Choice, Freedom and Politics.” The professors leading the seminar include anthropology and gender studies professor Richard Wilk and cognitive science and informatics professor Peter Todd. Wilk leads the Food Studies program in the Department of Anthropology and Todd often teaches a freshmen honors seminar called “Food for Thought: The Cognitive Science of Eating.” The grant was awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through its Sawyer Seminars program. “Food Choice, Freedom and Politics” marks the second time an IU proposal has been awarded the grant. “IU is grateful to have been invited to successfully participate in three different Mellon funded programs,” Sarita Soni, vice provost for research at IU Bloomington, said in the release."(info)
- August 10, 2011: Mellon Foundation grant funds IU seminar on 'Food Choice, Freedom and Politics' - Indiana University. GoogleNews. "The award supports a seminar titled "Food Choice, Freedom, and Politics," to be convened by Richard Wilk and Peter Todd. Wilk is Provost's Professor of anthropology and gender studies at IU Bloomington, where he also co-founded and leads the Food Studies program in the Department of Anthropology. Todd is professor of cognitive science and informatics in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU Bloomington, where he regularly teaches a freshman honors seminar titled Food for Thought: The Cognitive Science of Eating. A small number of universities are invited to compete for Sawyer Seminar funding."(info)
- August 11, 2011: A Rational Argument for the Existence of the Human Soul - Huffington Post. GoogleNews. "share this story All sentient people possess the same intuitive awareness of their own existence. It seems to me that the answer to this query is fairly binary -- either our self-awareness is a function of the mechanistic forces of the brain and its structure or our consciousness exists in time but not in space and is rooted in a plane of reality that is beyond (but interacts with) our own. All we need concern ourselves with is -- what is the simplest solution to what Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett has referred to as the "problem of consciousness? " Why then should we not consider the possibility -- the one that satisfies our deepest, most powerful and intuitive sense -- that the "I" that we all experience is the human soul?"(info)
- August 14, 2011: Financial debacles fray confidence, tempers - STLtoday.com. GoogleNews. "Friday August 12, 2011--Chris Leuther, owner of the Party Pastry Shop, works in the kitchen of his bakery in Ballwin on Friday. He also could play most of the typecast roles in articles about the economy: consumer, shopkeeper, investor. Her message hit a nerve in a nation staring into the hole of a third year of economic troubles, its leaders unable to agree on the government's next move, with widening U.S. income inequality and growing economic instability in Europe. Sandy Rossini, a clerk at Leuther's store, says, "If I had the money, I'd do it myself."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Bringing Science to the Silver Screen - Arizona Public Media. GoogleNews. "The program is designed to pair feature films, old and new, with insightful contextual discussions by leading experts in science and medicine. The first film in the series will be screened Friday, and will feature a panel discussion with faculty from the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences . Project Nim is an award-winning documentary that tells the tragic story of Nim, a chimpanzee who became the subject of a controversial language acquisition experiment during the 1970s. Add a Comment Name Email address URL Comment If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam Comments are encouraged, but you may not use profanity or post anything unrelated, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, or other materials which would violate the law."(info)
- August 15, 2011: 2011-2012 George T. Hunter Lecture Series Line-Up Announced - The Chattanoogan. GoogleNews. "The Benwood Foundation announced that education reform advocate Michelle Rhee will be the debut speaker of the 2011-2012 George T. Hunter Lecture Series on Sept. 20. Now in its fourth year, the lecture series is sponsored by the Benwood Foundation, in partnership with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies, and CreateHere. Following Ms. Rhee�s lecture, the remaining three speakers in the lecture series will be community planning expert Armando Carbonell on Nov. 1; former U.S. By doing so, we hope to generate meaningful dialogue around big ideas and how they apply to community issues within Chattanooga."(info)
- August 09, 2011: Lawsuit aimed at Apple's Mac OS may be Android battle by proxy, says expert - Computerworld. GoogleNews. "Computerworld - A patent lawsuit aimed at Apple could be the latest shot in the ongoing battle between that company and Google's Android mobile operating system, a patent expert said today. In a filing with a federal court in Florida, Operating Systems Solutions (OSS) claimed that Apple's Mac OS X operating system and its Mac personal computers infringe on a patent that describes a "method for fast booting a computer system. " The lawsuit, which was first reported by the Patently Apple blog, is notable because it was originally assigned to LG Electronics, the South Korean company that makes smartphones and tablets powered by Google's Android . This independent paper from senior analyst Jon Collins at FreeForm Dynamics considers how Web-based security threats are evolving, within the context of IT trends including mobile, home computing and other forms of remote access that could potentially increase the attack surface of the companies."(info)
- August 11, 2011: Researcher Teaches Computers to Detect Spam More Accurately - CSO. GoogleNews. "Researcher Teaches Computers to Detect Spam More Accurately Without spam detection many of us would spend hours managing the daily load of e-mails. Nina Balcan develops machine learning methods that could be used to develop personalized automatic programs for deciding whether an e-mail is spam or not. For her efforts, the computer scientist from the Georgia Institute of Technology has just been awarded with a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship. Balcan is one of eight recipients of the fellowships the company has awarded this year."(info)
- August 12, 2011: Japanese Scientists Unveil Thinking, Learning Robot - Escapist Magazine. GoogleNews. "Japanese Scientists Unveil Thinking, Learning Robot In an effort to remove the one advantage mankind has over our mechanical underlings, Japanese researchers have created a robot capable of human-like problem solving. The YouTube clip at right shows the 'bot in action as its creators put it through a test of its abilities. The robot will be told to pour a glass of water, make it cold, and give it to a person. If the robot is told that cold water is wanted, it recognizes that after pouring the water, it can't pick up ice straight away, because it's hands are already full with the glass and the bottle."(info)
- August 15, 2011: Chat Translation Q&A Provides Excellent Introduction to Advantages - TMC Net. GoogleNews. "Chat Translation Featured Articles. Chat Translation Q&A Provides Excellent Introduction to Advantages GeoFluent is a relatively new edition to the chat translation industry and is a cost-effective, instant translation tool of communications and content into multiple languages. Lionbridge is one of the more high-profile providers of chat translation, so examining their offerings is a good way to get an idea of what you should probably expect from the services. They offer automated machine translation technology to render content and communications into multiple languages."(info)
- August 11, 2011: “Monkey with a Grenade” - ArmsControlWonk.com. GoogleNews. "Aleksandr Bolgarov is a Russian engineer who spent two years at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and has given a not entirely reassuring interview ( in Russian ) about safety at the plant. At one point, the journalist asks Bulgarov whether the situation at Bushehr can be fairly compared to a “monkey with a grenade.” Bolgarov disagreed with that characterization, noting that the Russians will most likely operate the plant for the next few years. Bolgarov has lots of details on the politics between Russia and Iran over the construction of the plant, expatriate life at Bushehr (miserable), and the the safety of the plant — including details on the pump that failed last year. How [people] end up in Bushehr [Alekseyev] What were you working on before you ended up in Bushehr?"(info)
- August 14, 2011: Parents concerned about high-tech classrooms in Connecticut - West Hartford News. GoogleNews. "Parents concerned about high-tech classrooms in Connecticut Classrooms across the country are becoming increasingly high-tech, and teachers are incorporating 3D imaging, digital devices and the latest computer applications into their daily curriculum. In Connecticut, schools and economic development agencies alike are working to prepare a new generation of students for careers in math in science, with new jobs being created by projects like the new Bioscience Connecticut. While these high-tech applications can greatly enhance learning, they also increase the importance of proper eye and vision care. According to the AOA2011 American Eye-Q survey, parents have some concern about the effects of the evolving technology."(info)
- August 09, 2011: Classrooms Go High-Tech - WALA-TV FOX10. GoogleNews. "That’s an increase of $300,000 from 2010. While these devices can greatly enhance learning, they also increase the importance of proper eye and vision care. According to the American Optometric Association's 2011 American Eye-Q survey, prolonged use of these technologies can cause eye strain, headaches, fatigue, burning or tired eyes, loss of focus, blurred vision, double vision or head and neck pain. Optometrists suggest giving your eyes a break from those computer screens every once and a while."(info)
- August 09, 2011: A simple new imaging system could help identify cancer and inspect products - Balkans.com Business News. GoogleNews. "A simple new imaging system could help identify cancer and inspect products A simple new imaging system could help manufacturers inspect their products, forensics experts identify weapons and doctors identify cancers.By combining a clever physical interface with computer-vision algorithms, researchers in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive... The heart of the system, dubbed GelSight, is a slab of transparent, synthetic rubber, one of whose sides is coated with a paint containing tiny flecks of metal. When pressed against the surface of an object, the paint-coated side of the slab deforms. In a 2009 paper, Edward Adelson, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Vision Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Micah Kimo Johnson, who was a postdoc in Adelson’s lab at the time, reported on an earlier version of GelSight, which was sensitive enough to detect the raised ink patterns on a $20 bill."(info)
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