…within 15 years robots will have overtaken us, having fulfilled the so-called Turing test where computers can exhibit intelligent behaviour equal to that of a human.
Click the link to see more: Robots will be smarter than us all by 2029, warns AI expert Ray Kurzweil - News - Gadgets & Tech - The Independent
The Mx3D-Metal robot is part printer, part welder. It can sculpt remarkable, gravity-defying designs using a variety of metals, including steel, stainless steel, aluminum, bronze and copper, without the need for any other means of support. "By adding small amounts of molten metal at a time, we are able to print lines in mid air," explains Laarman on his website.
Click the link to see more: 3D-printing robot creates freestanding metal structures
Click the link to see more: 3D Printed Exoskeleton Helps Amanda Boxtel Walk Again | 3D Printer3D Printer
It might sound difficult to define what makes a smart company, but you know one when you see it. When such a company commercializes a truly innovative technology, things happen: leadership in a market is bolstered or thrown up for grabs. Competitors have to refine or rethink their strategies.
Click the link to see more: MIT Technology Review's List of 50 Smartest Companies for 2014 | MIT Technology Review
The latest batch of Pharaoh’s magicians.
The engineers do things that the shamans and wizards of previous eras only promised, and they do them so well, and so reliably, that their reward is to be taken for granted. So here's my request: every once in a while, stop and think about the miracles inherent in everyday devices, and send a silent prayer of thanks to the engineers who made them possible.
Click the link to see more: Cyborgization
Improves Lives - TCS Daily
If you’ve been tracking the posts on this blog, you already know technology is magical. The question is how we understand it and articulate that understanding.
32-year-old Timo Boll is Germany's table tennis champion, currently ranked number eight in the world. He is also a new "brand ambassador" for KUKA Robotics in China.
The company's "Agilus" robot is the fastest robot in the world, and it appears to play a pretty mean game of ping pong itself.
Click the link to see more: Timo Boll Playing Ping Pong Against A Robot - Business Insider
Techno-Immanuel: Robots with advanced capabilities will soon dwell among us.
Via Instapundit and Penn State News:
…a team of chemists and engineers at Penn State has placed tiny synthetic motors inside live human cells, propelled them with ultrasonic waves and steered them magnetically.
Nanomotors are controlled, for the first time, inside living cells | Penn State University
John Sleezer | The Kansas City Star Mason Wilde, 16, has been building things since he was little. He put his skills to good use by using the Johnson County Library’s 3-D printer to craft a prosthetic hand for 9-year-old Matthew, who was born with only a thumb on his right hand.
Click the link to see more: Kansas teen uses 3-D printer to make hand for boy - KansasCity.com
Democratization of technology. Anyone can do it.
Scientists in California said on Wednesday night that they have for the first time managed to release more energy from their nuclear fusion experiment than they put into it, which marks a critical threshold in eventually achieving the goal of a self-sustaining nuclear-fusion reaction.
Click the link to see more: The lasers fuelling hopes of unlimited, clean nuclear energy - Science - News - The IndependentPoints:
…culture can be a bit amorphous. Few companies successfully develop one. Fewer still can articulate theirs in a mission statement, let alone truly incorporate it into everything they do: making culture a part of their performance criteria, managing employee performance according to the cultural expectations, and documenting how employees perform as part of that culture. Yet the best companies do all of these things, turning their culture into both a sword and a shield—a way to improve performance and also to mitigate the risk of toxic high performers. How? They ingrain it into every facet of the business—making it a key part of all aspects of the employee life cycle, with documentation to show how it was done.
Click the link to see more: How to Get the Wrong People Off the Bus
The fact that genome editing worked to create modified monkeys suggests it might also work to create genetically modified humans. Crispr is already used to modify human cells grown in labs, but it has not yet been tested on human embryos or adults. “We believe the success of this strategy in nonhuman primates gives lots of potential for its application in humans, but we think due to the safety issue, it will take a long way for expanding this strategy to human embryos,” says Ji.
Click the link to see more: Gene Surgery Creates First Monkeys Modified with Precision Genome Editing | MIT Technology Review
Coming to a baby near you.
In the fourth quarter of 2013, GDP grew 6.5 percent, and the Philippines remains the fastest-growing economy in Asia after China.
…Even though Typhoon Haiyan caused devastating damage and left at least 6,200 people dead, the economy has remained surprisingly strong. In 2014, it’s expected that the trend will continue as a result of rebuilding efforts and faster growth from the global economy.
Click the link to see more: The Philippines After Typhoon Haiyan: Fastest Q4 GDP Growth In Asia After China
Resiliency
Double allows an unparalleled degree of flexibility when it comes to needing to be places. I loved working from my couch and desk at home while remotely wheeling a robot around the BI office, some ten miles away. I was attending Manhattan meetings from Brooklyn, conversing with everyone in realtime and making literal eye contact from miles away without any problems to speak of. I could've just as easily been in Singapore or on a Wi-Fi-enabled flight.
Click the link to see more: Double Telepresence Robot - Business Insider
One person’s experiment with telepresence.
Via Business Insider:
Pater believes that as drones become increasingly common, people should have the tools to identify them at a moment's notice. The ability to recognize a drone by their silhouette, Pater thinks, is much like our ancestors' ability to spot predators from afar.
Military people will remember aircraft and vehicle recognition flash cards.
