This robot may make your skin crawl

Editor's Note: The hope of researchers is that this robot can not only fit anywhere in the human body but can crawl there under its own power and, once there,perform whatever functions are needed.

American Technion Society - July 7, 2009, by Kevin Hattori

Technion researchers have created a micro robot that can crawl through the human body.

Moving reality a step closer to "Fantastic Voyage," researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a micro robot that can crawl through the human body.

The robot is propelled by micro legs, a mechanism especially adapted to the movements of a tiny body through water. It is only a millimeter in diameter and 14 millimeters long, fitting on the tip of a finger, so it can get into the body’s smallest areas. It is powered by either actuation through magnetic force located outside the body, or through an on-board actuation system. Made of silicone and metal, it can be made completely biocompatible, so it could remain in the body much as a stent placed in arteries does.

“In the future, we hope the robot will be able to travel through a blood vessel, the digestive tract or the lungs, delivering targeted medicines to specific locations, clearing blockages, performing biopsies, or placed inside a shunt to drain body fluids from clogged areas,” Shoham explains.

The development has been presented at scientific conferences where it has aroused great interest. Professor Menashe Zaaroor and research engineer Oded Salomon also participated in the research.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

A better virtual assistant

Editor's Note: Remember the dancing paperclip that came with MS Office? Clippy was his name. Very annoying. Researchers think it's time we had the real thing.

New Scientist - July 29, 2009, by MacGregor Campbell

Two years since its demise, the spectre of Microsoft's animated paperclip, Clippy, still haunts anyone hoping to develop a virtual assistant to help people get things done. Few have tried to push virtual assistants to the public since.

But Clippy's unpopularity hasn't deterred the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from spending an estimated $150 million on its own virtual helper.

And although intended to ease the US military's bureaucratic load, an artificially intelligent helper based on the project is heading the way of consumers later this year.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Intel CTO acknowledges the approach of the Singularity

Editor's Note: It is interesting to follow the mainstreaming of the Singularity. Most people still have no idea what you're talking about, but, baby-step by baby-step, as tech luminaries begin to discuss it, humans are beginning to get a clue.

EDN - June 25, 2009

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.—Vernor Vinge

You are to be forgiven if you have yet to hear of the coming singularity. It’s a science fiction premise espoused by SF author Vernor Vinge back in 1993. Boy genius Ray Kurzweil put meat on the bones of the idea by writing multiple tomes on the topic. The premise of The Singularity is that soon, perhaps within one to four decades, we will be able to build machines with something rivaling human intelligence. Shortly after that happens, the age of humans will end as machines evolve like...well machines, and leave us to choke in their dust. Of course, that’s not how Vinge and Kurzweil see it. They’re optimistic that the machines will serve us. Or at least tolerate us. Apparently, they haven’t seen the Terminator or Matrix movies.

In any case, I attended a lunch-time interview with Intel’s CTO Justin Rattner at the Computer History Museum today. The interview is part of a year-long series of events at the museum, which is celebrating the 50th year of the Integrated Circuit. (That’s a big thing here in Silicon Valley.) During the interview, Kate Greene, Information Technology Editor at the MIT Technology Review gently tossed softball questions at Rattner. Most of the questions at the beginning focused on the singularity.

Greene’s first question concerned when we’d know that the singularity had arrived. Rattner replied that we’d know it was here when we saw a robot emptying our dishwasher. In other words, when we’ve handed routine tasks over to machines, then we should know.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Are we to be doomed by smart machines?

Editor's Note: A distinguished group of researchers will convene soon to discuss the possibility of self-aware and generally intelligent machines acting in ways that endanger human existence. This article touches upon some of the specific danger they will address.

New Scientist - July 27, 2009, by MacGregor Campbell

What would happen if robots reached human-level artificial intelligence? (Image: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features)

An invasion led by artificially intelligent machines. Conscious computers. A smartphone virus so smart that it can start mimicking you. You might think that such scenarios are laughably futuristic, but some of the world's leading artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are concerned enough about the potential impact of advances in AI that they have been discussing the risks over the past year. Now they have revealed their conclusions.

Until now, research in artificial intelligence has been mainly occupied by myriad basic challenges that have turned out to be very complex, such as teaching machines to distinguish between everyday objects. Human-level artificial intelligence or self-evolving machines were seen as long-term, abstract goals not yet ready for serious consideration.

At the moment such systems only advise or assist humans, but the AAAI panel warns that the day is not far off when machines could have far greater ability to make and execute decisions on their own, albeit within a narrow range of expertise.

Now, for the first time, a panel of 25 AI scientists, roboticists, and ethical and legal scholars has been convened to address these issues, under the auspices of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in Menlo Park, California. It looked at the feasibility and ramifications of seemingly far-fetched ideas, such as the possibility of the internet becoming self-aware.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Reading and Writing to Genes - How to accelerate evolution

Editor's Note: Remember when reading the genetic codes of organisms was new and exciting? Now, the cutting edge is writing genetic codes. Researchers have been able to manipulate individual genes in order to change an organism's properties for a few years, but now, thanks to this new development, they can manipulate thousands at a time.

New Scientist - July 26, 2009, by Ewen Callaway

If humans want to persuade microbes to produce vast quantities of fuels or pharmaceuticals, we may need to give evolution a helping hand. A new genome engineering machine that tweaks dozens of genes to create billions of unique strains in a few days does just that.

"This technique allows us to do some amount of rapid evolution," says Harris Wang, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, who led the project along with colleagues Farren Isaacs and George Church.

"The general motivation behind what we're trying to do is develop a set of techniques that will allow us to write into the genome of any organism with the same ease that we are able to read from the genome by DNA sequencing," he adds.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Massive advances in the predictive power of technology expected

Editor's Note: Setting aside unscientific, hysterical and politically-motivated predictions about the future, there are some very real advances in computer hardware, software and data-gathering tools that will result in amazing predictive power.

PhysOrg.com - July 23, 2009

Much as meteorologists predict the path and intensity of hurricanes, Indiana University's Alessandro Vespignani believes we will one day predict with unprecedented foresight, specificity and scale such things as the economic and social effects of billions of new Internet users in China and India, or the exact location and number of airline flights to cancel around the world in order to halt the spread of a pandemic.

In tomorrow's (July 24) "Perspectives" section of the journal Science, Vespignani writes that advances in complex networks theory and modeling, along with access to new data, will enable humans to achieve true predictive power in areas never before imagined. This capability will be realized as the one wild card in the mix -- the social behavior of large aggregates of humans -- becomes more definable through progress in data gathering, new informatics tools and increases in computational power.

Vespignani is the James H. Rudy Professor of Informatics and adjunct professor of physics and statistics at IU, where he is also the director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (CNetS) at IU's Pervasive Technology Institute and the IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing.

Researchers have already shown they can track the movement of as many as 100,000 people at a time over six months using mobile phone data, and use worldwide currency traffic as a proxy for human mobility. There are sensors and tags generating data at micro, one-to-one interaction levels, much as Bluetooth, Global Positioning Systems and WiFi leave behind detailed traces of our lives.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

10-year countdown on a working artificial brain

Editor's Note: A leading researcher has proposed that a working artificial brain can be developed and built within the next 10 years. This is not the wild speculation of some know-nothing prognosticator, but rather an estimate based on some solid work already being done in the lab. Read on.

BBC - July 22, 2009, by Jonathan Fildes

Professor Markram said he would send a hologram to talk at TED in 10 years

A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.

He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.

Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.

"It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," he said.

For example, they can show the brain a picture - say, of a flower - and follow the electrical activity in the machine.

"You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation," he said.

Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers could see directly how a brain perceives the world.

"And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk."

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Quantum Key Distribution moves out to 250 km

Editor's Note: In the world of communications and information, secrecy and security are paramount. Firms are always on the lookout for ways to make their security unbreakable, hence the field of cryptography. Using quantum key distribution essentially makes the sending and receiving of cryptographic keys unhackable, since any attempt to intercept the communication, because of the laws of quantum mechanics, results in that information being changed.

PhysOrg.com - July 21, 2009, by Lisa Zyga

Quantum key distribution (QKD) could be the next commercial success of quantum physics, and a recent study has taken the field a step closer to this reality. Researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Corning Incorporated in New York have demonstrated a new QKD prototype that can distribute quantum keys over a distance of 250 km in the lab, improving upon the previous record of 200 km. The scientists hope that the achievement will lead to the goal of distributing quantum keys over intercity distances of 300 km in the near future.

As the researchers explained, the purpose of QKD schemes is to distribute a secret quantum key between two distant locations with security relying on the laws of quantum physics. The idea of QKD was first proposed in 1984, and in 1992, scientists could distribute quantum keys over 32 cm, while the technology has improved from there. Despite these advances, the scientists say, the main challenge is still to achieve higher bit rates over longer distances.

To reach their new record of 250 km, the scientists made three significant improvements to their QKD technique. First, they developed a coherent one way (COW) protocol tailored specifically for quantum communication over optical fiber networks. In addition, they used an improved superconducting single-photon detector to decrease noise, as well as ultra low loss fibers made by Corning to minimize channel loss and improve the distribution rate.

By making these improvements, the physicists could distribute quantum keys in the lab at a rate of 15 bits per second over 250 km of optical fiber, or 6,000 bits per second over 100 km, with low error rates. The system is also fully automated, and can run for hours without human intervention.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Tiny telescopes in our eyes

Editor's Note: I'm all for giving people with poor eyesight the opportunity to see optimally before anyone gets the chance to see better than optimally. That being said, I thing people should be allowed to see super-optimally eventually.

NYT - July 18, 2009, by Annie Eisenberg

A TINY glass telescope, the size of a pea, has been successfully implanted in the eyes of people with severely damaged retinas, helping them to read, watch television and better see familiar faces.

The new device is for people with an irreversible, advanced form of macular degeneration in which a blind spot develops in the central vision of both eyes.

In a brief, outpatient procedure, a corneal specialist implants the mini-telescope in one eye in place of its natural lens. The telescope magnifies images on the retina, extending them so they fall on healthy cells outside the damaged macula, said Allen W. Hill, chief executive of VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies in Saratoga, Calif., the implant’s maker.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Who let the crickets out?

Editor's Note: Blanketing the landscape with robotic insects in order to establish an omnipresent early-warning network is an idea that has some money behind it, as you'll see below.

PhysOrg.com - July 13, 2009, by Lisa Zyga

By taking advantage of the way crickets communicate, researchers are building "cyborg crickets" that could form a mobile communications network for emergency situations, such as detecting chemical attacks on the battlefield, locating disaster victims, monitoring gas leaks, and acting as smoke detectors.

This kind of living, mobile communication network would include groups of not only crickets, but also cicadas and katydids. Like their natural counterparts, the cyborgs would communicate through wing beats. Containing a package of electronics and sensors, the insects would change their call tone in the presence of various chemical and biological agents on the battlefield, or even the scent of humans trapped in rubble after natural disasters.

The technology's designer, Ben Epstein, came up with the idea during a visit to China, where he heard cicadas changing calls in response to each other. Recently, the Pentagon has awarded Epstein's Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey-based company, OpCoast, a six-month contract to develop a mobile communications network for insects. The biggest challenge will be to fit all the necessary electronics into a tiny body, and then make hundreds or thousands of them in each network.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Can we push past the mouse and keyboard interface?

Editor's Note: Human beings are generally averse to change. We've become quite used to the keyboard and mouse, window and icon and toolbar interface with our computing machines, and it will take a fantastic new set of methods to make us choose something different. The touchscreen is only useful with handheld devices when you get right down to it. Voice recognition and motion sensing may be useful. But the real enchilada, if you ask me, is thought. Anyway, this article describes a company that wants to set up an OpenInterface project to get things moving.

ScienceDaily - July 17, 2009

Human-computer interaction is undergoing a revolution, entering a multimodal era that goes beyond, way beyond, the WIMP (Windows-Icons-Menus-Pointers) paradigm. Now European researchers have developed a platform to speed up that revolution.

We have the technology. So why is our primary human-computer interface (HCI) based on the 35-year-old Windows-Icons-Menus-Pointers paradigm? Voice, gestures, touch, haptics, force feedback and many other sensors or effectors exist that promise to simplify and simultaneously enhance human interaction with computers, but we are still stuck with some 100 or so keys, a mouse and sore wrists.

In part, the slow pace of interface development is just history repeating itself. The story of mechanical systems that worked faster than handwriting is a 150-year saga that, eventually, led to the QWERTY keyboard in the early 1870s.

In part, the problem is one of complexity. Interface systems have to adapt to human morphology and neurology and they have to do their job better than before. It can take a lot of time to figure how to improve these interfaces.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Future computer interfaces: life beyond keyboard and mouse (guardian.co.uk)

Read more...

Brain Hacking - Security issue of the future

Editor's Note: Just about everyone who's not a Ted Kaczynski disciple knows that computer networks are constantly facing an onslaught of attacks from hackers. The only computers that are relatively safe are those that are not attached to any network. It used to be that human brains were in that category, safely ensconced withing the confines of our skulls. That safely may be ending soon. As implants are incorporated and connected wirelessly to the outside world, what makes us think that hackers won't try to gain control? Talk about zombies.

Wired Science - July 9, 2009, by Hadley Leggett

Hackers who commandeer your computer are bad enough. Now scientists worry that someday, they’ll try to take over your brain.

In the past year, researchers have developed technology that makes it possible to use thoughts to operate a computer, maneuver a wheelchair or even use Twitter — all without lifting a finger. But as neural devices become more complicated — and go wireless — some scientists say the risks of “brain hacking” should be taken seriously.

“Neural devices are innovating at an extremely rapid rate and hold tremendous promise for the future,” said computer security expert Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington. “But if we don’t start paying attention to security, we’re worried that we might find ourselves in five or 10 years saying we’ve made a big mistake.”

Hackers tap into personal computers all the time — but what would happen if they focused their nefarious energy on neural devices, such as the deep-brain stimulators currently used to treat Parkinson’s and depression, or electrode systems for controlling prosthetic limbs? According to Kohno and his colleagues, who published their concerns July 1 in Neurosurgical Focus, most current devices carry few security risks. But as neural engineering becomes more complex and more widespread, the potential for security breaches will mushroom.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Military robots will live off the dead?

Editor's Note: If robots eat the dead for fuel, will they make people dead when hungry?

Live Science - July 15, 2009, by Robert Roy Britt

A steam-powered robot is being designed to fuel itself by consuming organic material, from grass to furniture or even dead bodies, Fox News reports.

But c'mon, could the U.S. military really deploy something to do that without a global outcry? The 'bot, from Robotic Technology Inc., is called the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR). It can "find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass."

According to the company's web site, the purpose of EATR:

"To develop and demonstrate an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling, which would otherwise preclude the ability of the robot to perform such missions. The system obtains its energy by foraging – engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable."

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Reverse engineering insect brains

Editor's Note: What's different about this project is that it's not just about building insect-sized robots, but rather reverse engineering the brains of the living animals and building artificial ones programmed to carry out the manufacturers' wishes.

PhysOrg.com - July 14, 2009, by Miwa Suzuki

Police release a swarm of robot-moths to sniff out a distant drug stash. Rescue robot-bees dodge through earthquake rubble to find survivors.

These may sound like science-fiction scenarios, but they are the visions of Japanese scientists who hope to understand and then rebuild the brains of insects and programme them for specific tasks.

Ryohei Kanzaki, a professor at Tokyo University's Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology, has studied insect brains for three decades and become a pioneer in the field of insect-machine hybrids.

His original and ultimate goal is to understand human brains and restore connections damaged by diseases and accidents -- but to get there he has taken a very close look at insects' "micro-brains".

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

When you're (robot is) smiling

Editor's Note: When people smile at me, I tend to feel more safe with them, more friendly towards them. That's why we smile at people, especially strangers. If robots, or artificial persons, are going to move about and interact with the rest of us effectively, it stands to reason that they'll need to know when to smile, frown, bare their teeth, etc. Which is what this fellow is learning.

Technology Review - July 10, 2009, by Kristina Grifantini

The UCSD robot watches itself to learn how to pull new facial expressions. (Photo Courtesy of UCSD)

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), who demoed a realistic-looking robot Einstein at the TED Conference last February, have now gone a step farther, infusing the robot with the ability to improve its own expressions through learning.

Previously, the head of the robot--designed by Hanson Robotics--could only respond to the people around it using a variety of preprogrammed expressions. With 31 motors and a realistic skinlike material called Frubber, the head delighted and surprised TED conference goers last winter.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

The science of happiness

Editor's Note: People generally know what happiness feels like, although it's devilishly difficult to describe. And we generally want to feel happy most, if not all, the time. Hence the proliferation of things that purport to be happy-making, some benign, some beneficial, some destructive and addictive. We have no instruction booklet to show us how to attain happiness-maximum, although various groups and organizations claim to have one. Here's an interesting article on the beneficial aspects of "seeding" our lives with positive emotions."

ScienceDaily - July 12, 2009

Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction By Building Resilience

People who seed their life with frequent moments of positive emotions increase their resilience against challenges, according to a new study by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill psychologist and colleagues.

“This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go,” said Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and the principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory. “Those small moments let positive emotions blossom, and that helps us become more open. That openness then helps us build resources that can help us rebound better from adversity and stress, ward off depression and continue to grow.”

“The levels of positive emotions that produced good benefits weren’t extreme. Participants with average and stable levels of positive emotions still showed growth in resilience even when their days included negative emotions.”

In the month long study, 86 participants were asked to submit daily “emotion reports,” rather than answering general questions like, “Over the last few months, how much joy did you feel?”

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Positive Emotional Psychology: Have a 'Daily Diet' of Positive Emotions (health.usnews.com)

Read more...

With new technology must come new diseases

Editor's Note: This won't be a new disease, but rather a new expression of an old one. People with addictive personalities will find things to be addicted to, and if drugs, drink, porn and slot machines aren't enough, bring on the smartphones.

WSJ - July 7, 2009, by E. Kinney Zalesne

Smartphoniacs: Addicts of the Information Age

Among everybody from our leaders to our teenagers, no habit is spreading faster than being connected 24/7 via a smart phone.

Its penetration in the U.S. is estimated at 18%, and it seems that everywhere you turn, people are using their smart phones in new ways and in new places. Samsung recently estimated that it expects 500 million global smart-phone users by 2012. Actual phone calls are becoming extinct compared with handheld texts and email messages -- whoever thought people would prefer typing to talking? But the evidence appears to say they do.

Here are five tell-tale traits of Smartphoniacs:

Do they take their smart phones with them when they get up from the table to go to the restroom -- and do they take an awful lot of trips there?

This has also given rise to a group of people -- the top 10% of smart-phone users -- who just can't stop. They are the smartphoniacs, the true addicts of the information age.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Of Mice and Men - Life Extension

Editor's Note: We're always reading about wonder drugs that work on mice. I'm waiting for the article that says: Works on humans too! Pick it up at your local Walgreen's!

Technology Review - July 8, 2009, by Jocelyn Rice

First Drug Shown to Extend Life Span in Mammals - Rapamycin, an immunosuppressant, enables elderly mice to live longer.

A drug derived from bacteria in the soil on Easter Island can substantially extend the life span of mice, according to a study published online today in Nature. The drug, called rapamycin, is the first pharmacological agent shown to enhance longevity in a mammal, and it works when administered beginning late in life. Prior to this research, the only ways to increase rodents' life span were via genetic engineering or caloric restriction--a nutritionally complete but very low-calorie diet.

Rapamycin is an antifungal compound already approved by the FDA as an immunosuppressive therapy to help prevent organ rejection in transplant patients. It is currently being tested in clinical trials for potential anticancer effects.

The drug had previously been shown to extend life span in invertebrates. "[This study is] exciting because it shows that it's feasible to do this in a mammal," says David Sinclair, codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study. "Maybe 20 years from now we'll look back at this study as a landmark that pointed the way to medicines of the future."

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Easter Island compound vastly boosts lifespan in mice (nationalpost.com)

Read more...

Memristors - The pathway to artificial intelligence?

Editor's Note: This is a story about two remarkable phenomena that cause quantum leaps is science and technology. First is the discovery, by pure mathematics, of a physical entity that should exist, but has never been seen. Einstein discovered black holes in this manner. The second phenomenon in the intuitive connection that is made from one set knowledge to another, sometimes across centuries, as when one scientist discovers an obscure set of equations in an old book and finds within it an answer to a modern-day problem. In this article is described a researcher's discovery, by pure mathematics, of a basic circuit element that should exist, but did not. He called it a memristor. Another scientist discovered that a slime mold was in fact an analogue of the memristor in nature. The connection? Biological memristors in the brain allowing for the existence of intelligence, hence the possibility of electronic memristors providing the breakthrough needed for artificial intelligence. Read on!

NewScientist - July 8, 2009, by Justin Mullins

Slime mould feeding on the surface of an almond. These cunning organisms could be the missing link in memory circuits (Image: Eye of Science/Science Photo Library

EVER had the feeling something is missing? If so, you're in good company. Dmitri Mendeleev did in 1869 when he noticed four gaps in his periodic table. They turned out to be the undiscovered elements scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium. Paul Dirac did in 1929 when he looked deep into the quantum-mechanical equation he had formulated to describe the electron. Besides the electron, he saw something else that looked rather like it, but different. It was only in 1932, when the electron's antimatter sibling, the positron, was sighted in cosmic rays that such a thing was found to exist.

In 1971, Leon Chua had that feeling. A young electronics engineer with a penchant for mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, he was fascinated by the fact that electronics had no rigorous mathematical foundation. So like any diligent scientist, he set about trying to derive one.

Were this an article about a conventional breakthrough in electronics, that would be the end of the story. Better memory materials alone do not set the pulse racing. We have come to regard ever zippier consumer electronics as a basic right, and are notoriously insouciant about the improvements in basic physics that make them possible. What's different about memristors?

And he found something missing: a fourth basic circuit element besides the standard trio of resistor, capacitor and inductor. Chua dubbed it the "memristor". The only problem was that as far as Chua or anyone else could see, memristors did not actually exist.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Ray Kurzweil on How to Combat Aging

Editor's Note: Ray is one of my heroes. Although oft taken out of context and otherwise misinterpreted, he offers a glimpse into the future based on extrapolating from the past.

Technology Review - July 6, 2009, by Ray Kurzweil

Entropy is not the most fruitful perspective from which to view aging. There are varying error rates in biological information processes depending on the cell type and this is part of biology's paradigm. We have means already of determining error-free DNA sequences even though specific cells will contain DNA errors, and we will be in a position to correct those errors that matter.

The most important perspective in my view is that health, medicine, and biology is now an information technology whereas it used to be hit or miss. We not only have the (outdated) software that biology runs on (our genome) but we have the means of changing that software (our genes) in a mature individual with such technologies as RNA interference and new forms of gene therapy that do not trigger the immune system (I am a collaborator with a company that performs gene therapy outside the body, replicates the modified cell a million fold and reintroduces the cells to the body, a process that has cured a fatal disease--Pulmonary Hypertension--and is undergoing human trials).

We can design interventions on computers and test them out on increasingly sophisticated biological simulators. One of my primary themes is that information technology grows exponentially, in sharp contrast to the linear growth of hit or miss approaches that have characterized medicine up until recently. As such, these technologies will be a million times more powerful in 20 years (by doubling in power and price-performance each year). The genome project, incidentally, followed exactly this trajectory.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Let's move things along, shall we? - Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

Editor's note: Hawking essentially proposes that transmitted information be included in the calculation of the speed of human evolution. His argument makes a great deal of sense, considering that evolution does not have to be biological to result in the transformation of a species.

Daily Galaxy - July 3, 2009, by Casey Kazan

Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture, is about a bit a year.

"By contrast," Hawking says, "there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA."

Read entire article>>

(Source: http://www.rationalvedanta.net/node/131)

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Evolution 2.0 (and 3.0 beta) (snarkmarket.com)

Read more...

Puffing our way to space - Inflatable tower may offer easier access to space

Editor's note: First, I don't like it that the word "space" has such faraway connotations. Space is not that far away. One only has to get out of the thin film of our atmosphere to be in "space." That's only a little over 19 miles. Second, that being said, getting there, and getting into a stable orbit, is quite difficult yet useful to humanity. Useful earth orbits are low (100 - 1,240 miles), medium (1,240 - just under 22,240 miles) geosynchronous (22,236 miles), and high (beyond geosynchronous). Modern communications are dependent on orbiting satellites. No-gravity science can only be done in orbit. And of course there's observation of the earth from on high. So getting to "space" is important, and getting there cheaply even more so.

MSNBC - July 2, 2009, by Eric Bland

At 9-miles tall, it could also enable creation of new wireless data network

A nine-mile-high inflatable tower (a smaller-scale model is shown here), tethered to a mountain top could also cut the cost to launch spacecraft, according to a new paper.

An inflatable tower nine miles tall and tethered to a mountain top could cut the cost to launch spacecraft, reduce the need for geostationary communications satellites and improve cell phone signals.

"This structure could be made of commercially available materials," said Brendan Quine, who, along with Raj Seth and George Zhu at York University in Toronto wrote an article detailing their tower in the journal Acta Astronautica.

The tower itself would be 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) tall, 230 meters (754 feet) across, and weigh approximately 800,000 tons, or about twice the weight of the world's largest supertanker when fully inflated with a variety of gases, including helium.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Simulated Beginnings - Toy Universe

Editor's note: The idea that we are living within a computer simulation, although not new, is intriguing. Could this be how such a thing begins?

Space.com - July 2, 2009, by Leslie Mullen

The power of computer processing could one day solve the riddle of life's origin.

Scientists think life appeared about 4 billion years ago, and ancient rocks on Earth can give us some idea of what the environment was like. Life may have originated in an ocean rich in chemicals. This primordial soup may have been simmering, or it may have been zapped by lightning. Certainly energy of some sort must have helped drive a simple chemical system into a more complex state. But the clues are few, and the picture remains hazy.

Enter the Evogrid, a computer creation concept that would be a digital version of the primordial soup. The EvoGrid was dreamed up by a group of international advisors and Bruce Damer, the founder of a research company that creates 3-D spacecraft and mission simulations for NASA and the space community. Damer and his chief architect, Peter Newman, are developing the EvoGrid concept by adapting GROMACS, a powerful open source molecular dynamics simulator originally developed at The University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Each virtual particle within the Evogrid's simulated liquid soup will have particular physical properties, and will behave accordingly.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hundred nanoseconds a day (mndoci.com)

Read more...

Robot Rat to the Rescue! (Video)

ditor's note: Do you get how many varieties and uses there are? They aren't everywhere yet, but it may not be 20 years before the street begins to look like the set of iRobot.

NewScientist - July 2, 2009, by Sandrine Ceurstemont



A new robot with artificial whiskers could one day be used to locate survivors of natural disasters, or people trapped in burning buildings.

Developed by a team led by Tony Prescott from the University of Sheffield and Anthony Pipe from the University of Bristol, both in the UK, SCRATCHbot mimics the way a rat senses its environment.

Long plastic whiskers at the side of the robot's head move back and forth up to 5 times per second to detect nearby objects. If a whisker touches something, control software determines the location of the obstacle and orients the robot's head and body so that shorter bristles on its nose can make contact with it.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mechanical mandible aids research (news.bbc.co.uk)

Read more...

The 3 Laws Won't Cut it - Living Safely with Robots, Beyond Asimov's Laws

Editor's note: The law is always playing catchup when it comes to advances in technology, but these guys are making some great suggestions in advance of the robot ubiquity future. Many experts put that future within the next 20 - 30 years, and when you couple robotics with artificial general intelligence, thinking through the legal implications is very wise.

PhysOrg.com - June 22, 2009, by Lisa Zyga

TOPIO 2.0 - TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot version 2 at Nuremberg International Toy Fair 2009. Image: Wikimedia Commons

"In 1981, a 37-year-old factory worker named Kenji Urada entered a restricted safety zone at a Kawasaki manufacturing plant to perform some maintenance on a robot. In his haste, he failed to completely turn it off. The robot’s powerful hydraulic arm pushed the engineer into some adjacent machinery, thus making Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot."

In situations like this one, as described in a recent study published in the International Journal of Social Robotics, most people would not consider the accident to be the fault of the robot. But as robots are beginning to spread from industrial environments to the real world, human safety in the presence of robots has become an important social and technological issue. Currently, countries like Japan and South Korea are preparing for the “human-robot coexistence society,” which is predicted to emerge before 2030; South Korea predicts that every home in its country will include a robot by 2020. Unlike industrial robots that toil in structured settings performing repetitive tasks, these “Next Generation Robots” will have relative autonomy, working in ambiguous human-centered environments, such as nursing homes and offices. Before hordes of these robots hit the ground running, regulators are trying to figure out how to address the safety and legal issues that are expected to occur when an entity that is definitely not human but more than machine begins to infiltrate our everyday lives.

As Chen added, Asimov’s Three Laws were originally made for literary purposes, but the ambiguity in the laws makes the responsibilities of robots’ developers, robots’ owners, and governments unclear.

In their study, authors Yueh-Hsuan Weng, a former staff of Taiwan’s Conscription Agency, Ministry of the Interior, and currently visiting at Yoshida, Kyoto, Japan, along with Chien-Hsun Chen and Chuen-Tsai Sun, both of the National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, have proposed a framework for a legal system focused on Next Generation Robot safety issues. Their goal is to help ensure safer robot design through “safety intelligence” and provide a method for dealing with accidents when they do inevitably occur. The authors have also analyzed Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, but (like most robotics specialists today) they doubt that the laws could provide an adequate foundation for ensuring that robots perform their work safely.

Read entire story>>

Follow me on Twitter. Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS [Man Vs Machine] (gizmodo.com)

Read more...