Science Alert April 21, 2019 Researchers at Cornell University have created a new biomaterial called DASH: DNA-based Assembly and Synthesis of Hierarchical materials, that isn’t alive, but exhibits three key traits for life: metabolism, self-assembly, and organisation. It can crawl forward like a slime mold, grow new strands from the front as the old ones at the back decay and fall away. At the core of DASH are nanoscale building blocks that can rearrange materials into polymers and eventually larger shapes, all from chains of repeating DNA. The material is grown from a 55-nucleotide base seed sequence, which when combined […]
Category Archives: Emerging technology
Heads in the cloud: Scientists predict internet of thoughts ‘within decades’
Nanowerk April 12, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, industries, UC San Diego, University of Miami, Duke University, Purdue University, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Canada, Russia, Australia) predicts that exponential progress in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, AI, and computation will lead this century to the development of a “Human Brain/Cloud Interface” (B/CI), that connects neurons and synapses in the brain to vast cloud-computing networks in real time. According to the researchers the B/CI system mediated by neuralnanorobotics could empower individuals with instantaneous access to all cumulative human knowledge available in […]
A new type of airplane wing that adapts midflight could change air travel
MIT Technology Review April 1, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (NASA, MIT) has designed wing that is made from an open, lightweight lattice framework that is covered with a thin layer of polymer material. It looks like thousands of matchstick-type struts welded together in small triangle shapes. This design lets it adapt and deform in many ways so that it is the optimal shape for the different stages of flight—takeoff, landing, cruising, and so on. It is also far lighter than conventional wings and would therefore use much less energy. The manufacturing process incorporates 3D printing and […]
Intel buys into an AI chip that can transfer data 1,000 times faster
MIT Technology Review April 2, 2019 Untether, based in Toronto, Canada, has developed a prototype inference chip which is akin to a chip that runs on a device like a smartphone or a camera. It can transfer data between different parts of the chip 1,000 times more quickly than a conventional AI chip. It uses “near-memory computing” to reduce the physical distance between memory and the processing tasks, which speeds up data transfer and lowers power consumption…read more.
Copper-based alternative for next-generation electronics
Science Daily April 1, 2019 In the existing techniques for the preparation of copper nanoparticles, impurities can be removed via extremely high temperatures hence those prepared at room temperature could not solidify into usable parts. Researchers in Japan have synthesised copper nanoparticles with the ability to solidify at much lower temperatures, remain pure; they altered the structure of the copper nanoparticles and rendered them more stable so that they do not degrade at low temperatures. With the new technique copper nanoparticle-based materials can be utilized in various types of on-demand flexible and wearable devices which can be fabricated easily via […]
10 Breakthrough Technologies with Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review March 28, 2019 The magazine has been publishing its list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies annually since 2001. Usually the list is assembled by the magazine’s expert editors and reporters, but this year Bill Gates curated the list to share his own perspective on which emerging technologies that could make the biggest difference for the largest number of people…read more.
EmTech Digital 2019 Coverage
MIT Technology Review March 25, 2019 Everything you need to know from EmTech Digital 2019, where the sharpest minds in the technology, management, startup, engineering, and academic communities converge. The article covers the following 14 stories: Tech companies must anticipate the looming risks as AI gets creative ; AI researchers must confront “missed opportunities” to achieve social good; Deepfakes are solvable—but don’t forget that “shallowfakes” are already pervasive ; Robots won’t make it into our houses until they get common sense ; How malevolent machine learning could derail AI ; How machine learning is accelerating last-mile, and last-meter, delivery ; Your next car could have […]
Ten big global challenges technology could solve
MIT Technology Review February 27, 2019 According to the editors of MIT Technology Review the following 10 challenges are incredibly important but none is easy: Carbon sequestration, Grid-scale energy storage, Universal flu vaccine, Dementia treatment, Ocean clean-up, Energy-efficient desalination, Safe driverless car, Embodied AI, Earthquake prediction and Brain decoding…read more.
Your body is your internet — and now it can’t be hacked
Science Daily March 12, 2019 Radiative communication using electro-magnetic fields amongst the wearable and implantable devices act as the backbone for information exchange around a human body enabling applications in the fields of connected healthcare, virtual reality etc. As EM signals propagate in all directions, they allow an eavesdropper to intercept the information. Researchers at Purdue University have developed a method called Electro-Quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC) for localizing signals within the body using low-frequency carrier-less transmission, thereby making it extremely difficult for a nearby eavesdropper to intercept critical private data. Detailed experiment reveals that the quasi-static leakage due to […]
Special Operations Command is calling all creative technology futurists
Fed Scoop February 28, 2019 SOCOM wants three to five pages long essay on a topic detailing the evolution of an existing technology or talk about how a yet-to-be-created one will rock the world, but the essay should be full of original ideas. Essays will be evaluated based on the novelty, impact and feasibility of the technology described. Once the responses have been ranked, the top five to 10 writers will be invited to join an “Innovation Foundry” design thinking event at the Capital Factory in Austin where they will work with SOF Operators to develop potential technological concepts to […]