The Dawn of Cognitive Technology

Cognitive technology is a new and evolving field which combines the interactive qualities of modern computers with the knowledge acquired by cognitive psychology to create tools that can preserve and improve our cognitive abilities. In this article, we chose to cover one of the pioneers in this field, the Israeli company CogniFit, which has developed a unique adaptive technology that enables its software to learn the users abilities, and based on this data, create a personalized cognitive training program.

Site – http://www.isracast.com

Carbon nanotubes pinned down at last

A new technique that places carbon nanotubes exactly where they are needed could help overcome one of the biggest obstacles blocking the development of nanotube-based electronic devices. The method uses a specially constructed molecule that attaches one end to a carbon nanotube and the other end to a strip of metal oxide that has been placed on piece of silicon. The nanotubes are just a few nanometres in diameter, and knowing exactly where a tube is means researchers can use it to make a transistor.

Site – http://www.newscientisttech.com

Digital Maoism

The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it? The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it’s been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it’s now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

Site – http://www.edge.org

The next big bang: Man meets machine

In science-fiction fantasies, the melding of organic matter and digital technology usually takes human form, from Steve Austin's six-million-dollar bionics to the replicants running amok in "Blade Runner" to the Terminator. Yet research on multiple fronts in digital technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology may, over the next half century, alter the way we think about computers and information, and our relationship to them. With these changes, bionic body parts won't seem so far-fetched as we increasingly develop ways to integrate high-tech materials into our mortal flesh.  All of these overlapping strands of scientific inquiry are known colloquially as "BANG," which stands for bits, atoms, neurons and genes.

Site – http://news.com.com

Caught up in the ‘Net

"Singularity," the fusion of human, machine and the communication capacity of the web, may enable a spectacular and fundamental shift in our understanding of human consciousness. "I am still a big believer in Artificial Intelligence; new software 'shells' that surround us as individuals and becomes our interface with the outside world," says Diamandi. "The Internet will merge into these software shells, serving as a global nervous system interconnecting people to people in the way single cell life-forms grouped into multi-cellular organisms and eventually into an organism as complex as the human body."

Site – http://edition.cnn.com

Google users promised artificial intelligence

A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly is a future predicted by Google. Google co-founder Larry Page said one thing that he had learned since Google launched eight years ago was that technology can change faster than expected. Speaking at a conference for Google's European partners, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page gave an insight into perhaps the most ambitious project the Californian business is undertaking – artificial intelligence (AI).

Site – http://business.guardian.co.uk

FSU research produces images of AIDS virus that may shape vaccine

As the world marks the 25th year since the first diagnosed case of AIDS, groundbreaking research by scientists at Florida State University has produced remarkable three-dimensional images of the virus and the protein spikes on its surface that allow it to bind and fuse with human immune cells. Findings from this AIDS research could boost the development of vaccines that will thwart infection by targeting and crippling the sticky HIV-1 spike proteins. In fact, said principal investigator and FSU Professor Kenneth H. Roux, at least two laboratories already are crafting vaccine candidates based on preliminary results uncovered by his team of structural biologists.

Site – http://www.eurekalert.org

Dawn of the zombies

You can poke them, prod them and pump them full of drugs, and they'll never complain, as New Scientist discovers IT STARTS out like any silicon chip: intricate patterns are drawn with light and etched with acid. But this is no microprocessor destined for a computer. Instead there are minuscule chambers filled with human cells: liver cells, lung cells, fat cells, all connected by tiny channels. A nutrient fluid is pumped through the channels, flowing from one chamber to another just as blood flows from organ to organ in the body.  A company named Hurel (Human Relavent) is commecializing these so called animal on a chip technologies.

Site – http://www.newscientist.com

Evolution in a Petri Dish

Charles Darwin never thought he could witness evolutionary change. He relied instead on indirect clues. He looked at its effects after millions of years — in the fossil record and in the similarities and differences among living species. He got clues to the workings of evolution from the work of pigeon breeders, who consciously chose which birds could reproduce and thus created birds with extravagant plumage. But that was artificial selection — not natural selection that had been operating long before humans came on the scene. Darwin was pretty sure that natural selection worked too slowly for him or anyone else to witness.

Site – http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com

The Emergence of Social Inequality among Robots

In 1949 the British cyberneticist, Grey Walter, and his technician, “Bunny” Warren, built two electronic tortoises, Elmer and Elsie. The tortoises were capable of avoiding obstacles, moving toward a light source (phototaxis), and parking in a hutch to recharge their batteries. They were built with analog electronics that connected simple sensors with motors. Grey Walter had designed these robots to investigate how a “living brain” manages to exhibit flexible control, learning, and adaptivity vis-à-vis the environment.

Site – http://www.cabinetmagazine.org

The Revolution

The next time you jack an MP3 player into your skull to shut out the world, or the next time you can't put down that solitaire game, or the next time you talk in the food court on your cell phone rather than the person who is sitting with you or serving you lunch… The next time you pay more attention to your e-mail than to your children, the next time you feel uneasy when your connections are interuppted, the next time the innermost recesses of your brain recognize a machine as part of you when it dies, remember this:

• You have crossed the line. For you, the revolution has already occured. The machines have not only changed you, they have become you. Not metaphically, but in a way as real and tangible as the keyboard and mouse you now clutch.

Web inventor warns of ‘dark’ net

The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not “part of the internet model,” he said in Edinburgh.

Site – http://news.bbc.co.uk