Tag: technology

Team builds first living robots—that can reproduce

To persist, life must reproduce. Over billions of years, organisms have evolved many ways of replicating, from budding plants to sexual animals to invading viruses.

Now scientists at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction—and applied their discovery to create the first-ever, self-replicating living robots.

The same team that built the first living robots (“Xenobots,” assembled from frog cells—reported in 2020) has discovered that these computer-designed and hand-assembled organisms can swim out into their tiny dish, find single cells, gather hundreds of them together, and assemble “baby” Xenobots inside their Pac-Man-shaped “mouth”—that, a few days later, become new Xenobots that look and move just like themselves.

And then these new Xenobots can go out, find cells, and build copies of themselves. Again and again.

“With the right design—they will spontaneously self-replicate,” says Joshua Bongard, Ph.D., a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont who co-led the new research.

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Pentagon officials ‘remain baffled by Chinese hypersonic missile technology’ after Beijing tested weapon that could deploy a nuke while travelling at five times the speed of sound

A hypersonic weapon test carried out by China in July featured a missile fired at five times the speed of sound – a technological feat which no other country has demonstrated, according to US intelligence.  

The hypersonic glide vehicle – a spacecraft with the ability to carry a nuclear warhead – fired a missile mid-flight over the South China Sea, catching Pentagon scientists unawares.

Experts at Darpa – the Pentagon’s advanced research agency – are apparently still baffled at how China was able to defy the constraints of physics to fire a weapon from the vehicle travelling at hypersonic speed, the Financial Times reports.

Analysts are also attempting to piece together the purpose of the missile, which was fired with no obvious target before landing into the sea. 

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Police caught using online spy tool to plot “pre-crimes”

Tech startup Voyager Labs helps law enforcement agencies use what you post on social media and who you interact with to predict whether you have or “plan to” commit a crime. It is one of a growing number of companies that claim they can use social media analysis to help predict and solve crimes and has opened many questions about privacy.

Non-profit organization Brennan Center obtained documents through freedom of information requests that revealed the strategies Voyager uses violate the first amendment protections. For instance, the software uses posts about Islam and social media usernames indicating Arab pride as signs of potential inclination towards extremism. But they can also be used to target any group.

Additionally, according to the documents, obtained by The Guardian, the company uses questionable processes to access data on social media, and even enables law enforcement officers to infiltrate groups and private accounts using fake personas.

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Japan breaks world record for fastest internet speed

Engineers in Japan have set a new world record for fastest internet speed — and it’s so fast, you’d be able to download nearly 80,000 movies in just one second.

Need for speed: Internet speed is typically measured by how much data can be transmitted between two devices in one second.

The new record is 319 terabits per second (Tb/s). That’s double the previous world record for fastest internet speed and about 7.6 million times faster than the average home internet speed in the U.S. (42 megabits per second). 

Fiber-optic cables: Different types of internet connections transmit data over different types of hardware. The old dial-up connections, for example, relied on telephone wires, while the fastest kind of internet available today — fiber — uses fiber-optic cables.

These cables transmit data using pulses of light, which travel along thin optical fibers with glass or plastic cores.

To break the record for fastest internet speed, researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology developed an experimental optical fiber with four cores, instead of just one.

They then combined their fiber with a laser that fired pulses at different wavelengths and multiple signal amplification techniques. This enabled them to transmit data over a distance of more than 1,800 miles at 319 Tb/s. 

Perfect fit: The laser and amplifiers used to break the fastest internet speed record are not cheap, so don’t expect 300 Tb/s home internet any time soon. 

However, there is one part of the experiment that could have an impact on your life in the not-so-distant future: the optical fiber.

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New alarm system is triggered when “offensive” language is detected

During the Dubai Design Week, a new alarm system was unveiled. The device sounds an alarm when it detects potentially “offensive” language.

The device is named after Themis, the Greek goddess of social order and justice. Themis is a lamp-sized device created for the purpose of moderating discussions in educational settings and “manifest political correctness.”

The device can also be used to police language at family gatherings and dinner parties. The designer of Themis, Zinah Issa, hopes it will help with “self-critique.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, Issa said: “Through the use of speech recognition and sound sensors we were able to program Themis to detect offensive terms – racial slurs, offensive jokes – through the microphone.

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“Revolution In Warfare” – Israel Unveils New Scorpius Electronic Warfare System

Israel has recognized that the modern battlefield will not be entirely fought on air, sea, and space. To better prepare for new domains of warfare, Israel has developed a revolutionary weapon for electromagnetic warfare. 

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the country’s top aerospace and aviation manufacturer, has developed the Scorpius family of systems that scans a sphere of the operating environment for targets and deploys a narrowly focused beam to interfere with multiple threats across the electromagnetic spectrum. The high-tech weapon is categorized under “soft protection” because it doesn’t cause physical harm. Instead, it disrupts the operation of electromagnetic systems, such as radar, electronic sensors, navigation, and data communications.

Gideon Fustick, Marketing VP EW Group at IAI, told Forbes, “We call it [Scorpius family of systems] ‘soft protection.’ It’s an offensive weapon that doesn’t send out missiles. It’s not a hard-kill system,” adding that “it is very effective in engaging and disabling enemy systems.” 

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Self-Driving Farm Robot Uses Lasers To Kill 100,000 Weeds An Hour, Saving Land And Farmers From Toxic Herbicides

The nutrient content of our vegetables is down 40% over the last two decades and our soil health is suffering due to increasingly harsh herbicide use, according to Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell. And farmers are increasingly concerned about the long-term health impacts of continually spraying chemicals on their fields.

But not weeding will cost half your crop, killing profitability.

The solution?

A self-driving farm robot that kills 100,000 weeds an hour … by laser.

“We wanted [to] figure out if there’s a better way we could do this.” Mikesell told me on a recent episode of the TechFirst podcast. “What we discovered relatively early on is that through the use of high-powered energy systems — so, lasers, which is essentially a way of delivering targeted energy — we can kill these weeds. And we can do it with the use of our computer vision and deep learning expertise … which allows us to in real time identify what’s a weed, what’s a crop … and kill the weeds. Get rid of them.”

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Federal Gov Pays University $750k to Create Tool That Warns Journalists Against Publishing “Polarizing” Content

The NSF project titled “A System for Mapping the (Local) Journalism Life Cycle to Rebuild the Nation’s News Trust” will warn journalists when content may be “triggering” of unfavorable discourse.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided a $750,000 grant to Temple University researchers for developing a product that tracks local journalism cycles, which is part of their new “Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems” initiative.

The “America’s Fourth Estate at Risk: A System for Mapping the (Local) Journalism Life Cycle to Rebuild the Nation’s News Trust” project aims to create a data-based tool that informs journalists when publishing content might result in “negative unintended outcomes” like “the triggering of uncivil, polarizing discourse, audience misinterpretation, the production of misinformation, and the perpetuation of false narratives.”

The researchers hope to help journalists measure the long-term communication impact of stories, extending beyond existing metrics such as initial reactions, likes, and shares.

In an interview with Campus Reform, grant principal investigator and Temple University professor Eduard Dragut said the team will “use natural language processing algorithms along with social networking tools to mine the communities where [misinformation] may happen.”

“You can imagine that each news article is usually, or actually almost all the time, accompanied by user comments and reactions on Twitter. One goal of the project is to retrieve those and then use natural language processing tools or algorithms to mine and recommend to some users [that] this space of talking, this set of tweets, which may lead to a set of people, like a sub-community, where this article is used for wrong reasons,” he said.

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