The secret to a long life could lie with the naked mole-rat. This admittedly unsightly rodent is about the size of a mouse but lives about 10 times as long. Vera Gorbunova, a biologist at the University of Rochester, wants to know why. In her lab’s most recent study on this unlikely animal, published September 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Gorbunova and her colleagues show that naked mole-rat cells made just one-tenth the protein-synthesis errors of mouse cells. (Other studies put humans on a par with mice.) The accuracy may stem from an extra strand of RNA that makes their ribosomes different from those of most mammals.
3D printers tend to blow up on Kickstarter. And one of the latest, the Peachy Printer, is no exception. The project's raised almost C$500,000, about ten times its original goal. Peachy is an innovative approach to 3D printing being offered for as little as C$100. But there are yet many unmet challenges to be navigated before its June 2014 delivery date.
With online education, you don't have to go to MIT to learn from one of their top professors. You don't have to spend six figures or four years to get knowledge applicable to the career of your choosing. Education can continue all your life, if you like. Eventually online ed may even facilitate career adaptation in a more rapidly changing economic environment. Online education is full of potential. But today, it's still an experiment, and as anyone who's taken a course will tell you, the experience isn't perfect.
Recorded during the 2013 Graduate Studies Program, a panel discussion about the future of space exploration and the role of government and commercial interests...
The Food and Drug Administration recently issued its first-ever approval of an artificial pancreas that may make life easier and healthier for such patients. The device, made by Minneapolis-based Medtronics, relies on a computer algorithm to sync the results of a continuous reading of the wearer’s glucose levels and with a pump that provides appropriate amounts of insulin.
The May issue of National Geographic boldy states, “This Baby Will Live to Be 120 (and It’s Not Just Hype)”; Pew Research published a poll on radical life extension in August; Google funded a new company, Calico, to tackle aging in September. Independent of all these developments, Chicago filmmaker, Tim Maupin, launched a Kickstarter for a short film titled, “The Last Generation to Die.” Maupin, thinks now is a great time to start a conversation about life extension. And he’s right. The idea that within decades a genetic fountain of youth may plausibly reverse the aging process, even indefinitely stave off death, is rising up in pop culture.
Modern medicine has undeniably extended the lives of people around the world, but, recently, a few data points have begun to muddle the clean upward trends. Gains in life expectancy have begun to slow, particularly in the United States.
Some Spanish researchers were the first to turn mature cells into stem cells inside the body itself. They prompted the cells of adult mice to regain the ability to develop into any type of specialized cell, which is normally only briefly present during embryonic development. The results were published in September in the journal Nature.
A recent study out of Oxford University found that almost half of U.S. jobs are vulnerable to being taken over by computers as artificial intelligence continues to improve. The study, based on 702 detailed job listings, found that computers could already replace many workers in transportation and logistics, production labor and administrative support. But computers are also increasingly qualified to perform "non-routine cognitive tasks."
This video filmed during the 2013 Graduate Studies Program presents Singularity University's efforts in tackling eight initiates dubbed Global Grand Challenges. A variety of...
Three days into its Kickstarter, app developer Occipital had raised just under $600,000, or roughly six times its $100,000 goal—which was met in the first three hours. What’s got early adopters and developers so excited? A 3D scanner called Structure that attaches to and runs on an iPad.
Intel recently announced their newest line of chips, dubbed Quark, are a fifth the size and consume a tenth the power of Atom, their smallest low-power chip to date. Quark marks a shift, a few years in the making, from Intel’s traditional focus on powerful, fast processors for PCs. In fact, the chipline aims beyond even mobile. According to Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich, "Smartphones and tablets are not the end-state. The next wave of computing is still being defined. Wearable computers and sophisticated sensors and robotics are only some of the initial applications."
Google made a big press splash when it announced the launch of a life sciences spinoff company, Calico. But what exactly will the company do? The breadcrumbs point to a data-driven approach to improving healthy life expectancy by attacking common diseases.
Innespace’s Seabreacher series is biomimetic. Sort of. These special watercraft behave like a rocket-powered shark or killer whale might. And in case you wonder what inspired its inventors, they erase all doubt with the paint job. Yes, that's a shark. Seabreacher may not positively affect the lives of billions worldwide, but it might positively affect your day to watch this video.
Most tech players are now engaged in a race to distance themselves from the NSA by safeguarding user data. Such efforts, if they reach fruition, will help users, who have ever-expanding parts of their lives in digital format stored with a handful of tech companies. But they shouldn't be mistaken for altruism.
Elon Musk and his companies have been a PR treasure trove of late. SpaceX continues to make strides in reusable rocket tech with its Grasshopper rocket. Musk showed off an Iron Man 3D design interface his engineers are building. Then of course, there’s his hypothethical 700+ mph Hyperloop from SF to LA. And now, he’s pushing the envelope again. This time it’s self driving cars—a hot topic any way you slice it. Big automakers are stumbling over each other to forecast and commit to bold timelines. First, it was BMW's prediction we’d have partially autonomous cars by 2020 and the fully automated variety by 2025. More recently, Nissan upped the ante with their prediction of fully self-driving autos by 2020.
Google Glass is augmented reality—and then again, it isn’t. At least, not yet. True augmented reality would take in your view and attach applicable information to any object you like, maybe the name of the person you’re currently talking to and a few key points from their Facebook bio. Or the prices of those delicious pastries you’re perusing at the local café. Think Terminator or Tony Stark's Iron Man suit.
Few would argue the overall health benefits of living in the industrialized world. But does it also bring threats to health that aren’t present in countries that have stuck to their agrarian traditions? A recent Cambridge University study suggested that, paradoxically, improved sanitation in developed countries may leave residents more exposed to Alzheimer’s disease. The study is apparently the first to link Alzheimer’s disease to an increasingly accepted theory called the hygiene hypothesis.
Even as climate change has made it more important for us to monitor the health of marine ecosystems, the science of tracking and counting fish remains relatively rudimentary and haphazard. A recent study from the University of Mānoa proposes a method to expand what is known about fish populations and migrations within the limits of current underwater tracking technology.
Amazon’s latest dedicated storefront channels a well-worn idea—the fully automated home! The idea, common in 20th century visions of the future from the World’s Fair to the Jetsons, is at the same time futuristic and quaint. Something that’s always seemed right around the corner and never been fully realized.
Larry Brilliant, CEO of the Skoll Global Treats Fund and former Google VP and Executive Director of Google.org, chatted with Peter Diamandis is a fireside-like...
Mars One wants to send permanent settlers to Mars by 2023. To make the trip’s cost and logistics more realistic, said settlers won’t get a return ticket. But returning home seems a minor detail for many. From late April through the end of August, the organization took in 202,586 applications from aspiring astronauts across the globe.
Dylan Laas, 12, says Robohand makes him look like Darth Vader. For $150, the 3-D printed Robohand also lets Dylan, who is missing the fingers on one hand as a result of Amniotic Band Syndrome, grab things with bendable fingers, which most prosthetic hands don’t.
Apple is giving biometrics a huge bump as a result of its latest iPhone, the 5S, which goes on sale September 20. The model employs fingerprint identification as the way users unlock their devices. If users like it, they may be more open to other biometric identification systems. But the reverse is also true.
Why are some people fat? It’s not just a question that fat people ask themselves, but also one that drives much medical research because obesity increases the risk of serious illnesses, including heart disease and diabetes. The proposed causes of obesity range from diet plain and simple to hormonal conditions to genetics. A study recently published in Science adds to that list gut bacteria.
Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen, has lured long-time AI academic Oren Etzioni from his 22-year University of Washington post to head a new project called the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence or AI2.
If you hadn’t heard of Bitcoin before this year, chances are you have now. Launched in 2009, Bitcoin is a virtual currency, traded incognito for drugs, cars, houses…a pair of alpaca socks. The currency’s dollar exchange rate went meteoric this spring, jumping +1900% from January to April, before crashing -81% over the next six days.*
When editing digital images, algorithms struggle to differentiate one object from another, even when it seems obvious to the human eye. Some Israeli researchers have developed a workaround software that prompts the human user to do the identifying work, and then allows the computer to do what it’s good at: turning the object into data that can be manipulated.
The hottest holiday gift this year for children of tech geeks will be the Dash. That’s right, all across Silicon Valley, little Jacks and Jills will be diving into their Christmas stockings or Hanukkah gifts to find robotic cockroaches. If geek world isn’t your world, perhaps this requires some explanation.
Heart disease is the most common cause of death in the world, accounting single-handedly for one in eight deaths. It has proved a difficult incumbent to unseat, and a new a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows just how difficult. It turns out that faster treatment times have not budged the mortality rates among patients who present with heart attacks.
A few months ago BMW predicted cars would be highly automated by 2020 and driverless by 2025. Pretty cool, but perhaps a touch conservative. Nissan recently upped the bar. At a press event in California, Executive Vice President, Andy Palmer, said Nissan will bring “multiple affordable, energy efficient, fully autonomous-driving vehicles to the market by 2020.”
Singularity University produced a series of “101″ videos for the Graduate Studies Program to help acclimate the participants of the 2013 class to the...
Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship Enterprise successfully fired its rockets for a second time this week. The spacecraft was released at 46,000 feet by its WhiteKnightTwo mothership, where the craft commenced a 20-second burn, reaching 69,000 feet and a speed of mach 1.43. After the burn, Enterprise folded its wing and tail sections upward into a “feathered” position to slow its rate of descent smoothly, like a “shuttlecock.” It was the fastest and highest test yet. But more importantly, the spacecraft successfully executed all phases of flight together for the first time.
It’s been said Iron Man’s Tony Stark (the movie version) was modeled after Elon Musk. Apparently, the admiration's mutual. Musk is now modeling his space exploration firm, SpaceX, after Iron Man. Or Minority Report. Or name the sci-fi film or show with gesture-based 3D computer systems. (There are more.)
Mobile computing and miniaturized sensors are threatening to transform medicine. Peek, a mobile eye exam system, is a great example of the power of mobile. In tandem with a phone camera, flash, and external clip on device (?), Peek can perform simple vision tests, check for cataracts, and even scan the retina for disease.
Singularity University, the Silicon Valley-based learning institution founded by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, has reached its first major milestone: five years of cutting-edge...
After Google researchers floated the idea of a USB stick or a ring that would generate login keys, it appeared the Web giant would lead the way in wearable access keys. But a UK project recently closed a $380,000 Kickstarter campaign, promising delivery of 61,000 password-bearing rings in September.
Sarah Murnaghan just turned eleven years old. She wouldn’t be here but for two lung donors, a crack team of surgeons, and a last-minute suspension of the rules.
Facebook is proposing to expand its use of facial recognition technology, which has been controversial since the company acquired Face.com in 2012. The Israeli startup’s app, which suggested whom a user might want to tag in photos, became an integral part of the social network.
Social networking makes it easier than ever to compare yourself with others—but forget about vanity. It’s not uncommon to hear Facebookers complain many of their social contacts appear to be living vastly more interesting and fulfilling lives than they are. So, has social networking created a billion bitter Facebookers? A team of University of Michigan researchers decided to move past the anecdotal and apply the scientific method to this bit of common wisdom.
Harvest Automation has built a robot to do something not especially difficult or sexy: move potted plants around in nurseries and greenhouses. It’s a task the company decided to tackle with its first robot, dubbed Harvey, not because humans can’t do it, but because they don’t.
Singularity University produced a series of “101″ videos for the Graduate Studies Program to help acclimate the participants of the 2013 class to the...
