Lifeboat Foundation

Many think author, inventor and data scientist Ray Kurzweil is a prophet for our digital age. A few say he’s completely nuts. Kurzweil, who heads a team of more than 40 as a director of engineering at Google, believes advances in technology and medicine are pushing us toward what he calls the Singularity, a period of profound cultural and evolutionary change in which computers will outthink the brain and allow people—you, me, the guy with the man-bun ahead of you at Starbucks—to live forever. He dates this development at 2045.

Raymond Kurzweil was born February 12, 1948, and he still carries the plain, nasal inflection of his native Queens, New York. His Jewish parents escaped Hitler’s Austria, but Kurzweil grew up attending a Unitarian church. He worshipped knowledge above all, and computers in particular. His grandmother was one of the first women in Europe to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry. His uncle, who worked at Bell Labs, taught Ray computer science in the 1950s, and by the age of 15, Kurzweil was designing programs to help do homework. Two years later, he wrote code to analyze and create music in the style of various famous composers. The program won him the prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search, a prize that got the 17-year-old an invitation to the White House. That year, on the game show I’ve Got a Secret, Kurzweil pressed some buttons on a data processor the size of a small car. It coughed out original sheet music that could have been written by Brahms.

After earning degrees in computer science and creative writing at MIT, he began to sell his inventions, including the first optical character recognition system that could read text in any normal font. Kurzweil knew a “reading machine” could help the blind, but to make it work, he first had to invent a text-to-speech synthesizer, as well as a flatbed scanner; both are still in wide use. In the 1980s Kurzweil created the first electronic music keyboard to replicate the sound of a grand piano and many other instruments. If you’ve ever been to a rock concert, you’ve likely seen the name Kurzweil on the back of a synthesizer.

They deserve it too.

X2 Biosystems has received the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics (SBMT) 2016 Pioneer in Healthcare Technology Innovations Award for developing its next-generation head impact measurement sensor technology, the company said.

X2´s “X-Patch” wearable impact sensor has become widely deployed and tested head impact monitoring device, used in a continually expanding range of athletic activities from football (youth, high school, collegiate, pro) to hockey, soccer, lacrosse, rugby, Australian rules football, baseball, field hockey, wrestling, boxing, taekwondo, mixed martial arts, skiing and BMX cycling.

The X-Patch is also being actively evaluated for use in military training applications.

Continue reading “X2 Biosystems awarded” »

Nice

HYDERABAD: In an initiative that may improve farm productivity, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai and Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agriculture University (PJTSAU), Hyderabad have joined hands to develop nanosensors that can read the percentage of moisture and nutrients in the soil. This new research is expected to provide an important technological innovation in the field of agriculture. This is for the first time an IIT is collaborating with an agricultural university to devise solutions for the farmers.

“While we were exploring the possibilities of nano technology in various fields, the idea of using it in agriculture sector struck us. Thanks to the interest shown by some agricultural scientists at PJTSAU, we decided to develop nanosensors which can calculate the moisture content of the soil. There is a need for IITs to work for solving the problems faced by farmers and this is a step in that direction,” said V Ramgopal Rao, director of IIT Delhi, who was instrumental in initiating the research project, while he was the chief investigator of Centre of Excellence in Nanoelectronics Project at IIT, Mumbai.

While IIT, Mumbai will develop the nano soil sensors, PJTSAU will serve as the testing partner and conduct field tests to assess the efficacy of nanosensors. Already, funds have been allotted by IIT for the research project and a team of agricultural scientists and technologists has been formed to work on the project.

Continue reading “IIT to Develop Nanosensors to Boost Farm Productivity” »

California Polytechnic State University researchers propose a system capable of probing the molecular composition of cold solar system targets such as asteroids, comets, planets and moons from a distant vantage.

Their concept utilizes a directed energy beam to vaporize or sublimate a spot on a distant target, such as from a spacecraft near the object. With sufficient flux, our published results indicate that the spot temperature rises rapidly, and evaporation of materials on the target surface occurs (Hughes et al., 2015; Lubin and Hughes, 2015; Lubin et al., 2014). The melted spot serves as a high-temperature blackbody source, and ejected material creates a molecular plume in front of the spot. Molecular and atomic absorption of the blackbody radiation occurs within the ejected plume. Bulk composition of the surface material is investigated by using a spectrometer to view the heated spot through the ejected material. They envision a spacecraft that could be sent to probe the composition of a target asteroid, comet or other planetary body while orbiting the targeted object. The spacecraft would be equipped with an array of lasers and a spectrometer, powered by photovoltaics. Spatial composition maps could be created by scanning the directed energy beam across the surface. Applying the laser beam to a single spot continuously produces a borehole, and shallow sub-surface composition profiling is also possible.

Their initial simulations of laser heating, plume opacity, material absorption profiles and spectral detectivity show promise for molecular composition analysis. Such a system has compelling potential benefit for solar system exploration by establishing the capability to directly interrogate the bulk composition of objects from a distant vantage. They propose to develop models, execute preliminary feasibility analysis, and specify a spacecraft system architecture for a hypothetical mission that seeks to perform surface molecular composition analysis and mapping of a near-earth asteroid (NEA) while the craft orbits the asteroid.

Continue reading “All of the technology is nearly ready for megawatt space based laser systems for science and planetary defense” »

University of Tokyo researchers have created an ultrathin and ultraflexible organic e-skin that supports PLED and OLED displays.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo have created a protective layer of organic material that’s ultrathin and ultraflexible. And the have demonstrated the material’s usefulness by making an OLED display that’s air-stable. This opens the possibility of developing better electronic skin displays, the next major leap in wearable technology.

Continue reading “New Remarkably Thin E-Skin Turns Your Body Into a Walking Display” »

The applications for a bendable lens are endless.

Imagine shirts that act as antennas for smartphones or tablets, workout clothes that monitor fitness level or even a flexible fabric cap that senses activity in the brain!

All this will soon be possible as the researchers working on wearable electronics have been able to embroider circuits into fabric with super precision — a key step toward the design of clothes that gather, store or transmit digital information.

“A revolution is happening in the textile industry. We believe that functional textiles are an enabling technology for communications and sensing and one day, even for medical applications like imaging and health monitoring,” said lead researcher John Volakis from Ohio State University.

Continue reading “Clothes that Transmit Digital Data Are Coming” »

Wicked nice — however, I cannot wait to see SamSung leverage Q-Dots (QD) for VR.

It’s Samsung’s best 4K UHD TV yet, and not just because it has stunning picture quality. It’s also the smartest, easiest-to-use TV we’ve seen in some time.

Research scientists at INM have combined the benefits of organic and inorganic electronic materials in a new type of hybrid inks. This allows electronic circuits to be applied to paper directly from a pen, for example.

The electronics of the future will be printed. Flexible circuits can be produced inexpensively on foil or paper using printing processes and permit futuristic designs with curved diodes or input elements. This requires printable electronic materials that can be printed and retain a high level of conductivity during usage in spite of their curved surfaces. Some tried and tested materials include organic, conductive polymers and nanoparticles made of conductive oxides (TCOs). Research scientists at INM – Leibniz-Institute for New Materials have now combined the benefits of organic and inorganic electronic materials in a new type of hybrid inks. This allows electronic circuits to be applied to paper directly from a pen, for example.

Continue reading “New hybrid inks permit printed, flexible electronics without sintering” »