Wired has an interview with Jeff Hawkins about how his Numenta Artificial Intelligence system will work Scan and match1) The system is shown a poor-quality image of a helicopter moving across a screen. It’s read by low-level nodes that each see a 4 x 4-pixel section of the image.2) The low-level nodes pass the pattern …
From Stephen Kosslyn, Havard Psychology, relatively nearterm paths to increasing intelligence Cognitive neuroscience and related fields have identified a host of distinct neural systems in the human brain. Different combinations of these systems are used in the service of accomplishing different tasks, and each system can be made more efficient by “targeted training.” Such training …
The new age of climate re-engineering and the $25 million bounty from Richard Branson is discussed at open the future. It is noted that the re-engineering efforts would have the best chance of succeeding if we adjust technology and behavior to stop making the problems worse. Gregory Benford’s proposal for climate re-engineering is discussed at …
There are two developing technologies. The millimeter radiation system for Active denial. The pain beam. It works out to 500+ meters. They are talking deployment in 2010. They are already in various field trials. I wrote about theHPM (High Power Microwave) pulses–powerful enough to destroy enemy electronics–can be produced without the need for explosives or …
From Wired.com, An international team of scientists is developing what they say will be the world’s first microrobot — as wide as two human hairs — that can swim through the arteries and digestive system. The scientists are designing the 250-micron device to transmit images and deliver microscopic payloads to parts of the body outside …
Intel’s researchers have produced an 80-core chip that uses less energy than a quad-core processor and has teraflop performance capabilities. The chip is being called the Tera-Scale Teraflop Prototype. Vara says the 80-core chip uses less than 100 watts of energy; a dual-core chip uses 60 to 70 watts and a quad-core uses 105 to …
Quote Gandalf from the Two Towers:And I come back to you now – at the turn of the tide If other countries respond with similar or more aggressive software control of matter projects, than the very interesting projects from the UK Ideas Factory then this would be the start of a growing race to molecular …
Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) has provided a 1 Gbps symmetric service for the residential market since April 2005. Approximately 800,000 households, out of a total of 2.2 million households in Hong Kong, are wired to receive the service. The 1 Gbps symmetric service is priced at US$215 per month. HKBN Premium bb1000 service is …
Software defined radio Vanu, a small Cambridge, Mass., company, says that this year it will begin selling the first cellular base station that can simultaneously process two waveforms—CDMA (short for code division multiple access) and GSM (global system for mobile communications)—all in software running on off-the-shelf computer servers. A cellphone based on software-defined radio would …
Walmart targets selling 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs each year by 2008 If it succeeds in selling 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs a year by 2008, total sales of the bulbs in the United States would increase by 50 percent, saving Americans $3 billion in electricity costs and 3 million tons of greenhouse gas per …
The nano-cables developed by Takanori Fukushita of Tokyo Japan are 16 nanometres in diameter and several micrometres long. They resemble the light-harvesting antennae used by some bacteria and transform light into electricity in a similar way to the semiconductors in solar panels, albeit on a much smaller scale. “This is the first example of a …