A subsidiary of SoftBank has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire robotics pioneer Boston Dynamics from Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL, GOOG). The transaction aligns with SoftBank’s investments in paradigm-shifting technologies and its vision of catalyzing the next wave of smart robotics. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO …
DARPA is funding a non-von-Neumann processor called a HIVE — Hierarchical Identify Verify Exploit with $80 million. HIVE is not von Neumann because of the sparseness of its data and its ability to simultaneously perform different processes on different areas of memory simultaneously,” Trung said. “This non-von-Neumann approach allows one big map that can be …
Many people who use computers and other digital devices are aware that all the words and images displayed on their monitors boil down to a sequence of ones and zeros. But few likely appreciate what is behind those ones and zeros: microscopic arrays of “magnetic moments” (imagine tiny bar magnets with positive and negative poles). …
Japanese and German researchers have found evidence that suggests the middle of Earth’s mantle holds as much water as the planet’s oceans. If scientists can prove without doubt that the middle mantle is filled with water, it calls into question theories that suggest water arrived on Earth from comets. An open question for solid-earth scientists …
A single treatment giving life-long protection from severe allergies such as asthma could be made possible by immunology research at The University of Queensland. A team led by Associate Professor Ray Steptoe at the UQ Diamantina Institute has been able to ‘turn-off’ the immune response which causes allergic reaction in animals. “When someone has an …
NASA has renamed the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft — humanity’s first mission to a star, which will launch in 2018 — as the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker. Parker believed there was high speed matter and magnetism constantly escaping the sun, and that it affected the planets and space throughout our …
A new class of “miracle materials” called organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites could be a game changer for future spintronic devices. Researchers discovered that the perovskites possess two contradictory properties necessary to make spintronic devices work—the electrons’ spin can be easily controlled, and can also maintain the spin direction long enough to transport information, a property known …
The World Economic Forum said that employees should continue working until 70 in nations such as the UK, US, Japan and Canada. Since the 1950s, life expectancy has been increasing rapidly. On average, it has been increasing by one year, every five years. Babies born today in 2017 can expect to live to over 100, …
Researchers have shown that lymphatic vessels extend into the brain. It has major implications for a wide variety of brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, stroke and traumatic brain injury. Researchers have identified two networks: the vessels that lead into and surround the brain, and those within the brain itself. The first is known as …
By 2027 to 2037 scientists will likely be able to create a baby from human skin cells that have been coaxed to grow into eggs and sperm and used to create embryos to implant in a womb. The process, in vitro gametogenesis, or I.V.G., so far has been used only in mice. But stem cell …
Stanford University researchers funded by DARPA’s Neuro Function, Activity, Structure, and Technology (Neuro-FAST) program have developed new optical imaging and analysis techniques that allowed them to decode the neural activity of awake mice engaged in an adaptive, decision-making task. The findings of the Stanford team, made in collaboration with researchers at the California Institute of …