All predictions came true today. The Technological singularity, Mayan end of the world and judgement day all arrived. A technological singularity is a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress becomes so rapid that it makes the future after the singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict. The Terminator judgement day preceded the Mayan doomsday. Mayan’s …
The Israeli Shefela oil shale is on land. The natural gas is under the water Harold Vinegar, the former chief scientists of Royal Dutch Shell, has devised an ambitious plan that would, if successful, turn Israel into one of the world’s leading oil producers. Now chief scientist for Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), Vinegar maintains that …
Lawrence Livermore studies on Chernobyl liquidators have focused on three techniques-two of them developed at Livermore in the 1980s-that are in wide use today to monitor genetic damage in people. The techniques are called biodosimeters because they measure changes in cells to infer the biological consequences of the “dose,” or energy deposited in human tissue …
Tensilica’s has a new Xtensa LX4 dataplane processor (DPU) for SOCs (system-on-chips). The new Xtensa LX4 DPU supports wider local data memory bandwidth of up to 1024 bits per cycle, wider VLIW (very long instruction word) instructions up to 128 bits for increased parallel processing, and a cache memory prefetch option that boosts overall performance …
Quantum computers come in two forms, depending on how localized the information is. Researchers are looking into hybrid models that could combine the best of both systems. Two papers in Physical Review Letters describe possible interfaces for relaying information between the two quantum platforms. Quantum computers store information in “qubits,” which are quantum combinations of …
The three major economic mega-urban zones are the pearl river delta in the south (merging into one 42 million person city) and Yangtze River delta around Shanghai and the Bohai economic rim Geoffrey West and the Sante Fe Institute performed a study of cities and found that if the size of a city doubles, then, …
Expanding the power of thought The implantable BrainGate neural interface can detect and record brain signals, allowing persons who have lost the use of arms and legs to have point-and-click control of a computer. A BrainGate device has remained functional for 2.7 years (1,000 days). Credit: BrainGate Collaboration An investigational implanted system being developed to …
Clearwell Systems datasheet on their e-discovery (Artificial Intelligence – Data mining product) system which automates the discovery process for lawyers. * High-performance architecture processes and analyzes documents at rates of up to 1 TB per day. * Robust File Support: Processes and analyzes over 400 different file types, including support for OCR of images containing …
Lawyers replaced by Artificial Intelligence for eDiscovery
The experimental realization of extended, two-dimensional sheets of silicene, the silicon counterpart of graphene, has been elusive so far. Researchers have demonstrated that such a two-dimensional, epitaxial honeycomb Si layer forms through surface segregation on a metallic zirconium diboride (ZrB2) Film grown itself epitaxially on Si(111). The honeycomb Si layer uniformly covers the ZrB2(0001) surface …
There is on the order of 7000 deaths per year from terrorism. state department stats on terrorism Most of it is terrorism within Afghanistan and Iraq. Global terrorism has far lower numbers of about 300-700 per year (other than in 2001). There were about 200,000 murders in the world (2000). 2-3% are likely arson, which …