Technology

New Little Lotus baby blankets, which are getting a Kickstarter campaign today, are advertised as a phase-change material designed by NASA contractors to constantly absorb and release heat. If it is good enough for an astronaut in the cold reaches of the cosmos - okay, they are only 220 miles up, but that is still technically outer space - it will surely keep your infant at the optimal temperature. But is there a great need for this? The promotional materials talk about infant mortality yet the main causes of infant mortality are not kids who lack the ideal temperature at all times, nor…

The roles played by autonomous weapons will be discussed at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, this week which could have far reaching ramifications for the future of war. The second Expert Meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) will discuss issues surrounding what have been dubbed by some as “killer robots”, and whether they ought to be permitted in some capacity or perhaps banned altogether. The discussion falls under the purview of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which has five protocols already covering non-detectable fragments, mines and booby traps,…

Since we have been hearing about quantum computing for decades with no real applied breakthroughs, it may be necessary to use technology available now to edge close to computers that act like brains. A team wants to create the functionality of a network of neurons using  memory resistors - memristors - which are resistors in a circuit that "remember" how much current has flowed through them. Current computers use random access memory (RAM), which moves very quickly as a user works but does not retain unsaved data if power is lost. Flash drives, on the other hand, store information when…

txt msgs r running language *ruining ^lol, jk!! :) In many casual discussions of language and the internet, it’s not uncommon to hear about how such “textspeak ruins language” – how technology has made everybody lazy with their speech and writing. Major media outlets such as the LA Times, the BBC and The Daily Mail have all bemoaned the ways in which people communicate through technology. Of course, language does change when it’s used to text or write messages on the internet. It’s even become the focus of the field of linguistics known as Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). Although it…

The percentage U.S. CEOs who are women is 27 but you wouldn't know that by searching among Google images. Of the top 100 Google image search results for CEOs women are only 11 percent.  Obviously Google is not in the social engineering business, they go by popularity. That is why a Huffington Post article about science will show up in Google search higher than a real science article. Female CEOs may be too busy working to be uploading their pictures to lots of places so their results are higher.  A new University of Washington analysis took a lot at how accurately gender…

The predatory red tiger oscar may be scary to zebrafish but it will run from a robot predator.   Zebrafish are a highly versatile species that are increasingly taking the place of more complex animals in behavioral studies. They have been used to explore social behavior, as well as aspects of cognition, anxiety, and fear.  But robots can do what live models cannot. They don't feel fatigue or have environmental impacts. Maurizio Porfiri, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the  NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, creates bio-inspired robotic models that…

Space science missions are a lot like smartphones. News apps and operating systems may not be compatible with older hardware and vice-versa. Different data processing protocols of individual space missions has limited comparison of data from numerous space missions. Due to the complexity of space exploration, instruments and devices are usually purpose-made and data acquisition as well as number crunching tools are built using mission specific data structures and protocols. The downside: the exchange and comparison of observational data between missions and complex computational models…

Display screens are everywhere but convenience needs are going up, not down, and people are wanting to break free of rigid monitors. The race is on to develop computer displays that can be easily rolled up and put away rather than requiring a flat surface for storage and transportation. A new study suggests that a novel DNA-peptide structure can be used to produce thin, transparent, and flexible screens. The research, conducted researchers at Tel Aviv University, harnesses bionanotechnology to emit a full range of colors in one pliable pixel layer, as opposed to the several rigid layers that…

A microstimulator and geomagnetic compass attached to the brains of blind rats allows them to spontaneously learn to use new information about their location and navigate through a maze nearly as well as normally sighted rats. The findings show the incredible flexibility of the mammalian brain but also suggest that a similar kind of neuroprosthesis could help blind people walk freely through the world. What they set out to do was to restore the blind rats' allocentric sense rather than vision - that sense is what allows animals and people to recognize the position of their body within the…

The scientific community is facing a 'pollution problem' in academic publishing, one that poses a serious threat to the "trustworthiness, utility, and value of science and medicine," according to Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, director of the Division of Medical Ethics in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Medical Center. That is a maturity issue. While open access - freeing publicly-funded research from copyright corporations and allowing the public to read the results they paid for with taxes - was hailed as a good thing, early on there were concerns that once it became popular,…