Amazon’s ‘Echo’ Virtual Assistant Has Many New ‘Skills’ to Voice Control All Walks Of Your Daily Life

Posted on January 29, 2017January 29, 2017 by

Amazon's 'Echo' is a hands-free Virtual Assistant with speaker that you control with your voice. Echo connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music, provide information, news, sports... Amazon Echo (known in-development as Doppler or Project D and shortened and referred to as Echo) is a smart speaker developed by Amazon.com. The device consists of a 9.25-inch (23.5 cm) tall cylinder speaker with a seven-piece microphone array. The device connects to the voice-controlled intelligent person...

Yale-led research on how cancer cells spread has found that a melanoma cell and a white blood cell can fuse to form a hybrid with the ability to metastasize.

Posted on January 28, 2017 by

In a second human case, a Yale-led research team has found that a melanoma cell and a white blood cell can fuse to form a hybrid with the ability to metastasize. The finding provides further insight into how melanoma and other cancers spread from solid tumors with implications for future treatment. The study was published on Jan. 27 in the journal PLOS ONE. Cancer turns deadly when malignant cells spread from a primary tumor to other organs and tissues. Building on a theory first proposed ...

‘SensorTile’ is a sensing and connectivity hub ideal for developing products such as wearables, gaming accessories, smart-home and IoT devices.

Posted on January 25, 2017 by

'SensorTile' is a sensing and connectivity hub ideal for developing products such as wearables, gaming accessories, smart-home and IoT devices. It has small sensor board with MEMS accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, pressure sensor, and a MEMS microphone STMicroelectronics’ 13.5mm x 13.5mm 'SensorTile' is currently the smallest turnkey sensor board of its type, containing a MEMS accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, pressure sensor, and a MEMS microphone. With the on-board low-power ST...

Epson’s augmented reality smart glasses

Posted on January 24, 2017 by

MOVERIO. Explore how the Epson MOVERIO family of smart eyewear is transforming today's activities with tomorrow's vision. The Epson Moverio BT-300 is the third iteration of the company's smart eyeglass lineup. It comes with a new lightweight form factor - 20% lighter than the BT-200 range - that has a 'Google' feel and is equipped with an OLED display, which projects an image in front of the eyes that feels around 80 inches in size. https://youtu.be/hhYPqF3aHUs Battery life on...

Research suggest diversity in the workplace is more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians

Posted on January 24, 2017 by

Diversity in the workplace helps firms be more productive, according to a study co-authored by an MIT researcher — but it may also reduce satisfaction among employees. “Having a more diverse set of employees means you have a more diverse set of skills,” says Sara Ellison, an MIT economist, which “could result in an office that functions better.” At the same time, individual employees may prefer less diverse settings. The study, analyzing a large white-collar U.S. firm, examined how much “s...

University of Tokyo research findings will help thermal conduction and insulators. Study suggest trajectory of an electron passing through a magnetic field is bent.

Posted on January 23, 2017January 23, 2017 by

A research group at the University of Tokyo and their collaborators have observed a phenomenon similar to the Hall effect—found only in electricity-conducting metal—in a spin liquid state, which, as an insulator, does not carry electricity. This groundbreaking discovery presents a new research method for studying spin liquid states, which are shrouded in mystery. A trajectory of an electron passing through a magnetic field is bent by what is known as the Lorentz force—the force exerted on the...

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Sweden has a online course on spaceflight returns with certification for participants

Posted on January 21, 2017January 21, 2017 by

Online course on spaceflight returns with certification for participants Learn about human space travel from an experienced ESA astronaut who flew on Space Shuttle Discovery to conduct research on the International Space Station. Christer Fuglesang participates in a spacewalk outside the International Space Station in 2006. The history-making ESA astronaut/KTH adjunct professor leads a massive online course (MOOC) in human spaceflight in which students can get certification from ed...

IBM’s Watson supercomputer will soon be the new smart doctor on the block

Posted on January 20, 2017 by

IBM's Watson correctly diagnosed a patient after doctors failed. It turns out the world’s smartest supercomputer is a pretty good doctor, too. Five years after dominating geniuses in its debut on Jeopardy!, IBM’s Watson is still putting human intelligence to shame. The artificial intelligence machine correctly diagnosed a 60-year-old woman’s rare form of leukemia within 10 minutes — a medical mystery that doctors had missed for months at the University of Tokyo. After treatment for a wo...

Aladdin Shadyab Researcher at University of California Suggests, Too Much Sitting Ages You Faster

Posted on January 19, 2017 by

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that elderly women who sit for more than 10 hours a day with low physical activity have cells that are biologically older by eight years compared to women who are less sedentary. The study, publishing online January 18 in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found elderly women with less than 40 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day and who remain sedentary for more than 10 hours per day have shor...

‘UC Davis School of Medicine’ research suggests women who start prenatal vitamins early are less likely to have children with autism

Posted on January 18, 2017 by

Women who reported not taking a daily prenatal vitamin immediately before and during the first month of pregnancy were nearly twice as likely to have a child with an autism spectrum disorder as women who did take the supplements -- and the associated risk rose to seven times as great when combined with a high-risk genetic make-up, a study by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute has found. "Mothers of children with autism were significantly less likely than those of typically developing...

FDA is in process of defining the claim ‘Healthy’ so that companies can use this term and other claims on the front of packages of foods that meet certain criteria.

Posted on January 18, 2017 by

With final rules on the Nutrition Facts label published, consumers soon will see an updated label on food packages that makes the calories and serving sizes of products easier to see and that gives them additional nutrition information, such as added sugars, vitamin D, and potassium. The marketplace is teeming with rows and rows of foods – some new and some not; some healthier than others. Even for the well informed, choosing what to buy is challenging, especially if you want to choose a heal...

Trinity College Dublin – CRANN researchers develop new method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen

Posted on January 18, 2017 by

Researchers at CRANN, Ireland’s leading Science Foundation Ireland funded nanoscience institute based at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), have developed a new method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The discovery will have significant impact in the worldwide race to cheaply and efficiently produce hydrogen gas, hailed as the clean energy source of the future. Professor Mike Lyons, a Principal Investigator at CRANN and TCD’s School of Chemistry and his team have developed new inexpens...

‘Horizon 2020’ European Union’s largest research and innovation initiative, with nearly €80 billion in funding.

Posted on January 16, 2017January 28, 2017 by

Horizon 2020 is the European Union's largest research and innovation initiative, with nearly €80 billion in funding allocated for over seven years. The program focuses on three overarching priorities: excellent science, industrial leadership, and solutions to global challenges. Horizon 2020 is open to participants from anywhere in the world as the program recognizes the growing importance of internationalizing how knowledge is produced and used. Please join our speakers to hear their testimon...

MIT Students, Asma Ghandeharioun, Asaph Azaria, Sara Taylor and Rosalind W. Picard Research suggest being ‘Kind and Grateful’ (gratitude) positively influences psychological wellbeing and physical health

Posted on January 16, 2017January 16, 2017 by

MIT research students Asma Ghandeharioun, Asaph Azaria, Sara Taylor and Rosalind W. Picard have developed "Kind and Grateful": Promoting Kindness and Gratitude with Pervasive Technology Team has designed a novel system to promote kindness and gratitude. They leverage pervasive technologies to naturally embed gratitude inspiration in everyday life. Mobile sensor data is utilized to infer optimal moments for stimulating contextually relevant thankfulness and appreciation. Team then analyzed the ...

Scientists at the Imperial College London Have Developed Urine Test Method That Can Reveal How Healthy Your Meals Are.

Posted on January 15, 2017 by

Scientists at the Imperial College London Department of Medicine, in conjunction with Newcastle University and Aberystwyth University, in the United Kingdom have developed a urine test that can tell how healthy your diet. A urine test that can reveal how healthy your meals are has been developed by UK scientists. They think it could be used to improve nutritional advice They think it could be used to improve nutritional advice or in weight loss because people are notoriously bad at recordi...

‘Creative Technologies’ is a new fast growing field that integrates creative arts and technology

Posted on January 14, 2017 by

The Creative Technologies Research Theme integrates creative arts and technology, creating a unique and dynamic combination in areas of multimedia, gaming, content and production. Creative Technologies researchers in Trinity look at technologies which are creative in themselves, including computer animation, computer graphics, and signal processing, while also carrying out research into how these technologies can be utilised in other wider research areas such as Education and Traini...

‘SimforHealth’ offers an immersive, interactive and collaborative approach to the training of health professionals, in line with the ethical concept

Posted on January 9, 2017January 9, 2017 by

SimforHealth offers an immersive, interactive and collaborative approach to the training of health professionals, in line with the ethical concept. SimforHealth creates and markets customized solutions for digital simulation teaching, aimed at medical students and at health professionals in continuing education. SimforHealth helps with patient management via virtual consultations, which rely on a range of methods and technologies including 3D real-time simulators, serious games, virtual re...

Helwan University Egypt Students have developed ‘Smart Stick’ for blind that detect obstacle in real-time

Posted on January 8, 2017January 8, 2017 by

Visually impaired people find difficulties detecting obstacles in front of them, during walking in the street, which makes it dangerous. The smart stick comes as a proposed solution to enable them to identify the world around. In this paper we propose a solution, represented in a smart stick with infrared sensor to detect stair-cases and pair of ultrasonic sensor to detect any other obstacles in front of the user, within a range of four meters. Moreover, another sensor is placed at the bottom...

Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) million dollar problem – ‘P vs NP Problem’

Posted on January 3, 2017January 3, 2017 by

Suppose that you are organizing housing accommodations for a group of four hundred university students. Space is limited and only one hundred of the students will receive places in the dormitory. To complicate matters, the Dean has provided you with a list of pairs of incompatible students, and requested that no pair from this list appear in your final choice. This is an example of what computer scientists call an NP-problem, since it is easy to check if a given choice of one hundred students...

University of Tokyo have developed a new analytical method that uses the rare metal tungsten to measure 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), a marker for gene expression

Posted on January 1, 2017 by

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a new analytical method that uses the rare metal tungsten to measure 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), a marker for gene expression, one nucleotide at a time. This method holds promise of contributing to advances in epigenetics and regenerative medicine research by simplifying 5hmC detection in the genome, and accelerating the pace in which knowledge on the initialization of cell functions is accumulated. Many multicellular organisms carry o...

Nanoengineers at the University of California created a 3D printed multipurpose fish-shaped microrobots.

Posted on January 1, 2017 by

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego used an innovative 3-D printing technology they developed to manufacture multipurpose fish-shaped microrobots — called microfish — that swim around efficiently in liquids, are chemically powered by hydrogen peroxide and magnetically controlled. These proof-of-concept synthetic microfish will inspire a new generation of “smart” microrobots that have diverse capabilities such as detoxification, sensing and directed drug delivery, researchers...

Apple’s White paper on ‘Understanding of 21st Century Skills and Classrooms needs’

Posted on December 31, 2016December 31, 2016 by

Understanding of 21st Century Skills and Outcomes Early in this century, leaders and visionaries in the business and education communities joined together to recommend the skills needed to enrich the lives of those living in the 21st century and to make them more successful in their work. Business leaders were especially outspoken in their call for a workforce well versed in 21st century skills. In a recent survey, business leaders were asked about the skills most needed for readiness for tod...

Feynman Technique Helps You Study Faster and Retain More Information.

Posted on December 28, 2016 by

Feynman Technique Helps You Study Faster and Retain More Information. You can read something and hope that it'll all be beamed into your brain for future application. Or you can read it and write down what you just learned, as if you were teaching someone else, and actually retain it. In other words, implement a more “active” way of learning, which obviously takes a lot more work than it sounds. Ideally, when you write down your learnings, you’d also repeat what you wrote aloud, like a teache...

‘CubeSat’ micro satellite for students

Posted on December 28, 2016 by

A CubeSat (U-class spacecraft) is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research that is made up of multiples of 10×10×11.35 cm cubic units. California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) and Stanford University developed the CubeSat specifications to promote and develop the skills necessary for the design, manufacture, and testing of small satellites intended for low Earth orbit (LEO) that perform a number of scientific research functions and explore new space technologies. CubeS...

Max Planck Germany and China researchers are working together to see, how nerve, cardiac muscle and lung cells can be generated in the petri dish

Posted on December 27, 2016 by

Healing damaged cells and organs and developing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) for clinical use – these are the aims of the new Max Planck Center in Guangzhou, China. The Max Planck – GIBH Joint Center for Regenerative Biomedicine brings together leading researchers from two German Max Planck Institutes and outstanding scientists from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The cooperation will enable vital progress to be made in the further d...

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory witnessed the birth of atmospheric ice clouds in the laboratory

Posted on December 21, 2016December 21, 2016 by 41629066

Scientists have witnessed the birth of atmospheric ice clouds, creating ice cloud crystals in the laboratory and then taking images of the process through a microscope, essentially documenting the very first steps of cloud formation. The team witnessed a process known as ice nucleation in unprecedented detail, taking time-lapse movies of the first few seconds when a particle attracts water vapor, forming ice crystals that become the core of icy cirrus clouds — the high, wispy clouds that act ...

MIT Media Lab Doc On “In the Matter of Promoting the Open Internet.”

Posted on December 20, 2016 by

This document is the response of members of the MIT Media Lab to NPRM 14-28, “In the Matter of Promoting the Open Internet.” We recognize that the Internet has become the platform for a great many innovations that have changed the face of society and industry. It has provided opportunity for people throughout the world to gain from unfettered access to information and, most important, to create a universal platform upon which advances in computing can propagate and impact the well-being of peopl...

University of Tokyo researchers have revealed anomalous behaviors of massless Dirac electrons

Posted on December 20, 2016 by

University of Tokyo researchers have revealed both theoretically and experimentally the anomalous behaviors of massless Dirac electrons, a special type of electron population, by means of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements, an experimental technique that allows detailed observation of electron behavior. It is well known that an electron at rest in a vacuum has a finite mass. On the other hand, in a crystal, an electron has an apparent mass (effective mass), which can take a variety...

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have uncovered a marvel molecule that blocks a key driver of inflammatory diseases

Posted on December 17, 2016 by

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have uncovered a marvel molecule that blocks a key driver of inflammatory diseases. The finding could meet a major unmet clinical need by inspiring new non-invasive treatments for arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Muckle-Wells syndrome, among a myriad of other inflammatory diseases. The molecule ‘blocks’ a key biological driver of inflammatory diseases. Marvel Molecule Could Lead to Treatments for Inflammatory Diseases and it could inspire non-invasive tre...

‘Minecraft.Print’ – Making the Virtual Real – take virtual creations, and bring them into the real world

Posted on December 17, 2016 by

Minecraft is a video game focused on creativity and building. Players build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world–everything from a hut, to a train station, to a fully functional computer. Why can't we take those virtual creations, and bring them into the real world? Minecraft.Print() is our attempt to do so by creating a bridge between Minecraft and the real world, via 3D printers. A Minecraft player defines a 3D space to be printed, after which the software extracts the object, ...