#World s first riot-control drone fires pepper spray and paintballs at protesters Skunk drone South africa-based Desert Wolf, the maker of a drone that fires pepper spray bullets,
The company told the BBC it had secured the sale of 25 units to a mining company after showing off the tech at a trade show.
But the International Trade union confederation is horrified by the idea. This is a deeply disturbing and repugnant development
and we are convinced that any reasonable government will move quickly to stop the deployment of advanced battlefield technology on workers
He added that the ITUC would now try to identify which company had ordered the drones.
We will be taking this up as a matter of urgency with the unions in the mining sector globally,
Blinding lasers Desert Wolf s website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets
In addition to pepper-spray ammunition, the firm says it can also be armed with dye-marker balls and solid plastic balls.
000 bullets at a time as well asblinding lasers and onboard speakers that can communicate warnings to a crowd.
the Defence Web news site has published a photo of the drone after it was unveiled at a security trade show near Johannesburg in May.
but I am allowed to say it will be used by an international mining house. We are also busy with a number of other customers who want to finalise their orders.
some security companies in South africa and outside South africa, some police units outside South africa and a number of other industrial customers.
We cannot afford another Lonmin Marikana and by removing the police on foot, using nonlethal technology,
I believe that everyone will be much safer. Lonmin Marikana is a reference to a violent strike over pay in 2012 that resulted in 44 deaths at a South african platinum mine.
Most of the deceased were workers, but local police were also among the casualties. Mr Kieser noted that Lonmin was not the customer in question.
Torture tech? Guy Martin, the editor of Defence Web, said he believed the drone was unique.
The Skunk unmanned aerial vehicle with its four paintball guns, loudhailer and cameras is only a logical next step in the development of UAVS,
but nevertheless it is watershed a moment in their evolution and goes to show that UAVS have unlimited almost uses,
he said. I predict that we will see a whole new wave of UAVS emerging with payloads more unusual than tasers,
dart guns and paintball guns. But Noel Sharkey, chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms control campaign group
is concerned that the deployment of such drones riskscreeping authoritarianism and the suppression of protest. Firing plastic balls or bullets from the air will maim and kill,
he said. Using pepper spray against a crowd of protesters is a form of torture
and should not be allowed. We urgently need an investigation by the international community before these drones are used d
#Vessyl: A smart cup that tracks everything you drink Vessyl. There are a lot of fitness and health trackers on the market today:
but slightly faceted aesthetic you might equate with their Jawbone headsets or Jambox. But it s also recognizably influenced from the Nike+Fuelbandwhen you tilt the cup,
a built-in LED display brings the stark cup to life, highlighting a single line that estimates your current level of hydration
and displays that information right on the outside of the cup. In a perfect world, you adjust your exercise intake accordingly.
phones are typically in our pockets. We wanted to make sure there was something right in front of you,
That display is also customizable. In addition to calories, you can track, say, caffeineand make sure you re not ODING in the morning,
if Vessyl s beverage detection doesn t work as seamlessly as it does. At its core lives a molecular sensor, the specifics
of which Lee refused to provide for competitive reasons, but we re told its scans are of high enough fidelity to distinguish, not just milk from beer,
but Coke from Pepsi. Over a Skype demo, Lee let me choose from maybe 60 different beverages he had on the table.
Colas fruit sodas, energy drinks, protein shakes, beers, wines, orange juices with pulp, orange juices with no pulp,
Presumably, this analysis time is of little concern to the user. It's certainly neat to watch as a machine reverse-engineers the liquid poured into it
but any long-time user of the Vessyl should, theoretically, forget that the Vessyl is doing anything special at all.
And in that regard, Vessyl as it is now a $199 glowing electronic device that you wash by hand and charge on a bundled coaster (for five to seven days of run time) will probably only make sense to a small pool of early adopters.
Just don t let my insurance company see my proclivities for booze and deep dish pizza. I'll need solid coverage for my impending heart attack.
Via Fast Company Shar r
#Bionic pancreas shows promise in managing diabetes The bionic pancreas In 2000, Ed Damiano s son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.#
#Damiano s son was 11 months old. The biomedical engineer, decided to create a device that would help his child
and millions of others better manage their disease. He set a goal of having it ready
by the time his son went to college.####Results from the latest clinical trials of his#smartphone-linked artificial pancreas#suggest he might just make that deadline.
Type 1 diabetes occurs when beta islet cells in the pancreas die off. These cells sense levels of blood sugar, aka glucose,
in the blood and secrete the necessary amount of insulin to keep those levels normal.
Insulin also enables glucose to enter our body s cells, where it is used as a source of energy.
This means an imbalance in blood sugar not only starves blood vessels and organs of energy but also keeps the blood saturated with glucose,
which can cause tissue damage and sometimes lead to coma or even death. The disease usually occurs early in life
and can be managed through careful monitoring of blood insulin levels, controlling what food is eaten and when, modifying physical activity,
and the use of pumps or injections to deliver insulin and the glucose-raising hormone glucagon to keep blood sugar levels within a normal range.
An app for that But controlling the disease is all-consuming, lurking in the back of every waking decision.
Damiano, who works at the University of Boston, says a bionic pancreas his team has developed with colleagues at the Massachusetts General Hospital offers hope of a normal life to people with type 1 diabetes.
A smartphone-linkedpancreas removes the need for people with type 1 diabetes to constantly monitor
Every 5 minutes, a signal is sent wirelessly from a glucose monitor under the user s skin to an iphone app,
sending a signal to pumps carried by the user to administer the required dose via a catheter.
Before eating, people can input data about the type and size of their meal. The artificial pancreas performed well in#hospital-based clinical trials in 2010.
But the important test is whether it works in a real-world environment. In the latest study, 20 adults wearing the device were put up in a hotel for five days
but were otherwise free to do as they chose, including eat in restaurants and go to the gym.
were monitored also for five days at a summer camp for kids with diabetes. For both groups, the results with the bionic pancreas were compared with five days of the participants using their usual method of controlling the disease pricking their finger to monitor glucose levels
and using an insulin pump, that requires them to manually calculate the dosage. The device performed beyond our expectations,
what the participants were able to do managing their own diabetes prior to the trial, he says.
the longer you can stave off the long-term health complications of diabetes, says Damiano. Emotional impact The study had a tremendous emotional impact on participants.
They got a glimpse of life without diabetes and that is pretty profound, he says. In many cases, the participants were reluctant to give the devices back,
and ate a banana for breakfast without fear of not enough time having passed between insulin injection
and food consumption and wondering whether or not the 20 minute brisk walk to work would drop my blood sugar in 2 hours!
both in the US and in the UK, says Alasdair Rankin, director of research at Diabetes UK,
a charity which is supporting the#development of a similar device#with researchers at the University of Cambridge.
Clearly more work will be needed before these systems can be used independently at home as a routine treatment option,
but there is now real hope that this technology has the potential to transform the lives of people with type 1 diabetes within a generation,
this may come to pass before his son heads off to college in the autumn of 2017.
The results of Damiano s study and several other groups working on artificial pancreases were presented today at the meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San francisco. Via New Scientist Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat t
but instead, should make us become more aware of skills necessary for future work. Frey lists new industries created as our future unfolds,
costing literally trillions of dollars and employing hundreds of millions of people. Brought on by development of auto-drive vehicles,
this new industry will need station designers and architects, traffic-flow analyzers, command center operators, and construction teams.
Other examples in this fast-developing future time include Bio-Factories. Based on using living systems bio-factories represent a new process for creating substances that are either too tricky
or too expensive to grow in nature or to make with petrochemicals. The rush to develop bio-factories as a means for production promises not only to revolutionize the chemical industry,
but also to transform the economy. Find more on Thomas Frey#here. However, from assembly line robots, ATMS,
and self-checkout terminals to voice-recognition telephone apps, each year intelligent systems will take over more jobs formerly held by humans;
which is confirmed by this#Global Trends 2025 report. Experts warn that even doctors and government officials could one day be replaced by increasingly smarter systems.
In healthcare, intelligent programs already wield a positive impact. Dr. Eric Topol, director of the#Scripps Translational Science Institute, describes in a#Youtube#video#how patient-focused technology improves medicine.
In other examples, the#Artificial neural network#helps#Mayo Clinic#doctors diagnose cardiac patients and many websites provide free medical advice;
and even TV ads often disclose critical data. The ultimate tool to replace doctors though, could be the nanorobot,
a tiny microscopic-size machine that can whiz through veins replacing aging and damaged cells with new youthful ones.
This nanowonder with expected development time of mid-to-late 2030s could eliminate nearly all need for human doctors.
Automatons that could replace politicians may be a welcome relief. The#U s. Congress#debate over finances exposed the inadequacies of human governing
when members stubbornly refused to consider opponent s views. Experts believe that A i systems, circa 2040s
would have averted these debacles. Naysayers, though, see allowing machines to make choices for humans as a threat to our dignity.
They argue that we should not let computers replace positions such as law makers, judges, or police officers.
However, in her book,#Machines Who Think, Pamela Mccorduck argues, I d rather take my chances with an impartial Computer experts estimate that by 2050,50 million jobs could be lost to automation.
So, how do we solve this dilemma? As machines take over occupations, there is still much that humans can do to stay employed.
Futurist Richard Samson, in his essay, Highly Human Jobs, suggests that human knowledge will continue to be needed for some time.
However, experts predict by the end of the century; or possibly much sooner, all jobs will disappear.
Futurist Marshall Brain in his#Robotic Freedom Blog#agrees with the idea. America should create a $25, 000 annual stipend for every U s. adult,
#The Holoroom Lowe s launches holographic virtual reality showroom The Holoroom Brick-and-mortar retail has changed little
since the Internet exploded into our lives in the mid-1990##s. We now go into a store to figure out what we want to buy only to go home
and buy it online from whoever offered the lowest price and free returns. But a number of retailers are looking for ways to leverage technology to get shoppers excited about buying in store again.
Say you re going to remodel your bathroom. You d likely go to a brick -and-mortar store to see the colors and hardware for yourself.
But you may still have trouble envisioning how the wall color tiles and taps will look together.
Step into the Holoroom, where they will be displayed in augmented reality. We know that for many homeowners,
the struggle to visualize a completed home improvement project or to share that vision with others can stop a project in its tracks.
The division, a participant in Singularity University s Corporate Innovation Exchange seeks to improve consumer experience by bringing bits of science fiction to life.
we felt that those rooms didn t design the level of detail that would be appropriate for a retail environment.
They re designed really for one person to be in the environment, and there s some motion sickness involved,
and matte paint and developed the augmented reality display system from scratch. The cost of each grid room is relatively low,
so while the original Holoroom will be in Toronto, similar rooms will make their way into many stores.
All told, Lowe s boasts 15 million customers every week. Customers using the Holoroom first use an ipad app to spec out the room they re remodeling.
As they select products from the Lowe s catalogue to put in the room the objects appear in a model in the app.
which consists of walls with grids on them that the phone uses to track with technology similar to#Google s Tango.
The tablet serves as a kind of de facto goggle a giant monocle, really allowing couples to experience the illusion together.
Lowe s foray into high tech capitalizes on recent developments in holography. Ten years ago, the holodeck#seemed like a dream.
Now, it feels within reach, Phil Rogers, a corporate fellow at Advanced micro devices, the computer chip maker,#told the New york times#in January.
Once limited to silvery#images#on credit cards, holography#made a splash#last year when University of Illinois computer scientists showed off an immersive holograph room, CAVE2, that projected images on an array of LED screens.
Users wore goggles to get the full 3d effect, and a wand allowed them to interact with the objects on the screens.
One setting they mocked up? Star trek s holodeck, of course. Perhaps the perfect kitchen feels like a dream barely within reach, too.
Well, it may remain a dream for a few more months. Like other computerscreens, the room displays inputs processed elsewhere.
That means Lowe s has to scan every item before it can appear in the Holoroom.
The company is beginning with bathrooms and will continue to expand to other rooms as well as locations beyond the pioneering Toronto store in coming months.
Via Singularity Hub Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat u
#Comfy a new app that solves the No. 1 complaint about offices Comfy You go to work on a hot summer day,
but as soon as you sit at your desk, your are freezing. Or it s winter and the heater keeps you too hot.
The heating and cooling system is designed to keep you comfortable but it s not doing a very good job,
and it wastes massive amounts of energy in the process. An app called Comfy is trying to put temperature control back in the hands of employees.
Tell the app that you re too warm or cold and it automatically sends a blast of air directly to your part of the office.
As the startup has met with local tech companies that are obsessed with keeping workers happy at their desks,
Of course, it s not just tech companies with the problemfor the last 50 years or so, it s been common for office buildings to use central temperature controls, partly as an attempt at energy efficiency.
If offices have thermostats, they re often fake, so people don t end up fighting with each other over the right setting
or accidentally leaving the system on too long. Though the new app might seem at first like it would use more energy,
since any employee can trigger it to work at will, it actually can end up shaving as much as 15%to 20%off a building s HVAC bill.
That s because the system quickly learns when people aren t in a particular part of the building.
If you look at a typical office building, you ll probably find 40%to 50%empty space at any time,
Baker says. Maybe someone s in a meeting and their office is empty, or a conference room isn t being used,
we re saving an enormous amount of energy. As someone uses the app, they can also see what preferences their coworkers have.
even though he personally thought the building was always cold. He never thought that anyone would possibly disagree with him,
it might be personal preference and not some eternal truth about the building. He started bringing in a sweater.
as Apple s new ibeacon technology makes it easier to pinpoint a person at an exact location inside the building,
because our phones help us keep a record of what we like e
#The Connected Fitting Room eliminates personal interaction with salespeople The Connected Fitting Room Retailers rely heavily on online shopping.
This has many advantages to in store shopping for both the customer and the retailer. Online shopping doesn t allow for spontaneous purchases.
and this is only possible through actually going into a fitting room.####Surprisingly, despite the significance of the fitting room in making a purchase,
retailers have done little to improve the fitting room experience. With these opportunities in mind, the#Connected Fitting Room#was born.
The Connected Fitting Room uses RFID tags to register the items a customer brings into a fitting room,
making note of the items, the specific colors, and the size. This information is displayed on a touch screen in the dressing room,
and if a customer desires a different size or color, they can simply click on the changes on the screen.
The system has a real time registry of the store s inventory and will show you all options available.
Sales associates will receive a notification and can bring the additional items straight to the fitting room.
In addition, the touch screen can suggest complementary or similar items, which can also be requested for retrieval.
Also helpful, if you see something you like that you can t purchase that same day,
Seeing what items customers bring into the fitting room and whether or not they purchase those items,
Created by#Accenture,#Microsoft, #and#Avanade, the Connected Fitting Room is currently in use at the department store Kohl s,
which has locations all throughout the US. In addition, talks are in process that would bring the technology to retailers in the UK as well.
#The nanodegree A new type of college degree created by AT&T and Udacity An instructor for Udacity teaching an online Python class.
AT&T and the online education provider Udacity have partnered to create thenanodegree, a new type of college degree similar to the#Micro Colleges that Futurist Thomas Frey predicted.
The vocationally focused nanodegree is designed to be a lifelong learning portfolio#that would be recognized#widely by the tech industry
##Since last year, Udacity, other online education providers, and Internet billionaires have promised to overhaul the clunky path to a diploma.
We need to take what now exists as a dumb, static document and turn it into a richer, updateable, more connected record of a person s skills, expertise,
and experience, wrote#Linkedin cofounder Reid Hoffman. Last year, on stage with California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun#announced#a new consortium of businesses, the Open education Alliance,
that would agree to recognize an industry-focused skills credential. The nanodegree is the first product of that promise
together with many of the original partners, from AT&T to Autodesk. It s a failure of the community college system, the California state system,
and the University of California system that that announcement was made, said Newsom, who believes California education should do more to address the widening skills gap.
Details about nanodegrees are still forthcoming, but Udacity stated, It should take a working student about six to12 months to complete without having to take time off.
Continuing, the blog explains, Our early nanodegrees will prepare you for a job as a front-end web developer,
back-end web developer, ios mobile developer, Android mobile developer, or data analyst. The first nanodegree will start this fall.
Other online education providers, such as Coursera,#are designing their own certifications, which take about the same amount of time,
depending on the course of study. So, how s the quality of the degree compared to a traditional diploma?
To test this out, I ve been taking the data science track at both Coursera and Udacity and comparing it to the master s in mathematical behavioral sciences
I got from UC Irvine. On many levels, data science at Udacity and Coursera are superior.
It s completely up-to-date with the latest software, it s problem-based, much (much) cheaper,
and more flexible. Don t get me wrong: my master s was fantastic for helping me think theoretically about data science
and how to carefully determine cause and effect. But it left me lacking#the raw coding skills necessary to download a dataset
and get through an actual project. For many data science jobs, the ability to run basic regressions and determine patterns in big datasets is more than sufficient.
Photo credit: New york times Via Venture Beat Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat t
#Researchers discover gene that stimulates growth of new brain cells in adults City of Hope researchers have found that over-expressing a specific gene could prompt growth in adults of new neurons in the hippocampus,
where learning and memory are regulated. The study, which used an animal model, found that over-expression of the TLX gene resulted in smart, faster learners that retained information better and longer.
Understanding the link between this gene and the growth of new neurons or neurogenesis is an important step in developing therapies to address impaired learning
and memory associated with neurodegenerative diseases and aging. The new research was published June 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Memory loss is a major health problem both in diseases like Alzheimer s, but also just associated with aging, said Yanhong Shi,
Ph d.,lead author of the study and a neurosciences professor at City of Hope. In our study, we manipulated the expression of this receptor by introducing an additional copy of the gene
which obviously we cannot do outside the laboratory setting. The next step is to find the drug that can target this same gene.
Researchers found that over-expression of the gene was associated actually with a physically larger brain,
as well as the ability to learn a task quickly. Furthermore over-expression of the gene was linked with the ability to remember, over a longer period of time,
what had been learned. The discovery creates a new potential strategy for improving cognitive performance in elderly patients
and those who have a neurological disease or brain injury. The bulk of the brain s development happens before birth,
and there are periods largely in childhood and young adulthood when the brain experiences bursts of new growth.
the region of the brain associated with learning and memory. Abstract of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper The role of the nuclear receptor TLX in hippocampal neurogenesis and cognition has begun just to be explored.
In this study, we generated a transgenic mouse model that expresses TLX under the control of the promoter of nestin, a neural precursor marker.
Transgenic TLX expression led to mice with enlarged brains with an elongated hippocampal dentate gyrus and increased numbers of newborn neurons.
the TLX transgenic mice exhibited enhanced cognition with increased learning and memory. These results suggest a strong association between hippocampal neurogenesis and cognition,
as well as significant contributions of TLX to hippocampal neurogenesis, learning, and memory y
#Mobile can drive down healthcare costs and improve care Jawbone, wearable technology for a healthier lifestyle.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aims to provide more people with access to healthcare. With a larger population of people insured, the ultimate goal and the only way to keep costs down is to improve the health of the overall population.##
If a hospital discharged a patient and he or she ended up being readmitted within 30 days for the same issue,
the hospital would be penalized. And doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers were encouraged to form networks Accountable Care Organizations (ACOS) to coordinate care
and align their economics around improved care and outcomes. The good news: economics are aligned around improving patient care and outcomes.
The bad news: a problem remains once a patient leaves the doctor s office, it becomes difficult to see what s going on with his or her health.
Therefore, it s hard to react quickly when there are changes in health conditions, which could land the patient back in the hospital or (at a minimum) back at the doctor s office.
Both of these scenarios drive costs up. Enter##Mobile Brands and healthcare organizations are realizing the potential of mobile apps and increasingly,
wearable devices to engage with and influence the behaviors of millions of Americans. According to a#study#we recently conducted
73 percent of people who use mobile to track their health/fitness now believe they are healthier than they used to be as a result.
Mobile in (medical practice When it comes to healthcare, mobile enables interactions and insights that were previously unimaginable,
including: Tracking of patients data through wearables and biometric sensors.##Healthcare providers can tell if the health of a patient at home is declining,
and can proactively intervene, preventing a readmission and also improving the patient s care. Improved communications with patients.#
#Healthcare providers can send app-based reminders or text messages to patients to take their meds,
In addition, patients who track their data can have a more detailed conversation during visits, hopefully resulting in a better care plan.
While people are starting to use mobile devices more and more to manage their health, it is still not the norm.
This is where healthcare providers have a golden opportunity to step in as trusted clinical experts who canprescribe apps
if their doctor recommended they do so, they would use their smartphones to track their health and fitness even more.
By leveraging the convenience, ubiquity and increasing intelligence of mhealth tools, we will not only help the Affordable Care Act achieve its goal of supporting the healthcaretriple Aim,
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