Google self-driving cars are legal and in use in several states at this point. As researchers, we are playing catch up trying to figure out the ethical and legal implications.
Arkin wrote in a 2007 research paper (PDF. Part of the reason for that, he said,
and that the same as Google cars as it is for military robots, we should begin now to do the research to how far can we get in ensuring the robot systems are safe
via email. n fact there are no technical and economic obstacles to go first to 20 percent of annual electricity demand penetration rate from a combination of those two technologies,
While lithium ion batteries are the dominant batteries these days for laptops, cell phones and early electric cars,
(which explains why your laptop battery dies every couple of years), and they can catch on fire under extreme impact.
While neither Kani or Nishina has a long background with battery chemistry (they hail from the telecom
and software sectors theye brought on Japanese battery cathode expert Kaname Takeya, who developed the cathode tech used today in the Toyota prius
Smartphones, for example, would be able to heal actual cracks in the casing, rather than micro-filling small scuffs and scratches that result from a pocket full of keys.
when he looked at accounting software for small business. Unlike consumer technology, which was quickly moving to a web-based approach,
business software was sold still in boxes. That made it difficult to integrate with other software
and almost impossible for the people who used it to collaborate effectively. So he went to his friend and accountant
Hamish Edwards, and together they decided to build a software company that centered on the relationship between small businesses and their accountants.
Rather than just transferring files every quarter or so, their product would allow accountants to act as real-time advisors.
it seamlessly integrates with a wide array of add-on software tools, from point-of-sale to timesheets to invoicing and payroll.
think back to how software used to work. You would buy a package from a vendor
and it would be installed on your company server or PC. Through partnerships and acquisitions, the software company would could then offer you additional products with expanded capability.
This was not only time consuming and expensive, but it limited you to the vision of your software provider.
If you had a restaurant and wanted to start selling takeout on the Web, you had to either buy a product that was compatible with your accounting software or basically run two sets of books.
In the best case you were held hostage to the partnerships and acquisitions your vendor saw fit to make.
Most of the time though, your ability to was hampered by the strategies and vision of your software provider.
If it didn see why your point-of-sale system needed to be integrated with e-commerce, you were basically out of luck.
Power has shifted from software companies to everyday consumers. Large scale Disruptions Most data are unstructured. Everyday there are millions of social media posts,
customers filling out comment cards, mentions in mass media and on blog posts. For a large enterprise, a keyword search would turn up thousands of hits per day.
It simply not possible for a human to read it all but now machines can. Lexalytics developed one of the most powerful text analysis software packages for exactly that purpose.
The company product can analyze tremendous amounts of content for meaning. So, for example, customer service organizations can monitor the web for complaints
in order to intervene and financial analysts can track sentiment on the companies they cover. The company former Marketing Director
Oleg Rogynskyy, thought there was a better way. He saw that by putting Lexalyticstechnology in the cloud,
It could be downloaded by nontechnical users, in under three minutes and used for less than $1000,
but also improve the software. Because all of the data is housed together rather than distributed on clientsservers,
the algorithms are able to learn and improve from a much wider data set. Semantria business is booming, growing at 20%per month.
Wee All Being disrupted Now Mike Saliter, Global Head of Market Development at Qliktech predicts that the cloud approach will soon become standard.
Anybody with an idea can go to Amazon, Microsoft or Oracle, sign up for a platform as a service and be up and running in minutes.
Competition is fierce and prices are falling while features are expanding. But what makes the cloud so disruptive is that it compels legacy players to change their business models
and for users to adopt the technology cheaply and easily. It seems the cloud is now disrupting every industry it touches.
but can be accessed by anybody with an internet connection. That a real game changer. One thing is clear.
This panel will be suspended by 6-mile-long wires connected to a small bus which will house the satellite controls and communication systems.
Using a technique called gravity gradient stabilization, the bus acts as a counterweight to the huge panel.
The panel, which will be closer to Earth, will experience more gravitational pull down toward the planet and less centrifugal force away from it,
while the bus will be tugged upward by the opposite effects. This balancing of forces will keep the satellite in a stable orbit,
Since the photovoltaic panel orientation is fixed the amount of sunlight that hits it varies greatly as the geosynchronous satellite and Earth spin.
The mirrors will be positioned so they can direct light onto two photovoltaic panels 24 hours a day.
as well as offer the convenience of simple apps and websites. Simple provides mobile-first banking with no need to visit a branch, no hidden fees and great customer service.
there is an easy-to-use app or web-based money transfer service. Here in the UK, our challenger bank Virgin Money are disrupting that idea with stunning free lounges,
and sell on the go using smartphones. Clinkle is introducing a mobile wallet for day to day transactions
so rather than put your hand in your pocket for small amounts of cash you can just pay with your phone.
#IBM creates a solar magnifying glass that could power the Earth IBM, the American multinational technology and consulting corporation are renowned the world over for being technology leaders
The team at IBM have developed a system called High Concentration Photo Voltaic Thermal (HCPVT), which is capable of concentrating the sun rays into a stream 2000x more powerful.
or delayed flights It can be hard to a book flight on an airline website,
Video) efore today, you had to go to our website or app to give us your flight information.
Airhelp CMO Nicolas Michaelsen told me in a phone interview before Disrupt. ow, you connect your Gmail account,
Digging through all your email could take a while. So after connecting to your Gmail account
Youl receive an email with interesting stats and potential claims a few hours later. After that, you have to give Airhelp the rights to handle the claims,
when each technology will be scientifically viable (the kind of stuff that Google, governments and universities develop),
Collars with GPS, RFID and biometrics can automatically identify and relay vital information about the livestock in real time.
By pre-computing the shape of the field where the inputs are to be used, and by understanding the relative productivity of different areas of the field,
Further understanding of crop variability, geolocated weather data and precise sensors should allow improved automated decision-making and complementary planting techniques.
which together would monitor, predict, cultivate and extract crops from the land with practically no human intervention.
Synthetic biology is about programming biology using standardized parts as one programs computers using standardized libraries today.
#$150 smartphone spectrometer can tell the number of calories in your food If you wanted to look up the calorie content of a specific food you are eating you could take it to a lab and run it through a spectrometer.
however, wants to make it easy as running an app and pairing a bluetooth dongle. The SCIO is a handheld device that pairs with a smartphone through Bluetooth LE being developed by Consumer Physics
an Israel-based startup funded by Kholsa Ventures. It based on near-infrared spectroscopy, which means it reflects light onto an object,
but Kickstarter backers pledging over $300 will receive two years of guaranteed app upgrades. While scientists and researchers use near-infrared spectroscopy on a regular basis,
Consumer Physics will offer both Android and iphone apps, and also hopes to develop a platform upon
In a few seconds, the associated smartphone app will take the spectrometer reading, send it to SCIO servers,
analyze it and compare it to a database of known spectral signatures, and display the information in an easy-to-understand manner.
In turn, the readings provided by users will make the spectral signature database more complete. Consumer Physics has developed three different applications for identifying food, medicines, and plants.
During a short demo, I saw the module return the percentage of fat and number of calories per 100 grams of cheese.
It closer to the size of a smartphone camera module, and could one day be included in a variety of forms,
Developer kits available through the Kickstarter for $200 offer barebones SCIO modules and come with CAD designs for 3d printers.
in addition to developing the hardware, is also populating the first databases and apps that work with the SCIO,
hopefully other companies will build their own apps, using the developer kit available from Kickstarter.
Other companies working in the portable spectrometer space have used also the technology to track calories eaten and nutritional intake through a user sweat.
despite the excitement that 3-D printing has generated. It can be used to make complex shapes,
But what if 3-D printers could use a wide assortment of different materials, from living cells to semiconductors, mixing
This means 3-D printing technology could make objects that sense and respond to their environment. ntegrating form and function,
s the next big thing that needs to happen in 3-D printing. A group at Princeton university has printed a bionic ear, combining biological tissue and electronics,
But even among these impressive efforts to extend the possibilities of 3-D printing Lewis lab stands out for the range of materials
In a basement lab a few hundred yards from Lewis office, her group has jury-rigged a 3-D printer, equipped with a microscope,
Another, larger 3-D printer, using printing nozzles with multiple outlets to print multiple inks simultaneously,
and easily destroyed as they are forced through the printing nozzle. In all cases, though, the inks must be formulated to flow out of the nozzle under pressure
Before coming to Harvard from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign last year, Lewis had spent more than a decade developing 3-D printing techniques using ceramics, metal nanoparticles, polymers,
Printing blood vessels was an encouraging step toward artificial tissues capable of the complex biological functions found in organs.
Most of us on our small team are musicians who are tired of being stuck behind computer screens, keyboards, faders
lightweight and self-contained system requiring little more than a laptop to function fully. The gloves capture the movements and postures of your hands.
Our software allows this information to be mapped to musical control messages which can then be routed easily to your favourite music software.
Specifically, the gloves track the following: The orientation of your hand The lexof your fingers Your current hand posture (e g. fist, open hand,
backwards) of your hand Sharp movements such as drum hits This information is transmitted wirelessly to your computer, over Wifi (via the x-OSC board on the wrist).
we have developed software allowing you to apglove data to musical control signals (e g. MIDI and OSC.
The software also allows you to combine glove inputs to make complex controls. For example, the software would allow you to program the following:
f I am making a fist with my right hand, and pointing downwards with my left hand,
map the ollof my right wrist to MIDI control change message 60 on channel 2 These mappings can then be used to control third party software such as Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic pro or Max
This ability of the software to combine postures and gestures for mapping, combined with other innovative technological advances,
-more than most MIDI controllers on the market all without having to even look at a screen during performance.
Finally, you can use the software to listen out for other inputs, as well, further increasing the richness of control and expressive mappability with your favourite music software.
Some details about the evolution of the project over the last few years can be seen on our Glove Project Blog.
hardware and software and we have arrived finally at a point where we can make them available to others through this Kickstarter.
Gestural data interface have been around for decades and have been used for many different applications (see our review of other glove systems).
and use to follow a line of text in a book or on a screen.
Fingerreader software recognizes that and offers haptic feedback, even knowing when it reaches the end of a line.
#Mayo Clinic s Better turns your smartphone into a personal health concierge The Mayo Clinic is offering unlimited access to the famed hospital nurses through a smartphone app for about $50 a month.
Along with real-time video chats with Mayo Clinic nurses, the new service also includes personally-tailored health information culled from Mayo Clinic databases
a ymptom checkerthat incorporate individual user health histories, and access to a personal medical concierge who can provide more information or schedule patientsdoctor appointments.
Fast Company has covered previously New york-based medical concierge service Sherpaa and Oscar, a new health insurer which tailors its products for web and mobile use.
or smartphone application is far less than a comparable standalone product, which requires far greater fees for the FDA process.
The Mayo Clinic Global Business Solutions wing has been actively building partnerships with everything from benefits providers to a variety of software developers.
The Mayo Clinic is entering a crowded market of smartphone-based concierge medicine firms. Beyond Sherpaa, there also Grand Rounds, Stat Doctors, Doctor on Demand,
which offers subsidized concierge medicine services via smartphones for residents of British columbia. For Better, the Mayo Clinic,
the real (and unanswered) question is just how much of a market for their services really exists via smartphone apps s
announcing a bachelor degree in information technology costing students just under $10, 000 in tuition and fees.
In May of 2013, Georgia Tech announced an online master degree in computer science for $7
According to THECB website, students arriving ith no prior college credits should be able to complete the degree program in three years at a total cost of $13, 000 to $15, 000.
#Facebook and Google are drooling over drone companies Last month it seemed as if Facebook would acquire the long-range solar-powered drone maker Titan Aerospace
and use its technology to deliver Internet to remote areas of the world. It was ostensibly a hedge against Google balloon-driven Project Loon and the possibility that Google,
rather than Facebook, would connect the ext billioninternet users. Today that picture is opaque at best.
Google not Facebook is buying Titan Aerospace, and Facebook has acquired a different U k.-based solar-powered drones startup called Ascenta.
And an answer to the question of how exactly the two Silicon valley giants will leverage their new technology?
Still elusive. What is clear is that while delivering connectivity to far-flung parts of the globe is advantageous for both Facebook and Google,
the race to acquire unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, technology is about much more. Exactly what, well, that more difficult to discern. ou definitely have to look at it as part of a broader business strategy,
says Mark Bünger, research director at Lux Research. he two of them are shooting for the strategic high ground here Amazon is obviously doing this, too.
For Facebook, the incentive is simple: catch up. Rival Google has been developing a means to provide Internet connectivity to remote regions of the world for years now through Project Loon,
which uses Internet hubs suspended from high-flying balloons to provide bandwidth to areas of New zealand that are wired off the grid.
Facebook isn breaking new ground by getting into commercialized drone technology, Bünger says, just keeping up. oogle has been working on the autonomous vehicles, the Nest acquisition,
and a bunch of other stuff that surprising if you think of them as a search engine company which hopefully nobody does anymore,
Bünger says. Facebook knows that if it wants to remain a major presence in the emerging Internet of things,
it will need to extend beyond software and into hardware. Drones are one means of doing so.
UAS are also a means of bypassing mobile carriers, which have given Facebook some trouble in parts of the developing world,
particularly where the company has attempted to negotiate ero-ratedeals that allow customers to use some of Facebook offerings without it counting against their data plans.
If Facebook does follow through with its ambitious plans to connect the next billion people through Facebook-owned Internet drones
Facebook can not only bypass mobile carriers that don want to play ball, but also push those new users toward Facebook offerings like its recently acquired messaging app Whatapp.
But one oft-overlooked area where UAS technology could really be a boon for Facebook is in data moving the other direction.
Right now, Facebook owns mountains of data on its users, but relatively little on the parts of the world that aren connected already to Facebook.
Comparatively, Google acquisitions and exclusive deals with third parties provide it with everything from the rich trove of geospatial data that powers Google maps to the energy use
and living habits of those using its Nest smart home technology, providing a far more robust picture of the world
and a wider range of services it can provide. With a fleet of UAS in the sky, Facebook could begin gathering its own proprietary geospatial data, aerial imagery, traffic data,
meteorological data information that it could then integrate into new products or sell to companies that need it,
much like Google does and other companies threaten to do, at least with regard to drones. or Facebook and Google and those guys,
they know they need a toehold in this space, Bünger says. here are a hundred other areas like that where theye having to compete now to get a toehold in the technology,
and they can really know right now what theye going to use it for. Nobody really knows.
At $20 million, Facebook found its way into the drone space for a third of
what it was reportedly going to pay to acquire Titan. The terms of Google purchase of Titan haven yet been disclosed,
but whatever the final figure, it will likely be worth it. The acquisitions certainly have the attention of the rest of the drone industry,
both of these drone acquisitions by Facebook and Google; a lot of this technology that has to do with wearables;
technologies that have to do with crunching all the data that you get from all these things those are the weapons you need to have with you going into the next competitive battles
#Google buys Titan Aerospace, a solar-powered drone company Solar-powered drone This week, Google announced the acquisition of Titan Aerospace for an undisclosed sum in a move that sees the technology
Following Facebook s $20 million purchase of U k.-based aerospace company Ascenta which has been working on the development of unmanned,
solar-powered aerial drones for the past few years Google acted fast to usurp an expected bid by Facebook to also acquire Titan Aerospace.
and nonstop for years at a time a technology Google hopes to utilize in order to extend its influence
a source close to Google said that the company offered to top any offer from Facebook for Titan Aerospace.
but as yet largely unproven technology that Google hopes can help beam internet access to areas of the globe that remain unserved by cellphone towers or telephone wires.
Solar-powered drones are an attractive proposition to company like Google and Facebook because of their reliability and stability in often adverse weather conditions.
Google s technical experts will work with Titan Aerospace to advance the material design for the drones wings,
while also developing advanced algorithms to help the aircraft better traverse wind patterns and flight routes.
and detail to atmospheric sensors used in many of Google s applications, such as Google maps. It is still early days
and environmental damage like deforestation, said a Google statement announcing the acquisition. Solar s influence Titan Aerospace caught Google s attention thanks to its innovative dragonfly-shaped drones that are powered by its wing-mounted solar panels
and onboard battery storage that allows the planes to fly at night. The drones are huge aircraft the smaller model,
whether the solar technology is advanced currently enough to deliver the kind of long-range reliability that Google will require.
and it takes a lot of power to broadcast internet signals. However, a source close to Facebook has revealed that the social media giants had been reviewing Titan Aerospace s solar-powered drones some six months ago,
and were impressed enough to open talks with the company about a possible acquisition. Google were evidently also eager to speak with Titan
and are believed to have gazumped Facebook s offer r
#Neuroscientists reverse symptoms of Alzheimer s in mice Researchers found that the overproduction of the protein known as p25 may be the culprit behind the sticky protein-fragment clusters that build up in the brains of Alzheimer patients.
The work, which was published in the April 10 issue of Cell, could provide a new drug target for the treatment of the disease that affects more than five million Americans,
In the mouse model of Alzheimer disease, inhibiting p25 production improved cognitive function, greatly reduced plaque formation and neuroinflammation, hallmark features of Alzheimer disease.
the era of suitcase-schlepping may soon be over. magine design is just data, and products could travel through the Internet as code,
produced on demand at any location, Kyttanen says in a video explaining the project. Now on view as part of Kyttanen solo exhibition at Galerie Vivid in Rotterdam
The files for these products could be sent in an email and then printed out, all in one operation,
The heavy lifting is done by the software that generates these designs employing a branch of mathematics called computational geometry.
For example, a user can tell the software he wants a two-wheeled robot of a certain size,
#DNA computers deliver drugs inside cockroaches Nano-sized entities made of DNA that are able to perform the same kind of logic operations as a silicon-based computer have been introduced into a living animal.
A computer inside a cockroach. The DNA computers known as origami robots because they work by folding
and unfolding strands of DNA travel around the insect body and interact with each other, as well as the insect cells.
and control of the nanobots is equivalent to a computer system. his is the first time that biological therapy has been able to match how a computer processor works,
which are suitable for our watches, our cars or phones, we can use these robots in life domains,
you can perform any kind of computation. In this case we have gone past that threshold, he says.
The team says it should be possible to scale up the computing power in the cockroach to that of an 8-bit computer, equivalent to a Commodore 64 or Atari 800 from the 1980s.
so the complexity of the computations will soon become higher, he says. An obvious benefit of this technology would be cancer treatments,
Below is a U s. Naval Research Laboratory Youtube video explaining the breakthrough Y
#Israeli startup Storedot charges smartphone batteries to full in 30 seconds Storedot It possible that youl be able to plug the smartphone in
and charge it from 0 percent to 100 percent in just under a minute, according to a report by the Wall street journal. An Israeli startup by the name of Storedot revealed the technology at Microsoft Think Next Conference using standard smartphone batteries,
and they claim itl even be portable. video) As the demo was held at a Microsoft conference,
the actual demonstration was shown on a Samsung galaxy S3; however, the technology will almost certainly be available for Apple smartphone.
Fast battery chargers already exist, but theye expensive, unwieldy things for special batteries. Storedot, however, claims that its technology will only cost around twice as much as traditional chargers.
Batteries traditionally charge quickly during the first 80 percent of the charge, but slow to a trickle for the last 20 percent
however, this technology could be used for other products such as Macbooks and ipads. And as Cult of Mac points out,
Press it and whatever you say will be stored as a search the next time you visit the Amazonfresh website.
The Dash is currently free but y invitation only, according to its website, and no release date has been announced yet.
#Europe to abolish roaming charges by December 2015 The first move was to slash pricing of mobile phone roaming costs across Europe.
Then calls were made to abolish mobile roaming costs completely, with a view towards afeguarding citizensright to access an open Internet.
Today that vision has become a reality. Neelie Kroes has been one of the main drivers behind this reform, with the outspoken European commission VP a strong proponent if a single ICT and telecoms market,
previously saying she would ight with my last breath to get us there together. Perhaps the most significant nugget from today news is that the European parliament has voted now to banish roaming charges by Christmas 2015.
This headline-grabber constitutes part of the broader move towards the onnected Continentthat would be created by a single telecoms market.
This is an historic day for the open Internet. The finer nuances of the net neutrality law have yet to be ratified,
distinct capacity, cannot be mistaken for Internet, no replacement of Internet services by specialised services. In other words, an ISP can reclassify Amazon Instant Video
or Netflix as a service other than Internet to bypass these new net neutrality laws. It a pretty solid advance for the Internet in Europe,
one that will ensure providers can slow down or otherwise degrade the speed of an Internet connection on a whim.
The European parliament is being very clear about this: the Internet cannot be affected by specialised services.
While there could still be some twists and turns with the finer details still to be ironed out,
and prevent someone from procuring a mobile phone plan in a cheaper EU country, and using it exclusively in another.
The main focus with this ruling is to ensure that you pay the same for calls, texts and data across the EU,
while contract rules will also apply to non-telecoms elements of bundles, such as TV. And there will be no automatic extension of contract terms
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