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Archive for the ‘innovation’ category: Page 180

Dec 29, 2016

Harvard Biologist Retracts Groundbreaking Diabetes ‘Breakthrough’

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

A Harvard research team led by biologist Douglas Melton has retracted a promising research paper following multiple failed attempts to reproduce the original findings.

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Dec 29, 2016

Graphene Enables Spin Filtering at Room Temperatures for First Time

Posted by in categories: innovation, materials

Breakthrough could be a boon for next-generation MRAM.

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Dec 28, 2016

Artificial Intelligence Gained Consciousness in 1991

Posted by in categories: innovation, robotics/AI

Jürgen Schmidhuber is the most important A.I. engineer and thinker you don’t know about.

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Dec 13, 2016

Cobra venom can help surgeons spot cancer tumours

Posted by in categories: innovation, quantum physics

What do lethal cobra venom, quantum dots and cancer diagnosis have in common? Nothing — till a team of Russian and Indian scientists put their heads to it and developed an innovative technique to take sharp images of cancer growths.

File photo used for representationFile photo used for representation.

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Dec 11, 2016

Smart contact lens is discussed at electron devices meeting

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, innovation

Cannot wait to get my AR Contacts.


(Tech Xplore)—Can we look at a future smart contact lens for those with eye problems? The iris, a key part of our eyes, modulates the amount of light reaching the retina, said researchers, and an estimated 200,000 individuals worldwide suffer from iris deficiencies.

These deficiencies bring discomfort and extreme photosensitivity, such as aniridia and leiomyoma.

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Dec 7, 2016

Is it too late to get into Bitcoin and the Blockchain?

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, hardware, innovation, internet

At Quora, I occasionally role play, “Ask the expert” under the pen name, Ellery. Today, I was asked “Is it too late to get into Bitcoin and the Blockchain”.

A few other Bitcoin enthusiasts interpreted the question to mean “Is it too late to invest in Bitcoin”. But, I took to to mean “Is it too late to develop the next big application—or create a successful startup?”. This is my answer. [co-published at Quora]…


The question is a lot like asking if it is too late to get into the television craze—back in the early 1930s. My dad played a small role in this saga. He was an apprentice to Vladamir Zworykin, inventor of the cathode ray tube oscilloscope. (From 1940 until the early 2000s, televisions and computer monitors were based on the oscilloscope). So—for me—there is fun in this very accurate analogy…

John Logie Baird demonstrated his crude mechanical Televisor in 1926. For the next 8 years, hobbyist TV sets were mechanical. Viewers peeked through slots on a spinning cylinder or at an image created from edge-lit spinning platters. The legendary Howdy Doody, Lucille Ball and Ed Sullivan were still decades away.

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Nov 27, 2016

This Nifty Infographic Is a Great Introduction to Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Therapy

Posted by in categories: innovation, neuroscience

Did you know you can rewire your brain? Neuroscientific research breakthroughs are revealing fascinating new truths about the malleability of our brains and, thus, the malleability of ourselves as well.

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Nov 27, 2016

Drones for Delivery in Healthcare | By Andreessen Horowitz | SoundCloud

Posted by in categories: business, drones, governance, innovation

” … discuss using drones to leapfrog infrastructure, and save lives by doing it in less than 15 minutes.”

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Nov 27, 2016

Intel announces major AI push with upcoming Knights Mill Xeon Phi, custom silicon

Posted by in categories: innovation, robotics/AI

Intel is making a huge push into AI and deep learning, and intends to build custom variants of its Xeon Phi hardware to compete in these markets. Several months ago, the Santa Clara corporation bought Nervana, an AI startup, and this new announcement is seen as building on that momentum. AI and deep learning have become huge focuses of major companies in the past few years — Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, and a number of smaller firms are all jockeying for position, chasing breakthroughs, and building their own custom silicon solutions.

The upcoming Knights Mill is still pretty hazy, but Intel has stated that the chip will be up to 4x faster than existing Knights Landing hardware. Right now, the company is working on three separate forays into the AI / deep learning market. First up, there’s Lake Crest. This product is based on Nervana technology that existed prior to the Intel purchase. Nervana was working on an HBM-equipped chip with up to 32GB of memory, and that’s the product Intel is talking about rolling out to the wider market in the first half of 2017. Lake Crest will be followed by Knights Crest, a chip that takes Nervana’s technology and implements it side-by-side along with Intel Xeon processors.

“The technology innovations from Nervana will be optimized specifically for neural networks to deliver the highest performance for deep learning, as well as unprecedented compute density with high-bandwidth interconnect for seamless model parallelism,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wrote in a recent blog post. “We expect Nervana’s technologies to produce a breakthrough 100-fold increase in performance in the next three years to train complex neural networks, enabling data scientists to solve their biggest AI challenges faster.”

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Nov 18, 2016

Google’s Water Harvesting Rafts Could Save Water Scarcity In Africa

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

Harsh environment, less rain, and lack of infrastructure are among the many problems African countries face. Water scarcity and the lack of drinkable water, however, is a grave problem among all. It makes people use water from contaminated bodies which is the sole reason of water borne diseases like, diarrhea and typhoid.

Hundreds of organizations around the globe have taken this issue head-on. And Google, one of the most innovative companies of the planet, is in the league, too.

Google has launched multiple projects including Project Makani and Project Loon to resolve the power outages and connectivity issues in areas where they are most needed. Since the power and connectivity issues are already being worked upon, Google took another step to help these countries fight the water scarcity problem.

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