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KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News
A collection of news articles and stories relating to the accelerating nature of technology

  • Microsoft Releases New Robot-Building Software
    Microsoft has released Robotics Developer Studio 2008, a software program that enables users to create applications for robots. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news146295165.html)

  • NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet
    NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet, using software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, developed with Google vice president Vint Cerf. Unlike TCP/IP on Earth, the DTN uses a store-and-forward method to deal with long delays between hops. In the next few years, the Interplanetary Internet could enable many new types of space missions. Complex missions involving multiple landed, mobile and orbiting spacecraft will be far easier to support through the use of the Interplanetary Internet. It also could ensure reliable communications for astronauts on the surface of the moon. Source: NASA news release (Source: )

  • Carbon-Nanotube Thread
    University of Michigan researchers have coated conventional cotton thread with highly conductive, biosensing carbon nanotubes. The threads can be woven into fabrics that are lightweight and wearable but act as simple, sensitive sensors that can, among other functions, detect human blood. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21689/?a=f)

  • Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm
    The book Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong offers six strategies that could reduce the danger from our own computers and robots: Keep them in low-risk situations, do not give them weapons, give them rules like Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics," program robots with principles, educate robots like children, and make machines master emotion. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16068-six-ways-to-build-robots-that-do-humans-no-harm.html)

  • Quantum calibration paves way for super-secure communication
    A new approach to calibrating quantum mechanical measurement has allowed scientists to calibrate a detector that can sense the presence of multiple individual photons. This means that devices that rely on information being transmitted via light, such as the fiber-optic technologies used in everyday communications, could detect the safe arrival of that light energy with an unprecedented level of accuracy, leading to ultra-secure communications technologies in the future via long-distance quantum communication networks. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news146150726.html)

  • Prophesy of economic collapse 'coming true'
    A real-world analysis of a controversial prediction made 30 years ago in the book Limits to Growth concludes that economic growth cannot be sustained and we are on track for serious economic collapse this century. Graham Turner at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia has compared the book's predictions with data from the intervening years. Changes in industrial production, resource depletion, population growth, food production, and pollution are all in line with the book's predictions of collapse in the 21st century, he found. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16058-prophesy-of-economic-collapse-coming-true.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news)

  • Broken nerves can be fixed in a flash
    Rats with breathing problems caused by damage to their nerves have had normal breathing restored by bursts of visible light aimed onto the spinal cord. This achievement raises hopes that a miniature light source implanted near the spine might one day allow people with similar injuries to breathe normally. A similar device might be used to relieve constriction of the bladder caused by nerve damage. (Source: New Scientist Health)

  • Tunnelling nanotubes: Life's secret network
    Recently discovered tunneling nanotubes may be responsible for the spread of HIV and prion infectivity from cell to cell, scientists have found. At 50 to 200 nanometers thick, they are wide enough to allow proteins to pass through, and can span distances of several cell diameters, wiggling around obstacles to connect the insides of two cells some distance apart. Nanotubes may also play a role in tumors becoming resistant to chemotherapy, so a drug that inhibits the growth of nanotubes could reduce the resistance to chemotherapy. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026821.400-tunnelling-nanotubes-lifes-secret-network.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news)


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