Whacked on Goofballs

KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News

• Ray Kurzweil proposes entrepreneurial peace fund and renewable-energy initiatives to Israeli leaders November 6, 2009
  Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres at the recent Israeli Presidential Conference: Facing Tomorrow 2009, Ray Kurzweil proposed several innovations for dealing with the coming energy shortages and bolstering Israel's growing economy. He also proposed an "Entrepreneurial Peace Fund" -- a coll […]
• Humanity+ Summit and Biopolitics of Popular Culture Seminar November 6, 2009
  The feasibility of redesigning the human condition (such as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet Earth) will be the focus at Humanity + Summit, Dec. 5-6 in Irvine, California at EON Reality's new state-of-the-art, 18,500-square-foot facility, built t […]
• Elevator to the Top: Space Elevators Climbing Towards Reality November 6, 2009
  The group LaserMotive successfully ran a climber up 1 kilometer of test cable at an average rate of just over 2 meters per second, qualifying for the 2nd place prize of $900,000 in The Space Elevator Games competition. The craft is powered by a stationary laser beaming the power to operate to the climber. (NASA MSFC, Artist Pat Rawling) (Source: http://www.w […]
• Analysis: Google's Dashboard Tackles Transparency November 6, 2009
  A new Google product called Dashboard aggregates users' personal information from more than 20 Google services into a single, password-protected page. (Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355490,00.asp)
• Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber November 6, 2009
  A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), causing significant overheating in the system's supercooled magnetic doughnut. Obligatory "this is not an Onion story" statement - Ed. See also: The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate (Source: http://www […]
• A Battery-Free Implantable Neural Sensor November 6, 2009
  Electrical engineers at the University of Washington have developed an implantable neural sensing chip that needs less power, drawing power from a RFID reader radio source up to a meter away. (Brian Otis, University of Washington) The NeuralWISP is a collection of smaller, more low-power components, such as a specialized signal amplifier, on a circuit board […]
• Sequencing Price Drops Even Lower November 6, 2009
  Complete Genomics has sequenced three human genomes for an average cost of $4,400. Lowering the cost of sequencing would allow scientists to study large numbers of human genomes, which is now thought necessary to understand the genetic basis of complex disease. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23891/)
• Spoonful Of Sugar' Makes The Worms' Life Span Go Down November 6, 2009
  By adding just a small amount of glucose to the C. elegans worm diet, University of California, San Francisco and Pohang University of Science and Technology researchers found the worms lose about 20 percent of their usual life span, suggesting that a diet with a low glycemic index may extend human life span. They trace the effect to insulin signals, which c […]
• Sony demos game controller to track motion and emotion November 6, 2009
  Sony has unveiled a hands-free, full-body game controller, the Interactive Communication Unit (ICU). Like Microsoft's Natal, Sony's ICU tracks a person's whole body without their having to wear the body markers used in motion-capture studios, and it can detect a player's emotions by watching their facial expressions, and judge sex and app […]
• Singularity University Kicks Off First Executive Program November 6, 2009
  Singularity University (SU) will launch the SU Executive Program at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. on Saturday. The nine-day program is designed to educate, inform and prepare executives for the imminent disruption and opportunities resulting from exponentially accelerating technologies. The SU Executive Program addresses six fields exp […]