Countries Debate Openness of Future National IDs
Kenya’s High Court rules on rushed next-generation ID system Kenya’s High Court ruled Thursday that a recent amendment requiring citizens to register for a national biometric digital identification system overreached on some counts, such as allowing for links to DNA or GPS records, and failed to guarantee sufficient…
In the Air With Zipline’s Medical Delivery Drones
Commercial operations in Rwanda prove the company can deliver emergency blood packs in minutes, rather than hours Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills, and our car seems to go over every one of them as we drive from the small town of…
Can AI Detect Deepfakes To Help Ensure Integrity of U.S. 2020 Elections?
Startup Deeptrace is racing to develop automated detection of fake videos and images as U.S. 2020 elections loom A perfect storm arising from the world of pornography may threaten the U.S. elections in 2020 with disruptive political scandals having nothing to do with actual affairs. Instead, face-swapping…
What Makes a University Great?
Is the reputation of elite universities just a self-fulfilling prophecy? I have the perception that a handful of universities get the lion’s share of credit for engineering achievement. It seems that their faculty and alumni receive an outsize proportion of awards and academy memberships. I don’t…
What Are Silicon Valley’s Highest-Paying Tech Jobs?
Product management, reliability, and security jobs pay the most in Silicon Valley, says job search firm Indeed Job-search site Indeed crunched its Silicon Valley hiring numbers for 2018, looking at tech job searches, salaries, and employers, and found that engineers who combine tech skills with business skills…
The Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame
Here are the stories behind the best gadgets of the past 50 years We’re all gadget hounds now. In developed countries, we wake up to our smartphones, we consult them obsessively all day, and then fall asleep with them by our side. Between dawn and…
Spinal Stimulation Enables Three People With Paraplegia to Walk Again
Combined with other recent studies, new evidence points to electrical stimulation as a promising treatment for paralysis Three men with paraplegia are able to walk after being treated with electrical stimulation of their spinal cords. The treatment, combined with physical therapy, enabled the men to overcome years-old…
These Researchers Want to Send Smells Over the Internet
Electrical stimulation of cells in the nasal passages produces sweet fragrances and chemical odors Imagine a virtual reality movie about the Civil War where you can smell the smoke from the soldiers’ rifles. Or an online dating site where the profiles are scented with perfume…
David Patterson Says It’s Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages
Moore’s Law is over, ushering in a golden age for computer architecture, says RISC pioneer David Patterson—University of California professor, Google engineer, and RISC pioneer—says there’s no better time than now to be a computer architect. That’s because Moore’s Law really is over, he says: “We…
What Programming Language Skills Do Employers Want?
Java tops Indeed’s latest list; Python, JavaScript rank high What programming language skills do employers want? Online job-search firm Indeed took a look at three months (18 May to 18 August) of 2018 job listings in its tech software category to find out. The company ranked programming…
Tomorrow’s Doctors Must Be Engineers Too
The medical profession is changing, and so must medical education When King Li went to medical school 40 years ago, he sometimes felt like he was trying to memorize the human body. “I’d see these curves in the textbook, and have to memorize: ‘If the patient’s kidneys…
Flexible Loudspeaker Made of Nanowires Will Stick to Your Skin and Play Music
Researchers in South Korea made a tiny loudspeaker, and then used it to play a violin concerto A variety of nanomaterials have been used over the years in loudspeakers and microphones. Nanoparticles have replaced permanent magnets in loudspeakers and a thin film of carbon nanotubes has done pretty…
New Wearable Sensor Detects Stress Hormone in Sweat
Cortisol is key to tracking stress, but it’s tough to measure in an instant; Stanford researchers say they’ve figured out how Stress. We all know it can be bad for us. It affects blood pressure, metabolism, immune response, and memory. Over time, it can contribute…
Humans Show Racial Bias Towards Robots of Different Colors: Study
Do people display different racial biases towards black robots and white robots? A new study says yes The majority of robots are white. Do a Google image search for “robot” and see for yourself: The whiteness is overwhelming. There are some understandable reasons for this; for example, when…
Facebook’s DensePose Tech Raises Concerns About Potential Misuse
Facebook’s DensePose technology lets anyone turn 2D images of people into 3D models In early 2018, Facebook’s AI researchers unveiled a deep-learning system that can transform 2D photo and video images of people into 3D mesh models of those human bodies in motion. Last month,…
Flying Dragon Robot Transforms Itself to Squeeze Through Gaps
DRAGON can change its shape to move through complex environments and even manipulate objects DRAGON is able to autonomously decide how to transform when given the constraints of the space it needs to pass through. There’s been a lot of recent focus on applications for…
Your Guide to the GDPR
The European Union (EU) initially introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2016 to help people assert control over their personal data on the Internet. Fast-forward two years, and GDPR takes effect worldwide on 25 May 2018, sending a cold shiver down the…
Alphabet’s DeepMind Makes a Key Advance in Computer Vision
Researchers at Alphabet’s DeepMind today described a method that they say can construct a three-dimensional layout from just a handful of two-dimensional snapshots. So far the method, based on deep neural networks, has been confined to virtual environments, they write in Science magazine. Natural environments are still too hard for current algorithms and hardware to handle. The article…
Malta Pilots Blockchain-Based Credentials Program
Malta, an island nation in the Mediterranean Sea, is completing the first ever attempt by a nation state to tie citizen records to the blockchain. If successful, a scaled-up version of the pilot program will give Malta’s 400,000 residents the ability to retrieve and share…
Tiny Robots in Disguise Combat Bacteria in the Blood
Researchers have come up with all sorts of ways to propel tiny robots deep into the human body to perform tasks, such as delivering drugs and taking biopsies. Now, there’s a nanorobot that can clean up infections in blood. Directed by ultrasound, the tiny robots, made of gold nanowires with a…
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