8700418
submission
blee37 writes:
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed a web-scraping AI program that never dies. It runs continuously, extracting information from the web and using that information to learn more about the English language. The idea is for a never ending learner like this to one day be able to become conversant in the English language.
8514072
submission
blee37 writes:
From the article: "Every day, 7,000 times a day, Stanford Hospital staff turn to pneumatic tubes, cutting-edge technology in the 19th century, for a transport network that the Internet and all the latest Silicon Valley wizardry can’t match: A tubular system to transport a lab sample across the medical center in the blink of an eye."
8472944
submission
blee37 writes:
The NY Times reports that China is increasing incentives for Chinese students earning PhDs in the U.S. to return home. One example is a prestigious Princeton microbiologist who returned to become a dean at Tsinghua, the Chinese MIT. In my experience as a grad student, Chinese students were often torn about returning home. The best science and the most intellectually stimulating jobs are in the U.S. Yet, surely they miss their families and their hometown. As alluded in the article, Chinese science remains far behind, especially because of rampant cronyism in academia as well as government. But, if more Chinese students go back, it could damage the U.S.'s technology lead. A large percentage of PhDs students in the U.S. are from China. Also, the typical PhD student has their tuition paid for and receives a salary. Does it make sense to invest in their training if they will do their major work elsewhere?
8420724
submission
blee37 writes:
Google's patent for a rapid book scanning system was reported last March. This article describes and provides pictures of how the system works in practice. Google is secretive, but the system's inner workings were apparently divulged by University of Tokyo researchers who wrote a research article on essentially identical technology. There is also information about how Google wants to use music to help humans flip pages and videos of robotic page flippers.
7286858
submission
blee37 writes:
Here is an excellent video demonstration of a new program developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge that can construct a 3D model of an object in real time from webcam video. The user can watch the program deduce more pieces of the 3D model as he moves and rotates the object. The resulting graphics are high quality.
7273834
submission
blee37 writes:
Researchers at Microsoft have invented a system for tagging images by reading brain scans from an electroencephalograph (EEG). Tagging images is an important task because many images on the web are unlabeled and have no semantic information. This new method allows an appropriate tag to be generated by an AI algorithm interpreting the EEG scan of a person's brain while they view an image. The person need only view the image for as little as 500 ms. Other current methods for generating tags include flat out paying people to do it manually, putting the task on Amazon Mechanical Turk, or using Google Image Labeler.
7240766
submission
blee37 writes:
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon demonstrate "popping out" touch screen buttons to become physical buttons using pneumatics. The idea is to combine the dynamic reconfigurability of touch screen buttons with the tactile feedback of real buttons. The technology could be applied where tactile feedback is currently lacking, such as in car navigation systems, ATMs, or cell phones.
7214116
submission
blee37 writes:
Side by side comparison of the Apple and Microsoft multi-touch mice. Video demonstration of all mice with applications to first person shooters and 3D manipulation. New photos of the internals of all the mice.
