You wouldn’t think there’s much room for improvement when it comes to a conveyor belt, or much demand for it. They just move things along, right?. Well Festo’s new WaveHandling conveyor system can actually move objects in any direction, and even individually sort them allowing it to replace multiple components in an assembly line. More »
Mind control is the inevitable endgame of just about every user interface. You know, Star Wars-style mind-controlled arms. But what about controlling other beings? Scientists have managed to enable a human to wag rat’s tail with his mind. Bio-drones away. More »
We’ve heard the arguments and opinions in the past that tablets are considered to be part of the post-PC era, and that as tablets become more powerful, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination if one day they might even replace laptops. While laptops still have a ton of use left in them, perhaps that future might be soon, but at the same time research group Gartner believes that Microsoft needs to succeed in the tablet market if they wish to remain relevant. As it stands, Microsoft has their own series of Windows 8 tablets in the form of the Surface RT and the Surface Pro, both commendable devices but we’re not sure if they took off the way Microsoft had expected.
According to the analyst who led the research, Carolina Milanesi (via The Guardian) “Winning in the tablet and phone space is critical for them to remain relevant in this shift […] We’re talking about hardware displacement here – but this shift also has wider implications for operating systems and apps. What happens, for instance, when [Microsoft] Office isn’t the best way to be productive in your work?” That’s a pretty interesting point she raised, but what do you guys think? Could Microsoft be made irrelevant despite their dominance in the desktop market?
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Galaxy S2 i9100P, Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus Start To Receive Android Jelly Bean, Apple Expected To Develop Digital Wallet By 2014 [Analyst], 
Getting microscopic objects into formation is a tricky proposition. They don’t make tweezers small enough. Fortunately there’s an alternative: sweeping them up in a sonic vortex. More »
Unless it’s been brought to life by Disney or Pixar, it’s hard to feel much empathy for robots, particularly the emotionless cyborg experiments being developed around the country. But not this little guy. Designed to stay on its feet no matter what happens, you can’t help but feel a little sad as you watch these researchers push, prod, and bully it like a nerdy fifth grader. More »
Tablets and smartphones will squash traditional PC and laptop sales in a trend that looks unlikely to slow down any time soon, analysts predict, with demand for cheaper, more approachable slates hiding a slump in the PC market. In fact, Gartner expects a 7.6-percent dive in PC and notebook sales in 2013 alone, despite combined shipments of PCs, tablets, and phones expected to climb 9-percent in the same period.
“While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play,” Gartner research VP Carolina Milanesi said of the stats, “most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device.”
That satisfaction means existing PCs are far less likely to get replaced, whereas once they might have been regularly updated. Whereas many vendors have blamed the global recession for underwhelming sales, Gartner argues that, in fact, it’s a sign of far more complex changes. “This is not a temporary trend induced by a more austere economic environment” the firm warns, “it is a reflection of a long-term change in user behavior.”
By 2017, Gartner expects PC and notebook shipments to have dwindled to 272m units, down from 341m in 2012. That will be partially offset, the analysts predict, by what it calls “ultramobile” – ultraportables and ultrabooks – shipments, which are tipped to more than quadruple between 2013 and 2017, to 96m units worldwide.
Headed in the opposite direction are tablet and phone shipments. Gartner estimates 197m tablet shipments in 2013, rising to 266m the following year, and then surging to 468m in 2017. Phones, meanwhile, will go from 1.9bn this year, to 2.1bn in 2017.
As for what OS will be reaping the rewards, Android is singled out as the likely top candidate. Apple and Microsoft will tussle for second place, it’s suggested, with Windows tipped to maintain a lead over iOS/OS X through to 2017.
Forget the economy, the PC slump is here to stay warns Gartner is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Have you ever had one of those days where you thought to yourself “Boy, I sure wish I didn’t have this sexy yet expensive cocaine addiction”? Fortunately for you, there could be a new solution on the horizon, and all you have to do is fry your brain with lasers. Equally sexy. More »
Astronomers at the European Space Agency have watched a hitherto-dormant black hole wake and gorge upon a nearby substellar object the size of a “super Jupiter”, a months-long feasting that consumed a tenth of its mass. The sudden flaring of the black hole – believed to have a mass around 300,000 times that of our Sun – came after several decades of inactivity, the ESA said, but is a timely example of the appetite the super-dense anomalies can have. Scientists expect a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way to flare in a similar way, potentially as soon as this year.
This particular observation occurred in galaxy NGC 4845, roughly 47 million light years away from Earth, and caught the attention of astronomers by virtue of its extreme X-ray flaring. The XMM-Newton worked with the INTEGRAL space observatory, NASA’s Swift, and Japan’s MAXI X-ray monitors to pinpoint the cause.
Although NGC 4845 had never before been a source of high-energy output, that rapidly changed over the course of several months. At its maximum, the ESA says, the output made the galaxy brighter by a factor of a 1,000 in January 2011.
The cause of all that brightness was the vast appetite of a supermassive black hole, which awoke unexpectedly to consume great quantities of mass from an orbiting object. Exact figures on the size of the object are unknown, though there are estimates that it could be anywhere from 14-30x the mass of Jupiter, potentially putting it on a par, mass-wise, with a brown dwarf. Alternatively, it could have been significantly smaller – a few times that of Jupiter – making it more like a large gas giant.
Either way, the black hole at NGC 4845 took a big, prolonged bite out of it. Over a roughly 2-3 month period, ESA says, the external layers – or roughly 10-percent of the overall mass – were peeled away and consumed, as per this short animation from the agency:
“This is the first time where we have seen the disruption of a substellar object by a black hole” Roland Walter of the Observatory of Geneva, Switzerland, and co-author of a paper detailing the incident, said. What remains is “a denser core” that has been “left orbiting the black hole.”
Supermassive black hole wakes to feast on giant planet as astronomers watch is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Opponents of windmills cite the dangers the spinning blades post to birds, the risk of damage due to storms, and the maintenance required to keep all those moving parts running smoothly. But what if a windmill lacked blades and didn’t move at all? That’s the idea behind the Delft University of Technology’s EWICON which looks more like a modern piece of art more than an eco-friendly source of energy. More »
It would appear that United States President Barack Obama will be showing no end to his interest in advancing home-grown scientific research efforts as the BRAIN Initiative was announced today. This research effort will take on the mighty task of revolutionizing our understanding of the human mind – no small task! Qualcomm’s CTO Matt Grob has let it be known that they are onboard with this effort and, as he joined the press event at the White House today, has assured the White House and the public that they’re bringing more than just a couple of their own innovations to the party.
BRAIN stands for Basic Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, and through this initiative, scientists will be searching for new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders such as autism, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s, and schizophrenia. Straight from the White House press room you’ll find this rather upbeat video narrated by the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins.
The full White House Fact Sheet on BRAIN includes a paragraph or two on the first “public-private partnerships” in this effort, it including several institutions you may have heard of before.
Public-private partnerships: Federal research agencies will partner with companies, foundations, and private research institutions that are also investing in relevant neuroscience research, such as the Allen Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Kavli Foundation, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
Qualcomm will be amongst those companies aiming to make a big push for BRAIN in both their internal efforts as well as through a co-development agreement with the Brain Corporation. The Brain Corporation is a private company that aims to develop brain-based mathematical algorithms, visual systems, and, with Qualcomm, “specialized neuromorphic hardware” that will one day bring “smart consumer products utilizing artificial nervous systems.” Rather exciting!
“Qualcomm supports today’s exciting announcement of the Basic Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, which aims to develop and implement new tools to collect and process large scale brain activity and to develop a theoretical framework to understand this brain activity. The BRAIN Initiative will necessitate stimulation and recording of an unprecedented number of neurons, requiring real-time data processing.
These goals will be facilitated by wireless data collection. Given Qualcomm’s rich heritage in wireless communications, we are well positioned to make contributions to the BRAIN Initiative. Furthermore, modeling of the functional connectivity of the brain will be a challenging task. Qualcomm is developing a neural simulation accelerator (Neuromorphic hardware) that can potentially enable large scale, real-time neural simulations, as well as a comprehensive software tool suite that will enable rapid development and analysis of neural models.
The Qualcomm Research team includes neuroscientists and applied mathematicians with a background in multi-unit cortical recordings and neural network modeling. Our innovations have included development of new mathematical models of processing and learning in neurons. In addition to Qualcomm’s internal efforts, we have a co-development agreement and an investment in the Brain Corporation (www.braincorporation.com ), with whom we are working on these initiatives. In sum, we have a vested interest in the success of the BRAIN Initiative, and we hope to apply new insights gained from the BRAIN Initiative to our development efforts concerning scalable Neuromorphic hardware.” – Matt Grob, CTO of Qualcomm
Sound line a positive set of moves to you? Let us know what you think of the BRAIN initiative and Qualcomm’s efforts to keep science powered up!
Qualcomm joins President Obama in ambitious BRAIN initiative is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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