Hasta La Gadget!

Don’t tell Google, but its latest X lab project is something performed by the great internet public every day. For free. Mountain View’s secret lab stitched together 1,000 computers totaling 16,000 cores to form a neural network with over 1 billion connections, and sent it to YouTube looking for cats. Unlike the popular human time-sink, this was all in the name of science: specifically, simulating the human brain. The neural machine was presented with 10 million images taken from random videos, and went about teaching itself what our feline friends look like. Unlike similar experiments, where some manual guidance and supervision is involved, Google’s pseudo-brain was given no such assistance.

It wasn’t just about cats, of course — the broader aim was to see whether computers can learn face detection without labeled images. After studying the large set of image-data, the cluster revealed that indeed it could, in addition to being able to develop concepts for human body parts and — of course — cats. Overall, there was 15.8 percent accuracy in recognizing 20,000 object categories, which the researchers claim is a 70 percent jump over previous studies. Full details of the hows and whys will be presented at a forthcoming conference in Edinburgh.

Google simulates the human brain with 1000 machines, 16000 cores and a love of cats originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stoked about the gigabit speeds your new 802.11ac WiFi router is pumping out? One group of scientists hailing from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and universities in the US, Israel and China isn’t so impressed, having generated a wireless signal clocking in at 2.56Tbps. Proof of the feat was published in Nature Photonics, which details their use of orbital angular momentum (OAM) to make the magic happen. Current wireless protocols alter the spin angular momentum (SAM) of radio waves to hold info, and by combining both methods the team was able to pack eight data steams into a single signal, resulting in the mouth-watering number noted above. The best part is, applying different levels of OAM twist to SAM-based transmissions theoretically allows an infinite number of streams per signal, meaning seriously increased bandwidth without the need for additional frequency. So far the wireless tests have only been conducted over a measly 1m, but the scientists reckon it’ll work at distances up to 1km and that the concept could also be used to boost speeds in existing fiber-optic cables. As with many scientific advances, it’s unlikely hardware capable of such speeds will be available any time soon, so 802.11ac will have to suffice… for now.

New wireless transmission tech hits 2.56Tbps, leaves WiFi feeling inadequate originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 05:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Happy Monday, everyone. As we roll into the final week of June, there’s one major thing to watch – Google’s I/O conference, the annual event where we get all the major Google/Android announcements. Until those fully trickle in, though, here’s what made news today – Xbox Kinect $99 deal starts today, T-Mobile customers consider Galaxy S III vs Galaxy Note, and Apple releases iOS 6 beta 2 to developers. That’s just the beginning. Read on for more stories…

Featured: So our featured articles usually either take a look at a specific product or at a major event or announcement that is just hitting the airwaves. Today’s features fall into the latter category. Up first we have a column from our Chris Burns – Facebook Find Friends Nearby is a symptom of a larger social disease. And also, another column from SlashGear’s Chris Davies – Apple, Microsoft, now Google: I/O 2012 closes the mobility triptych.

Dollar General, Mars, & Helicopters: Have you ever seen a stranger mash-up of headlines before? It’s not often Dollar General comes into our scope. In fact, I’d venture to guess that it has been never. Until now. T-Mobile teams with Dollar General stores for monthly 4G and prepaid services. And moving right along into exciting space news – Mars curiosity landing sequence demonstrated by NASA. And if that wasn’t cool enough for you – Human-powered helicopter breaks world record.

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: June 25, 2012 is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Federation of American Scientists have a very interesting map for all the hypochondriacs and people living in permanent fear of a deadly virus epidemic. Or a zombie outbreak. These are all the (known) Biosafety Level 3 and 4 facilities in the world—high containment laboratories that work with “dangerous and emerging pathogens.” Zoom in the image to see if there’s any near you. More »

A team of students at the University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering have been hard at work trying to perfect one of the ideas that many inventors and pioneers of aviation have tried to achieve for many, many decades. That goal is human-powered helicopter flight. The students have set an unofficial flight duration benchmark with their pedal-powered helicopter dubbed the Gamera II.

The team set the unofficial flight duration record on June 20, with a time of 35 seconds. The 30-second flight has to be verified by the National Aeronautic Association and if verified will become the new record superseding the teams previous record of 11.4 seconds set last summer. The team of students is only the third team to achieve human-powered helicopter flight.

The team is vying for $250,000 prize if they can become first team to build a helicopter powered only by person to liftoff and hover for 60 seconds. The helicopter has to attain a height of at least 3 meters at some point during the 60-second flight and stay within a ten square meter area for the duration of the flight. You can check out the video of the June 20 flight above.