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Mar 1, 2016

‘Very Close’: Pentagon’s Death Laser Right Around the Corner

Posted by in categories: energy, military

A new laser tag coming our way; however, this time when you’re tagged, you really are dead.


US officials tout the ‘unprecedented power’ of killing lasers to be released by 2023.

The US Army will deploy its first laser weapons by 2023, according to a recently released report.

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Mar 1, 2016

Keeping Tabs on Polyhistidine Tags

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Sounds like new options to be considered around Polyhistidine Tagging.


Among bioprocessors, attitudes toward affinity purification range from a desire to move beyond old specificity/yield trade-offs to a willingness to explore new polyhistidine technology spin-offs, including systems for real-time detection.

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Mar 1, 2016

Common vegetables help your brain defend against depression

Posted by in categories: food, health, neuroscience

If you have the “blues” eat some “greens”.


You can be in excellent physical shape, with low cholesterol, a healthy body weight and good overall physical fitness — but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re healthy.

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Mar 1, 2016

‘Brain Prize’ for UK research on memory mechanisms

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Your brain is “Plastic” according to Professor Bliss the receipentant of the UK’s Brain Prize award.


Three British researchers win a one million-euro prize for their work on how memories are stored inside the brain.

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Mar 1, 2016

Round Up linked to cancer

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health, sustainability

Bad news if you use RoundUp.


Local councils across Australia that use the weed killer glyphosate on nature-strips and playgrounds are being warned that the chemical probably causes cancer.

An updated World Health Organisation (WHO) warning for the herbicide, often trade marked as Roundup, is also routinely used in household gardens and farms.

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Mar 1, 2016

Autonomous Killing Machines Are More Dangerous Than We Think

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, drones, ethics, law, military, policy, robotics/AI

I see articles and reports like the following about military actually considering fully autonomous missals, drones with missals, etc. I have to ask myself what happened to the logical thinking.


A former Pentagon official is warning that autonomous weapons would likely be uncontrollable in real-world situations thanks to design failures, hacking, and external manipulation. The answer, he says, is to always keep humans “in the loop.”

The new report, titled “ Autonomous Weapons and Operational Risk,” was written by Paul Scharre, a director at the Center for a New American Security. Scharre used to work at the office of the Secretary of Defense where he helped the US military craft its policy on the use of unmanned and autonomous weapons. Once deployed, these future weapons would be capable of choosing and engaging targets of their own choosing, raising a host of legal, ethical, and moral questions. But as Scharre points out in the new report, “They also raise critically important considerations regarding safety and risk.”

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Mar 1, 2016

Minister announces £204 million investment in doctoral training and Quantum Technologies science

Posted by in categories: engineering, quantum physics, science

UK is getting serious about Quantum especially in their universities; all £204 million worth.


Universities and Science minister Jo Johnson has announced two major investments in science and engineering research totaling £204 million.

Forty UK universities will share in £167 million that will support doctoral training over a two year period, while £37 million will be put into developing the graduate skills, specialist equipment and facilities that will put UK Quantum Technologies research at the forefront of the field.

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Mar 1, 2016

Voice biometrics to be commonplace in customer service: Nuance

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, privacy

This could be very very tricky for a number of reasons: 1) how will this work with people who develop laryngitis or some other illness disrupting their speech? 2) what happens if a person uses a recorded voice or voice changer? 3) what happens when a person’s voice does change as they get older or have a medical procedure done that permanently alters the voice? I could list more; however, I believe that researcher will realize that there will be a need for two forms of biometrics when it comes to the voice.


Software firm Nuance believes that in the near future, there will be an expectation from customers to interact with technology in a more human-like manner.

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Mar 1, 2016

These are the 13 jobs in London where a robot is most likely to steal your job

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, employment, robotics/AI

The interesting piece in the articles that I have seen on robots taking jobs have only occurred in Asia and in certain situations in the UK. I believe that companies across the US see some of the existing hacking risks (especially since the US has the highest incidents of hackings among the other countries) that prevents companies from just replacing their employees with connected autonomous robots plus I am not sure that robotics is at the level of sophistication that most consumers want to spend a lot of money on at the moment.

Bottom line is that until hacking is drastically reduce (if not finally eliminated); that autonomous AI like connected robots and humanoids will find they will have a hard time being adopted by the US collective mass of the population.


In the future the global employment market will rely heavily on robots, artificial intelligence, and all sorts of automation.

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Mar 1, 2016

If We Want to Find Aliens, We Should Search for the Ones Searching for Us

Posted by in category: alien life

A paper published today in Astrobiology details a new strategy for seeking out intelligent life.

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