Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers have come up with a new method for 3D-printed adhesive that is much stronger than any other glue.

Footage making the rounds on social media shows what appear to be astonishingly lifelike humanoid robots posing at the World Robot Conference in Beijing last week.

But instead of showing off the latest and greatest in humanoid robotics, two of the “robots” turned out to be human women cosplaying as futuristic gynoids, presumably hired by animatronics company Ex-Robots.

“Many people think these are all robots without realizing they’re actually two human beings cosplayed as robots among the animatronics,” reporter Byron Wan tweeted.

Year 2022 face_with_colon_three

It might seem that the world’s landmasses are fixed, but as Richard Fisher discovers, there are major changes coming.

Nearly 500 years ago, the Flemish cartographer Geradus Mercator produced one of the world’s most important maps.

Continue reading “How the next ‘supercontinent’ will form” »

As an undergraduate he was drawn to theory, but he quickly switched to experiment.

“Theory was good, but I was driven to experimental particle physics because even if I write a theory, someone has to test it anyway,” says Gandrakota, who is now a postdoc at the US Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “I’d rather be the person who tests and finds stuff than the person who predicts it.”

But he never lost his soft spot for theoretical physics. Today, Gandrakota and his colleagues on the CMS experiment are developing a machine-learning tool that will allow theorists even more freedom and creativity.

A pen that can transform Braille into English text has been developed by experts at the University of Bristol.

Braille literacy is frequently reported as being in decline. This is despite visually impaired people often expressing a desire to learn it, and Braille literacy being a highly valued skill by those who are capable. This is often attributed to the lack of available learning resources, particularly away from large urban centers.

The handheld device, which includes a one-centimeter sensor with 19 channels programmed to read Braille, has demonstrated high accuracy in early trials.

MIT’s soft drone flies and grasps, swiftly picking up a bottle in a demo video:

Interestingly, the drone’s new capabilities allow it to catch objects that are moving at speeds of up to 0.3 meters per second.

Continue reading “MIT’s new drone with flying claws grabs objects mid-air at high speed” »

The use of the robot allows surgeries to be performed without opening the abdomen.

Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya says that a robot has been used for the first time in Israel to completely remove a patient’s pancreas.

The 78-year-old patient was diagnosed with multiple cystic tumors of the pancreas. Although this type of tumor is not considered cancerous, doctors say that left untreated, it could develop into a malignant pancreatic tumor in the future.

Continue reading “In Israel first, robot is used by doctors to completely remove patient’s pancreas” »

The work on the planned Dallas and Houston high-speed rail continues to advance slowly, despite years of pushback.

SparkLabs — an early-stage venture capital firm that has made a name for itself for backing OpenAI as well as a host of other AI startups such as Vectara, Allganize, Kneron, Anthropic, xAI, Glade (YC S23) and Lucidya AI — is gearing up to double down on more startups in the space. The VC firm announced Tuesday that it has closed a new $50 million fund, AIM AI Fund, which will back AI startups out of its own AIM-X accelerator in Saudi Arabia as well as other AI startups across the globe.

SparkLabs’ new fund and its wider investment aims underscore the bigger trends that have swirled around artificial intelligence for the last few years. The explosion of interest in generative AI in particular has led to a surge of startups in the space, as well as a rush of investors looking for the next Open AI — or at the very least, a startup that a bigger company might snap up as it looks to sharpen its own AI edge.

It also points to how the AI opportunity continues to widen beyond Silicon Valley. AIM-X is an AI-focused startup accelerator that SparkLabs launched earlier this year in the kingdom as part of its AI Mission, a national initiative to bolster AI technology over the next five years.