Category Archives: Futurism

In Brief The DARPA Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program is exploring ways to speed up skill acquisition by activating synaptic plasticity. If the program succeeds, downloadable learning that happens in a flash may be the result. Mindhack For Faster Learning

In March 2016, DARPA the U.S. militarys mad science branch announced their Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program. The TNT program aims to explore various safe neurostimulation methods foractivating synaptic plasticity, which is the brains ability to alter theconnecting points betweenneurons a requirement for learning. DARPA hopes that building up that abilityby subjecting the nervous system to a kind of workout regimen will enable the brain to learn more quickly.

As part of the TNT program, DARPA is funding eight projects at seven institutions. All projects are part of a coordinated effort that will first study the fundamental science undergirding brain plasticity and will conclude with human trials. The first portion of the TNT program will work to unravel the neural mechanisms that allow nerve stimulation to influence brain plasticity. The second portion of the program will practically apply what has been learned in a variety of training exercises.

To ensure the work stays practical, foreign language specialists, intelligence analysts, and others who train personnel now will work with researchers to help refine the TNT platform to suit military training needs. Researchers will compare the efficacy of using animplanted device to stimulate the brain versus non-invasive stimulation. They will also explore both the ethics of enhanced learning through neurostimulation and ways to avoid side effects and potential risks.

The Defense Department operates in a complex, interconnected world in which human skills such as communication and analysis are vital, and the Department has long pushed the frontiers of training to maximize those skills, Doug Weber, the TNT Program Manager, said in a DARPA press release. DARPAs goal with TNT is to further enhance the most effective existing training methods so the men and women of our Armed Forces can operate at their full potential.

If the TNT program succeeds, striving to be all you can be may mean learning at a much faster pace, and not just for military personnel. Downloadable learning may be one of the ways we achieve next-level humanity.

Continue reading here:
DARPA Is Planning to Hack the Human Brain to Let Us Upload Skills - Futurism

In BriefHumans may sometimes take all they can do with their hands forgranted. An appreciation for that dexterity is inspiring roboticsinnovators to develop ways of improving hand function in robots. Handy Bots

Its quite common for humans especially those who work in manufacturing to tie a knot, strip the casing off a cable, insert a pin in a hole or use a hand tool such as a drill. They may seem like simple tasks, but are really very complex and involve extremely fine finger and hand motions.

Though robots are getting more and more involved in factory work and in a wide range of other types of jobs including in the service industry and health care their dexterity is not nearly as impressive. Since people first brought them to work in automotive factories more than 50 years ago, we have built robots that can weld, paint and assemble parts quite well. Todays best robotic hands can pick up familiar objects and move them to other places such as taking products from warehouse bins and putting them in boxes.

But robots cant orient a hand tool properly say, lining up a Phillips head screwdriver with the grooves on a screw, or aiming a hammer at a nail. And they definitely cant use two hands together in detailed ways, like replacing the batteries in a remote control.

Human hands are excellent at those tasks and much more. To even come close to rivaling what our hands are easily capable of, robot hands need better agility, reliability and strength and they need to be able to sense more accurately and move even more finely than they do now, to figure out what theyre holding and how to grip it best. For robots to be able to work alongside humans, well have to figure out how to make robots that can literally lend us a hand when our own two are not enough.

My research group at Northeastern University is working on doing just this, in particular for humanoid robotslike NASAs Valkyrie, which has three fingers and a thumb on each hand. Each digit has knuckle-like joints, and each hand has a wrist that can rotate easily. Were working on creating motions combinations of arm, wrist, finger and thumb movements that collectively accomplish a task, like moving a wrench in a circle to tighten a bolt, or pulling a cart from one place to another.

Rather than making each robot a custom machine tailored for a very specific task, we need to design multi-use robots, or even such capable machines that they might be called general purpose good for almost any task. One key to the success of these types of robots will be excellent hands.

Our work focuses on designing a new class of adaptable robot hands capable of precise fine movements and autonomous grasping. When robots are able to hammer in nails, change batteries and make other similar movements basic for humans but very complex for robots well be well on our way to human-like dexterity in robotic hands.

Achieving this goal also involves inventing new designs that incorporate hard and soft elements the way human bone gives strength to a grip, with skin spreading the pressure so a wine glass doesnt shatter.

Modern technological improvements are making the development process easier. With 3D printing, we can make prototypes very quickly. We can even make low-cost disposable components to try different arrangements of mechanisms, like two- or three-fingered grippers for simple pick-and-place tasks or anthropomorphic robot hands for more delicate operations.

These abilities are already second nature to humans through vision and proprioception (the ability to sense the relative positions of body parts without looking or thinking about it). Once were able to achieve them in robots, theyll be able to do things like detect if a grasp is too strong and is squeezing an object too hard.As electronic cameras and sensors get smaller, were able to incorporate them in new ways. For instance, if we put pressure sensors and cameras in a robotic hand, they can give feedback to the robot controller (whether human or automated) when a grip is secure, or if something starts to slip. One day they may be able to sense which direction the slipping object is moving, so the robot can catch it.

Another milestone will be developing methods for robots to figure out what motions they need to make in real time, including sensing whats going on in their hands at each moment. If a robot hand can detect changes in objects it is handling, or manipulate items while holding them, they could help with those common manual tasks like knot-tying and wire-stripping.

Working with two hands together is even farther into the future, though it would provide a significant boost, particularly for manufacturing. A robot that can operate a drill with two hands or pass machine parts from one hand to the other would be big improvements, allowing factories to automate even more steps in their processes.

We humans havent developed these systems yet. Achieving human-like autonomous robot dexterity will keep robotics researchers, technologists and innovators busy in the foreseeable future. It wont slow down the ongoing robotics revolution in manufacturing, because current processes still have lots of room for automation to improve safety, speed and quality. But as we make robots even better, theyll be able to give us a hand.

Taskin Padir, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Read the original here:
The Next Generation of Robots Will Be Remarkably Human-Like - Futurism

Controlling the Message

Major changes in the message sent by the United States government began the moment Donald Trump took his oath of office on January20th. Shortly after the inauguration, all mentions of climate change and itshuman origins were deleted from the White House website. These pages have yet to be restored.

These pages have yet to be restored.

The administration continued to try and control their messaging with public information updates. In their latest act, the website for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been purged of a great deal of the science related to anthropogenic global warming. One of the removed pages was recently used to refute claims made by Scott Pruitt, the head of the agency.

In an interview last month with CNBC, Pruitt stated that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and theres tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that its a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. Previously the page stated that it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming. It comes as no surprise that the administration is removing this language from its site. You simply cannot have an agencys website fundamentally disagreeing with the statementsmade by those running it.

The old site has been archived with a red banner on top which labels the information as purely historical. In a statement, J.P. Freire, associate administrator for public affairs for the EPA, stated As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land, and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency. We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how were protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.

In response, Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, told the Washington Post, Its hard to understand why facts require revision. To the same end, former EPA department head Janet McCabe stated Historical and factual information about these issues, and regulations over time, is something that EPA has always made available to people. It belongs to the people, and people should be able to find it easily.

The top level EPA page now refers to a Back to Basics approach, which apparentlyincludes an agenda with three tenets: protecting the environment, engaging with partners, and sensible regulations for economic growth. Examples of this approach show Pruitt meeting with workers at a coal power plant.

Follow this link:
EPA Website Purged of Climate Change Information to Align With Trump Administration Claims - Futurism

In BriefThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hasdeveloped a website that can show you the potential future impactof climate change, down to the very neighborhood. The tool gives apersonal touch to the potential esoteric topic. Local Lessons

The climate is changing. Most people know that its changing, and a sizeable majority even say theyworry about those changes.But at the same time,just 40% of Americans think its going to harm them personally. And just 33% of Americans say they talk about climate change even occasionally.

One of the reasons for this discrepancy may be that discussion of climate science tends to happen at the 30,000-foot level examining global shifts in average temperatures and weather or focuses on extreme environments, like the Arctic, where the impacts of climate change are most extreme.But climate change is going to impact every corner of the Earth in some way or another.

Thats why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations slick new online Climate Exploreris so fascinating.

The updated system lets you zip across the 48 contiguous states (and Washington DC), and see for yourself how the local climate in any given neighborhood is likely to change between 2010 and 2100. The Climate Explorer also includes data on how the climate has behaved between 1950 and 2010; scroll forward in time, and youre seeingdata pulled from international climate models.

NOAAs site plots out changes according to two possible futures one in which global emissions peak in 2040 and then begin to decrease, and another in which emissions keep increasing apace. Take a look.

This image swipes back and forth between the two scenarios in a map of the country in 2090. Darker shades of red indicate more days each year above 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

That darkest red, visible around Phoenix, Arizona, as well as parts of southern Texas and Florida in the high-emissions scenario, indicates as many as 225 days over 95 each year.

The chart shows the difference between the two scenarios.

The red area indicates the range of possibilities for the higher-emissions scenario, and the blue area indicates the range for lower emissions. Those lines down the middle indicate the most likely outcomes.

You can see that for Cherry Hill, the difference between high and low emissions amounts to about 50 days with highs over95 degrees each year by 2090. Thats a lot of dangerously hot weather.

You can see the northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest turning brown in both scenarios, signaling theyre likely to get much drier.

But California shows the most dramatic impacts to precipitation. Look at that deep brown in Northern California, where the climate is expected to dry out. Then flick your eye down to deep green Southern California, expected to get a whole lot wetter than its been historically.

The darkest blue indicates deep subfreezingtemperatures highs of 20 degrees or lower.

As it gets lighter, were in the territory of 32 degrees highs right around freezing.

Some counties in these scenarios, particularly the high emissions scenario, show average highs above freezing in January. Thats a major shift for the region, with potential impacts on local life, ecosystems, and economies.

(Cook County includes Chicago.)

See the original post here:
Remarkable Interactive Graphs Show How Climate Change Could Transform Your Town - Futurism

In BriefA spin-off of an ambitious idea to refreeze the Arctic usingmachines is about to get a trial run in Switzerland where a team ofresearchers plan to add ice to a glacier in the Alps using snowmachines. Snow Machines

One of the strongest and most obvious indications of global warming is the receding polar ice caps, most specifically, the Arctic sheets. In February of this year, scientists brought up a peculiar solutionfor combating melting ice caps: refreezing them. Now, this seemingly outlandish idea is about to get a test run in Switzerland.

The pilot Swiss plan is similar to the proposed Arctic solution, except instead of entire ice caps, the target would be a small, artificial glacierat the foot of the Diavolezzafirn glacier. Whilethe Arctic plan proposed the use of wind-powered pumpsto spew water on top of ice, this mini-version of the project willuse snow machines to preserve the glacier over the summer by covering it with artificially created snow.

We have to carry the glacier through the summer, Utrecht University researcher Johannes Oerlemans explained toNew Scientist.

This ambitious plan is one of several ideas to combat global warming, which range from decreasing fossil fuel dependence to even geoengineering the planet.

If it works, the next step would be to try it out on the larger Morteratsch glacier in the eastern Swiss Alps, a plan Oerlemans recently presented at an annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria. Rising temperatures due to global warming have caused this vast valley glacier to recede at an alarming rate of 30 to 40 meters (98 to 131 feet) each year, according to a New Scientist report.

Oerlemans and his colleagues, however, dont just plan to keep the Swiss glaciers from receding. They want to grow them back, and 4,000 snow machines might just do the trick. In principle, even the snout could grow back, said Oerlemans. Within 20 years, he concluded, the glacier might be able to grow by 800 meters (2,625 feet) if researchers blow just a few centimeters of artificial snow over a 0.5 square kilometer (.19 sqaure mile) plateau each summer to give it cover.

In the case of the Arctic, however, it wouldnt be that simple. The area is huge, roughly 107square kilometers(3.8 million square miles), and the plan to refreeze it with water pump would require a hugeinvestment. If it worked, however, an extra meter of sea ice could be added in just one year, according to the Arctic plan, winding the ice cap clock back by 17 years.

Buying that sort of time might just be worth the effort required to put seemingly impossible ideas to fight climate change into action, and this smaller project in Switzerland could providethe confidence needed to give them a shot.

Go here to see the original:
Researchers Have Started a Trial to Refreeze the Arctic - Futurism

In Brief Scientists have created bricks harder than concrete by compressing simulated Martian soil. Hypothetically, this means we could significantly bring down the cost of constructing shelters when we finally reach Mars. The New Red Brick

The world is intent on sending humans to Mars, but the feasibility of Martian travel is dependent on cost. Thats why staying within budget is potentially the biggest challenge facing NASAs recently released five-year plandetailing how humans will get to Mars. Its also the reasonSpaceX is pushing to make reusable rockets.

When it comes building Martian settlements, the most ideal scenario would be one that doesnt require humans to haulconstruction materials and equipment at least 54.6 million kilometers (34 million miles) to the red planet. Right now, theyre evaluating3D-printing technology to address this challenge. But it looks like there could be a better solution using Martian dirt.

According to a paper published in Scientific Reports, compressing Martian soil at high pressure produces a surprisingly strong, solid form that is very similar to bricks. And these other-worldly bricks have strengths exceeding those typically possessed by steel-reinforced concrete.

The researchers believe this simple, chemical-free process is so successful becausemost Martian soil contains nanoparticulate iron oxide. These particles give Mars its inherent red hueand also seem to serve as a bonding agent that makes certain soil on the planet self-cohesive.

Martian brickscould significantly reduce the cost of building anything on Mars. No need to bring clay bricks, or materials to make them. All we need to figure out is how we willcompress the soil.

Heres the thing though all this is based on simulated Martian soil, called Mars-1a. Unfortunately, the team behind the study had no actual Martian dirt to test, so they recreated Martian dirt based on what we currently know of its components. And while the results are interesting, if not promising, theres still the possibility that actual Martian soil will behave differently.

In addition, the iron oxide bonding agent may be common in Martian soil, but its not present in all of it. So gathering enough material to build human shelters might be feasible in onlycertain parts of the planet.

Once we get to Mars, areal sample of Martian soil can be brought back to Earth, where we can learn more about its components and properties. Until then, well just have to wait and see whether this latest discoverycan actually lend itself to making construction on Mars more cost efficient.

View post:
Our Future Space Colonies Could Be Built Using Super-Strong Martian Bricks - Futurism