Are supercomputers on the verge of creating Matrix-style simulated realities? Michael McGuigan thinks so. He says that virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are just a few years away.
Emotiv, a company based in San Francisco, says its mind-control headsets will be on shelves later this year, along with a host of novel "biofeedback" games developed by its partners.
Making a truly bionic arm requires far more than mechanical breakthroughs, better processing power, or longer batteries. None of these enable the prosthetic to respond to the wearer's intent with a natural limb's unthinking grace.
Intel and Microsoft are planning to finance two groups of university researchers to start over and design a new generation of computing systems intended to break the industry out of a technological cul-de-sac that threatens to end decades of performance increases in computers.
Based in the Waitakeres, in West Auckland, software developer and artist Vik Olliver is part of a team developing an open-source, self-copying 3D printer. The RepRap (Replicating Rapid-prototyper) printer can replicate and update itself. It can print its own parts, including updates, says Olliver, who is one of the core members of the RepRap team.
"Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people." - Economist, Jeffrey Sachs on the shift in the Global Warming debate.
Tired of hearing other people’s cellphone conversations? It may become worse. Soon you may have to watch their favorite television shows and YouTube videos, too, as they project them onto nearby walls or commuter-train seatbacks.
A scrambled Rubik's cube can be solved in just 25 moves, regardless of the starting configuration. Tomas Rokicki, a Stanford-trained mathematician, has proven the new limit (down from 26 which was proved last year) using a neat piece of computer science.
Physicists have turned on the world's most powerful laser, whose pulses are more intense than any known light source in the universe.
Scientists have revealed what may well be the first pervasive 'rule' of evolution. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences researchers have found evidence which suggests that evolution drives animals to become increasingly more complex.
Gambling addicts don't learn from their mistakes, according to a study published in the open access journal Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health. The problem could be explained by a kind of mental rigidity that leads to harmful compulsive behaviour in sufferers.
A new mathematical object was revealed yesterday during a lecture at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM). Two researchers from the University of Bristol exhibited the first example of a third degree transcendental L-function. These L-functions encode deep underlying connections between many different areas of mathematics.
"We have to bear in mind that the 80 tonnes of kerosene used for a one-way commercial flight to New York is equivalent to the annual biofuel yield from an area of approximately 30 football pitches..." - Dr Richard Pike, chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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