For all the talk of artificial intelligence becoming increasingly brain-like, there’s one area where it frequently falls short: memory. Neural networks usually have to learn everything they need to know about their duties, rather than building on top of existing experiences like real brains do. Alphabet’s DeepMind team hopes to fix that. They’ve crafted an algorithm that lets a neural network ‘remember’ past knowledge and learn more … Read More → "DeepMind AI learns to ‘remember’ previous knowledge"

Judges and juries often have to gauge a defendant’s state of mind at the time he or she committed a crime. They have to decide whether a defendant committed a crime “knowingly” or “recklessly.” In some cases, the difference could be a matter of life or death.

Now a new study, published this week in … Read More → "Could brain imaging reveal your mental state during a crime?"

A Belgian company called BeWell is showing off WellPoint, a self-service kiosk that’s designed for patients entering hospitals or clinics. The WellPoint is a touchscreen-enabled booth that operates as a first port of call for visitors, quickly checking your basic vitals before you see a medical professional.

According to BeWell, initial contact with a nurse where your blood pressure, pulse oximetry and weight … Read More → "Meet the automated triage nurse of the future"

A design studio called Those is making a smart whiteboard that it calls “the first connected display that draws with a pen.” It’s named Joto, and it’s one part internet-enabled whiteboard, one part art display, and one part nostalgic throwback to a physical medium. It’ … Read More → "Joto is a robotic whiteboard that can draw your tweets and Slack messages in real life"

While there are government-approved test sites for land-based autonomous vehicles in the US, so far there is only one official test site for their seafaring counterparts. Tucked away in Norway’s Trondheim Fjord, the test site offers wide, open waters similar to a small sea, but with relatively low shipping traffic so there’s less of a chance of a collision should one of the test vehicles go haywire. The … Read More → "Seafaring drones are navigating Norway’s fjords"

Mt. Tateyama rises 9,892 feet in Japan’s Hida Mountains and is considered one of the country’s Three Holy Mountains. It also may be one of the snowiest mountains in Japan, and perhaps one of the snowiest places on planet Earth.

The Hida Mountains are part of the Japanese Alps and meteorologists suspect that parts of the range receive as much as 1,500 inches of snow a year, … Read More → "How to clear a path through 60 feet of snow"

Dutch piano restorer Frank Bernouw has painstakingly restored a stunning Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina, a self-playing, multi-violin orchestrion that plays a variety of concertos quite beautifully, if not a bit mechanically. This unusual instrument was invented in 1907 by Ludwig Hupfeld AG and “dubbed the “8 … Read More → "A beautifully restored Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina, a self-playing mechanical violin orchestrion player"

According to the World Health Organization, snakes bite an estimated 5 million people each year, killing more than 100,000 of those victims and permanently injuring hundreds of thousands more. Current antivenoms might not be saving lives as efficiently as they could be, given that they’re difficult and expensive to produce, distribute and administer. Now, researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) have developed a synthetic alternative with a long shelf-life … Read More → "New nanogel neutralizes deadly snake venom"

Living things: They’re most inspiring, but also difficult things to try to replicate in robotics. With that aim, researchers in Japan have managed to design a tiny robotic system that moves like a living cell. The scientists described the robot last week in the journal Science Robotics.  </ … Read More → "Amoeba-like robot programmed with DNA"