One hundred years after Alan Turing was born, his eponymous test remains an elusive benchmark for artificial intelligence. Now, for the first time in decades, it’s possible to imagine a machine making the grade.

Turing was one of the 20th century’s great mathematicians, a conceptual architect of modern computing whose codebreaking played a decisive part in World War II. His test, described in a seminal dawn-of-the-computer-age paper, was deceptively simple: If a machine could pass for human in conversation, the machine could be considered intelligent.

Artificial intelligences are … Read More → "Artificial intelligence could be on brink of passing Turing Test"

Sometimes a little mindless fun is a great way to trigger creative thinking and foster team building. Sometimes it is just mindless fun. For these 650 Dyson vacuum engineers who turned spare vacuum parts into dragsters, the line might be a little blurry.

And frankly, I like it blurry.

Watching these engineers play is like watching a bunch of puppies spill out of a basket. There is boundless energy, competition, laughs and high fives. It’s hard not to smile when you see it.
via Read More → "Dyson engineers make mini drag racers out of cannibalized vacs"

Originating in ancient China, acupuncture has been used for 2500 years. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that disease is caused by blockages and imbalances of energy (known as chi) flowing through meridians in the body, and can be eased by inserting needles at specific points.

……

Wenjing Huang of Charité University Medical Center, Berlin, Germany, and colleagues used more than 100 studies to produce these brain maps of 18 … Read More → "Proof that acupuncture really does activate specific parts of the brain"

Japan’s Ogaki Kyoritsu bank is preparing to roll out biometric ATMs that will allow users to access their accounts by scanning their hand, and entering their birthdate and PIN number. They will be the first machines that do not require cards.

Customers at select locations of the bank will register their biometric data with their branch where it will be stored in conjunction with their numerical data. These will then authenticate a person’s account.
via DVICE</ … Read More → "No cards required: Japanese ATMs to use hand scans"

Last month, Six to Start released Zombies, Run!, its Kickstarter-funded fitness app that inserts runners directly into a zombie apocalypse. Since the app’s launch, the game’s runners have clocked in over half a million miles. Celina Beach takes the app for a trial run to see what keeps players coming back for more.
via Wired

Continue reading</ … Read More → "Get in shape for the apocalypse with fitness app Zombies, Run!"

Medical informatics experts want to bring the digital revolution to studying human anatomy.

The BioDigital Human is a three-dimensional, fully interactive visualization program. While it won’t completely replace old-fashioned dissection, its users can explore a human body in ways not possible with a cadaver, much less a medical atlas.

With traditional anatomy atlases, “you’re at the mercy of what they’ve created for you. Here, you can manipulate it yourself,” said New York University anatomy instructor Victoria Harnik, who helped design the BioDigital Human.

Unlike … Read More → "A digital revolution for studying human anatomy"

Back in March, we posted about how this could be the year where the National Ignition Facility breaks even with laser fusion, reaching the point where as much power is generated as is input. This doesn’t mean we’ve got a fusion power plant around the corner, though, and researchers have come clean about what the hold-up is.

Fusion power is … Read More → "MIT scientists explain when we’ll have fusion power"

Newspapers proclaimed that hundreds of starships would soon venture out into the cosmos. People dreamed of moon colonies that were just a few years away. Ordinary citizens organized competitions to build rockets to reach the edge of space.

Welcome to Russia in the 1920s.
via Wired

… Read More → "The space craze that gripped Russia nearly 100 years ago"

Brightsource Energy could go public as early as Thursday on the Nasdaq, and with that move the solar power plant developer will be making history.

How, you ask? For one thing, the Oakland, Calif., company is managing to accomplish something that few (if any?) solar startups have done: raising massive amounts of money to build a massive solar power plant in California. The two other solar technology developers who also have become major power plant developers are SunPower and First Solar, and both entered and built their first big solar farm after they had built up … Read More → "5 reasons BrightSource’s solar IPO is important"

DARPA has some details about its new Robotics Challenge, which we first told you about last week. Anyone have a robot that can drive a car for a $2 million prize?

Formally announced Tuesday, the new challenge will take place during the next two years, with the first phase kicking off in October. The goal is to develop robots that can work in … Read More → "What must a humanoid disaster-response robot do to win DARPA’s challenge?"