Technology

Robotic Leg With Artificial Muscles Can Walk And Jump Across Unstable Terrain

Robots have a 200-year-old problem: motors. Even walking robots feature arms and legs that are powered by motors and that is a barrier to helping the living but a new muscle-powered robotic leg can jump and move and fast while detecting and reacting to obs ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 9 2024 - 1:22pm

To Be Effective, AI-Powered Bartenders Have To Ignore Some Signals

A robotic bartender has to do something challenging for a machine- ignore data and recognize social signals. Researchers at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) of Bielefeld University investigated how a robotic bartender can ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 27 2024 - 8:26am

Beware: That 'nubile female' you talk to in "Second Life" could be Richard Dawkins

Courtesy of GrrrlScientist at Guardian Blogs (who I found courtesy of the venerable yet still awesome ScienceURLs), I got a chance to view an interview of Richard Dawkins conducted by Matt Ridley.   Dawkins is a polarizing figure and maybe not a great publ ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Oct 15 2024 - 8:44am

HRP-4C: A Fembot eerily more realistic than Lady Gaga

The HRP-4C from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan, a descendant of the HRP-4 humanoid robot that sent normal people into uncanny valley creepiness territory last year, can sing now. Clearly catering toward Japane ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Oct 15 2024 - 9:33am

Battlestar Galactica Online MMORPG Closed Beta Begins

If you are reading this site, you already know "Battlestar Galactica" is the greatest science-fiction show of all time.  Yes, yes, "Farscape" was terrific and "Star Trek" set the standard but Battlestar Galactica as number on ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 15 2024 - 12:35pm

Carbon — to capture or not to capture

This came up on 2nd November 2024 (give or take a day), a broadcaster objecting to a carbon capture scheme being pushed by the UK Energy Secretary, who along with a considerable number of our politicians is aiming to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions as so ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Nov 6 2024 - 10:35am

Nothing like the HP RPN calculators

There is nothing like these RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) calculators from HP. But there seems to be two kinds of people: those who love RPN and those who just find it confusing. I happen to be in the first category and these are my RPN calculators: ...

Blog Post - Sverre Holm - Nov 7 2024 - 8:46pm

ChatGPT Is Cheaper In Medicine And Does Better Diagnoses Even Than Doctors Using ChatGPT

General medicine, routine visits and such, have gradually gone from M.D.s to including Osteopaths and now Physicians Assistants with no decline in quality, and Large Language Models, colloquially called "Artificial Intelligence", like ChatGPT can ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 13 2024 - 1:18pm

AI And The Poetry Problem

Artificial Intelligence is artificial, but it is not intelligence. That could change some day but it isn't happening soon, Large Language Models are fine for a few things but limited in most. That is why Ben Affleck can talk in a hurry and assure fell ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 18 2024 - 2:29pm

Nanopesticides May Be In Our Organic Farming Future

Friends of the Earth and other litigation groups opposed to science are cheering the closure of AquaBounty's AquAdvantage salmon- the poster-child (decades of regulatory roadblocks) for how the US regulatory system is manipulated by lawyers to hold ba ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Dec 12 2024 - 2:56pm