A massive leap in the autonomous vehicle revolution has arrived with the brand new Velodyne VLS-128.
Ten times more powerful and a third the size of the previous model, it uses 128 lasers
and new auto-alignment technology to map the surrounding area with a 300 meter range.
And a new study from Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute sheds light on
the origins of our disgust mechanism.
As it turns out chimpanzees will eat seeds from their own family’s poop right away,
but hesitate before eating from stranger poop.
Vsauce!
Kevin, here.
This is Mind Blow.
After years of work by The Seasteading Institute, Blue Frontiers is set to unveil the world’s
first floating island.
The island in French Polynesia, will consist of floating concrete upon which homes, offices,
shops, restaurants, and science research centers can be built -- and re-arranged as needed.
Blue Frontiers hopes to have a dozen floating islands that can adapt to changing sea levels
ready by 2020 and to make sustainable communities on the ocean a viable option for 1 billion
people by 2050.
Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine believe that we can better diagnose concussions
with saliva.
By testing the levels of microRNAs present in tiny molecules of spit, the team found
more accurate diagnoses and predictions of how long symptoms would last compared to traditional
survey tools.
The quick, reliable diagnosis of concussions and their severity would allow doctors and
sports medicine professionals to harness biomarkers to implement appropriate treatment immediately.
So maybe spit analysis will be coming to a future football sideline near you.
Pills with built-in radiofrequency emittors will make sure you take your prescriptions.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital did a pilot study involving oxycodone equipped with ingestible
digital biosensors inside gelatin pills.
The pills communicated information to doctors who were able to see how often patients used
the potentially-addictive medication.
And these monitored patients ended up taking only a fraction of the prescription to manage
their pain -- a breakthrough that could help rein in the growing opioid epidemic in the
United States.
Another new breakthrough could make organic semiconductors a viable alternative to silicon
in phones, TVs, and flexible electronics..
By using a new method of “doping,” which adds impurities to semiconductors to increase
their conductivity, researchers from Princeton, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Humbolt
University in Berlin were able to increase conductivity by 100,000 times.
This would allow for a cheaper and greener way to create the foundation of modern electronics.
Which means, that phone in your pocket could eventually be a carbon-based life form.
Kinda.
Buckypaper is looking to make wearable technology cheaper.
Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering have developed durable, highly-flexible motion
sensors using “buckypaper”, which is a sheet of carbon nanotubes 50,000 times thinner
than a human hair.
Buckypaper would allow wearable tech to stand up to the demands of the human experience
at a fraction of the current cost.
Everything from bed sheets that monitor your sleep to shoes that count your steps and track
your posture are on the table.
Don’t know what to wear?
An artificial intelligence system can learn your style and suggest outfits.
A team at the University of California San Diego worked with Adobe to develop a trainable
AI that uses your browsing data to present images of clothing that you’ll want to put
on -- and it can also design new pieces of clothing based on your preferences.
This could be extremely helpful for those of us who aren’t particularly fashionable.
An algorithm can now diagnose pneumonia better than humans.
Pneumonia is responsible for nearly a fifth of deaths among children under the age of
5 worldwide and notoriously difficult to diagnose.
It took the Machine Learning Group just one week to develop the CheXNet algorithm that
analyzes images to spot markers indicating pneumonia.
After a month of learning, CheXNet was better at identifying all 14 pathologies.
According to the World Health Organization, lower respiratory infections account for over
5% of deaths worldwide -- a number that CheXNet is poised to reduce.
3D printing silicone allows for highly-durable models with more realistic elasticity.
The Disney Research Institute has pioneered a method of injecting a variety of materials,
including water bubbles, into MetaSilicone prints.
The result is output that mirrors the elastic complexity of the world around us -- including
creating lifelike, multi-density models of organs that can be used for surgical training.
And bunnies that can safely withstand hammers.
So that's good.
For a clean and easy way to watch every episode of Mind Blow I created a Mind Blow website
with Squarespace.
I’ve made a lot of websites over the years and this was by far the most stress-free process
for making a site that looks great and works great.
You just choose a template, make it your own and you're done.
So check out the link below to start creating your website and in the process support Mind
Blow.
Which is officially back.
I’m gonna leave you with the Raven R, the robot Baidu hopes will be dancing in every
living room -- and as always, thanks for watching.
Okay, mom.
Bye.
What're you doing, Susie?
She wanted to hear the voice going through the wire.
You can't hear voices in the wire!
Well, how does it work?
How'd your mother's voice get in the phone?
That's simple!
It...
That's funny, I don't know.
I never thought about it before.
We were talking as if we were in the same room.
How does the telephone work, Uncle Bill?
Magic?
No, not magic, susie, but science.
Science of sound waves and electricity.