February 28, 2001 -
Computer
'can talk like a baby'
- By BBC News Online
internet reporter Mark Ward, An Israeli company
has created a conversational computer program it
claims could revolutionise the way people interact
with machines. Artificial Intelligence Enterprises
(Ai) says its Hal program can already converse
convincingly and has the vocabulary and grasp of
language of a 15-month-old child...
February 25, 2001 -
Flying
will be as easy as driving a car - William
Peakin, © 2001 The Observer, Flying a light
aircraft will soon be as easy - and safer than -
driving a car, according to aviation experts. A
consortium of aircraft companies, university
researchers, the US government and Nasa is developing
a system which will allow the public to fly planes
after a few minutes of rudimentary training. The group
is combining advances in aircraft design with
computer-assisted flight and tracking devices to
develop a prototype of a system they have named the
'Highway in the Sky'...
February 13, 2001 -
Sneak
Peek at the new Windows® XP
- Windows® XP
brings a new look to the familiar Windows user
interface. Here's a first look at what the next
generation has in store...
February 27, 2001 -
Fire
Photon Torpedoes! - A NASA alliance with
minority colleges and universities is working to
create futuristic computers that operate using
particles of light. Scientists at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center (MSFC) and a group of colleges and
universities are running together in a race. The prize
is nothing less than a new generation of computers
that operate at astonishing speeds. Using photons to
do their work, these optical computers would shatter
the speed limits of today's computing devices...
February 21, 2001 - Muscling
In
- © Copyright New Scientist, RBI
Limited 2001, A robotic fish powered by real
muscles goes for a test swim. The first robot to be
powered by real muscles has taken its first swim. It
waggled off looking surprisingly lifelike, but a few
minutes later, it flagged and came to a complete stop.
It was not faulty - it just needed a break...
February, 2001 -
Project
Delphis - Dolphin Cognition Research - Copyright
1995-9, 2000 Earthtrust, Inc.,
"Each year hundreds of thousands of dolphins die from driftnet
and purse seine fishing, from being harpooned, from being shot as
crab bait, and from pollution. Although it is already known that
dolphins are large-brained, intelligent, social creatures, humans
continue to slaughter these amazing mammals at an enormous rate..."
February 07, 2001 -
Push-button
pleasure
- Exclusive from New Scientist
magazine © 2001, Electronic implants may help
women who cannot orgasm any other way. A machine that
delivers an orgasm at the push of a button has been
patented in the US. The implant could help women whose
lives have been blighted by an inability to achieve
orgasms naturally...
February 25, 2001 -
ZOOLOGICAL
SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ANNOUNCES FROZEN ZOO® INITIATIVE
- © 2000 Zoological Society of San
Diego, As part of "Genetic Resources for the
New Century, " a conference discussing
developments and concerns for the future of genomics
and species conservation, the Zoological Society of
San Diego announced its "Frozen Zoo"
initiative at a dinner last May 10, at the San Diego
Wild Animal Park...
February 21, 2001 - Gift
for the Gab
- Copyright © 2000 FEED Inc.,
Clay Shirky on new software agents that evolve
language. "Intelligent agents," that
venerable CompSci concept, has long been something of
an oxymoron. We've had a decade's worth of promises
that an army of self-contained electronic processes
would soon be scouring the network on our behalf,
ferreting out information and finding the lowest price
for everything from CDs to airline tickets. The
reality, of course, is that agents have never yet
found any practical application. Dr. Lee Giles and Dr.
Kam-Chuen Jim, researchers at NEC, may have found the
secret to transforming experimental agents into
practical tools: talking helps...
February 23, 2001 -
Apocalypse
Then - NASA SCIENCE NEWS, "New
findings provide evidence that Earth's most severe
mass extinction - an event 250 million years ago that
wiped out 90 percent of the life on Earth -- was
triggered by a collision with a comet or
asteroid..."
February 21, 2001 -
Nature's
Tiniest Space Junk - NASA SCIENCE NEWS,
NASA scientists are using
an experimental radar to monitor a swarm of space dust
surrounding our planet -- cosmic junk that can pose an
electrical hazard to satellites. Now anyone can listen
to the radar echoes, live on the Internet! (This story
also includes an unusual radar movie of a 2000 Leonid
meteor.) ...
November 02, 2000 - Using ultrasound to
battle cancer - WASHINGTON (AP) - Vicki Freeman
lay perfectly still inside a tube-like machine as
ultrasound waves beamed deep into her cancerous
breast. Little bursts of heat signaled the beams were
cooking her tumor to death - without a mark or cut to
her skin. Freeman is one of the first women to try a
novel medical experiment to see if this "focused
ultrasound therapy" might one day offer a
noninvasive alternative to breast cancer surgery. It
will take years of study to prove whether cooking
tumors works. But as women already clamor for less
disfiguring breast surgery, pilot experiments at
Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Boston's
Brigham & Women's Hospital signal the latest in a
growing trend: research on ways to make cancer removal
not just less invasive, but to quit cutting patients
altogether. Yet it raises a serious safety question:
Are doctors trying to make tumor removal too minimal,
particularly for diseases like breast cancer where
surgery can work very well?
