KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News

A collection of news articles and stories relating to the accelerating nature of technology

Sir Tim Berners-Lee's new World Wide Web Foundation is looking for ways to give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources and help people separate rumor from real science. (Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7613201.stm)

Intel launched its first six-core processors, part of the new Xeon 7400 (code-named"Dunnington") 45nm family of processors, which will deliver 1.5 times the performance per watt of the current 65nm Xeon 7300 series. (Source:http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39488795,00.htm)

During the presidential debates, Current TV will broadcast Twitter messages from viewers, and in close to real time, it will display filtered comments on the screen and Web site while Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama face off.(Source:http://www.physorg.com/news140712364.html)

India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from a controversial brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question.With the Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test, or BEOS, an investigator reads aloud details of the crime and the resulting EEG brain images are processed using software that tries to detect whether, when the crime's details are recited, the brain lights up in specific regions -- the areasthat, according to the technology's inventors, show measurable changes when experiences are relived. Many experts in psychology and neuroscience were troubled that it was used to win a criminal conviction before being validated by any independent study and reported in a respected scientific journal. (Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/world/asia/15brainscan.html)

Google is considering deploying the supercomputers necessary to operate its Internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles offshore.The"water-based data centers"would use wave energy to power and cool their computers, reducing Google's costs. Their offshore status would also mean the company would no longer have to pay property taxes on its data centers, which are sited across the world.Data centers consumed 1 per cent of the world's electricity in 2005. By 2020, the carbon footprint of the computers that run the Internet will be larger than that of air travel. (Source:http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4753389.ece)

The experimental Peer-to-Patent program is publishing patent applications on the Web for all to see and let anyone with relevant expertise -- academics, colleagues, even potential rivals -- offer input to be passed along to the Patent Office.The goal is to locate prior art that Patent Office examiners might not find on their own -- and to produce better patents by reducing ones granted on applications that aren't novel. The hope is that this will drive innovation by improving the patent process and reducing the patent infringement lawsuits clogging the courts. (Source:http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/15/crowdsourcing.patents.ap/index.html)

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) are planning to develop a standard that will let consumers buy movies and other digital content once and play them almost anywhere, on any type of device, without the onerous restrictions that have hobbled the growth of digital downloads. (Source:http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2008/tc20080912_471690.htm)

Tim Berners-Lee and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation have unveiled the World Wide Web Foundation.The organization's mission is to advance a free and open Web and extend the Web's benefit to all people around the world, especially to underserved communities to share knowledge, access services, do business, participate in government, and communicate creatively. (Source:http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/policy/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210601715)

The brain corrects our speech through two simultaneous inputs -- through hearing the sound that we make, and also through these subtler feedback signals from mechanoreceptors in in the skin and muscles -- conceivably a basis for speech therapy, McGill University researchers have found.(Source:http://www.physorg.com/news140613973.html)

3M plans to launch its handheld MPro110 mini projector on September 30 for $359, with VGA and composite video inputs.(Source:http://www.popsci.com/gear-%2526-gadgets/article/2008-09/3m-launches-first-pocket-projector)

Some early adopters are now using their mobile phones for streaming scenes from their daily lives or events to blogs, social networking sites like Facebook, or Web sites of companies that provide the software and services for streaming, like Kyte (www.kyte.com) or Qik (qik.com). (Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/technology/14novel.html)

To counter fears that terrorists could order the genes needed to make a deadly virus, Industry Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB) members will carry a seal of approval on their websites confirming that they screen their orders, putting pressure on the minority of firms that cut costs by not screening to change. (Source:http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19926733.500-dna-firms-step-up-security-over-bioterrorism-threat.html?)

Tel Aviv University astronomers have found 14 galaxies that seem to be lined up along a bridge of dark matter at least 1.5 million light years long inside a region of nearly empty space.The alignment seems to suggest that the galaxies have come into contact with new, star-forming material, such as a swath of dark matter -- its gravity could help concentrate the material. (Source:http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14730-dark-matter-bridge-to-nowhere-found-in-cosmic-void.html)

A rudimentary form of natural selection likely existed in prebiotic molecules even before life arose on Earth, making the eventual arrival of life much more probable, according to models by mathematical biologists at Harvard University suggest.Selection actually precedes the origin of life, and helps to shape it, as the prebiotic soup constantly tests possible replicators, making it much more probable that one might eventually reach the threshold of life, they suggest. (Source:http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14726-did-evolution-come-before-life.html?)

A 1Gbps wireless local area network (WLAN) standard is being developed by the IEEE Very High Throughput (VHT) Study Group.VHT would use two frequency bands: high-frequency 60GHz for relatively short ranges (a few rooms) and under-6GHz for ranges similar to that of today's WLANs in the 5GHz band (about 70 meters indoors), allowing"a corporate or home user to roam from high-throughput dense cells to wider area networks in a seamless manner."Current WLAN products based on the 802.11n standard typically provide throughput of 130Mbps to 150Mbps. (Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/091108-ieee.html?hpg1=bn)

The National Space Society (NSS) will announce today a demonstration of the critical technology enabling space solar power.John C. Mankins, former manager of NASA's Exploration Systems Research and Technology Program, and a foremost expert on space solar power, will describe a demonstration project for long-distance, solar-powered wireless power transmission between two Hawaiian islands 148 kilometers apart. The project will also be featured in an hour-long special Friday evening on Discovery Channel as part ofPROJECT EARTH, an eight-part Discovery channel series on the most ambitious geo-engineering ideas to tackle global climate change and the need for new and sustainable energy sources.Space-based solar power, in which large satellites would collect plentiful solar energy in orbit and beam it safely down to Earth, is the only energy technology that is clean, renewable, constant and capable of providing power to virtually any location on Earth, according to the NSS.Source:National Space Society news releaseFull disclosure: KurzweilAI.net newsletter editor Amara D. Angelica is a newly elected member of the NSS board of directors.(Source:)