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Category: transportation

It’s leading to a different way of thinking about computing.

This year’s Detroit auto show is proving that autonomous driving is no longer a techie’s pipe dream. Even holdout Akio Toyoda has finally joined the parade. The self-driving car is coming.

But behind that development is an even more profound change: artificial intelligence (also known as “deep learning”) has gone mainstream. The autonomous driving craze is just the most visible manifestation of the fact that computers now have the capacity to look, learn and react to complex situations as well or better than humans. It’s leading to a profoundly different way of thinking about computing. Instead of writing millions of lines of code to anticipate every situation, these new applications ingest vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, and “learn” from them, much as the human brain does.

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Was hit by a car when I was younger and broke my leg. This would have been better then a metal rod. Fascinating.

A team of researchers from the University of Michigan has developed a new technique to aid bone repair, using polymer nano-shells to deliver microRNA molecules. The method could one day have a big impact on regenerative medicine, directing cells already present at injury sites to aid healing.

The new study builds on previous research conducted back in 2011, where nanofiber microspheres were used to carry cells to injury sites to help the wounding process. The new work uses the same idea, but rather than transporting foreign cells, focuses on making better use of the cells already at the wound site.

The team developed tiny polymer spheres that are able to easily breach cell walls, carrying microRNA molecules to cells at bone wound sites. The spheres are designed to protect the molecules during transit, degrading once in place in cells at the site of the wound.

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Just a day after a technology-heavy State of the Union comes news that the White House isn’t done pushing us into the future. Reuters believes that Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will head to Detroit tomorrow to talk about the administration’s efforts to accelerate the development of self-driving cars. It’s said that Google, which has been spearheading the project to build an autonomous vehicle, will also be in attendance at the event. The newswire mentions Mark Rosekind, head of the nation’s traffic safety bureau, who has asked for a “nimble, flexible” approach to writing new traffic regulations. Details are still thin on the ground, but it looks as if Obama’s “spirit of innovation” is alive and well.

[Image Credit: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg/Getty]

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pritzker-prize-alejandro-aravena-01

“While Aravena, who is from Chile, is relatively unknown in the United States (although he taught for five years at Harvard and served for a period on the Pritzker jury), for at least the last decade he has been establishing himself on the international architecture scene as a serious and unusual practitioner who straddles, subtly but brilliantly, the worlds of formal high design and social responsibility. He has plenty of credibility as a serious designer—he was recently named curator of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale—but his own mode of architectural practice is what sets him apart. Aravena runs Elemental, which bills itself as a “do tank”—not a think tank—and which creates “projects of public interest and social impact, including housing, public space, infrastructure and transportation.””

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