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LOS ANGELES — In the largest collaborative study of the brain to date, researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) led a global consortium of 190 institutions to identify eight common genetic mutations that appear to age the brain an average of three years. The discovery could lead to targeted therapies and interventions for Alzheimer’s disease, autism and other neurological conditions.

An international team of roughly 300 scientists known as the Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis (ENIGMA) Network pooled brain scans and genetic data worldwide to pinpoint genes that enhance or break down key brain regions in people from 33 countries. This is the first high-profile study since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched its Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) centers of excellence in 2014. The research was published Wednesday, Jan. 21, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
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FUTURISM UPDATE (February 13, 2015) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

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MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: A Pancreas in a Capsule. Stem-cell advocates pin their hopes on an artificial pancreas to treat diabetes. https://lnkd.in/en6cPcu

ENGINEERING-COM: NASA Floats an Extraterrestrial Submarine Design https://lnkd.in/e9zem4u

ENGINEERING-COM: Does the Earth’s Core Have its Own Core? https://lnkd.in/eeN3bSB

ENGINEERING-COM: Snail Shells Inspire Better Batteries http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/9578/Snail-Shells-Inspire-Better-Batteries.aspx

PHYS-ORG: Switching superconductivity by light. A research team led by Prof. Hiroshi M. Yamamoto of the Institute for Molecular Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences has developed a novel superconducting transistor which can be switched reversibly between ON and OFF by light-irradiation. This achievement is a milestone for future high-speed switching devices or highly-sensitive optical sensors. https://lnkd.in/e4gUyZv

LINKEDIN: Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt noted https://lnkd.in/es4ttBA

PHYS-ORG: Warming pushes Western US toward driest period in 1,000 years. https://lnkd.in/eenpg-e

NEW SCIENTIST: Geoengineering would be ‘irrational and irresponsible’ https://lnkd.in/eWjuj5u

NEW SCIENTIST: Oceans swallowed 13 million tonnes of plastic in 2010 https://lnkd.in/eHGUb9A

NEW SCIENTIST: Both cause and cure for diabetes could be in your gut https://lnkd.in/etSARDt

PHYS-ORG: GM to build 200-mile electric car at Michigan plant https://lnkd.in/e5RW3q9

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Mutation Order in Tumor Genes Affects Cancer Outcome. Findings could one day lead to more personalized treatment decisions https://lnkd.in/eKeGb4z

FUNDAMENTALLY SOLVING GLOBAL CORPORATION’S OVERPARAMETERIZED PROBLEMS AND BE VICTORIOUS IN THE PROCESS! http://www.amazon.com/FUNDAMENTALLY-CORPORATIONS-OVERPARAMETERIZED-PROBLEMS-VICTORIOUS-ebook/dp/B00TJB73MY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423788845&sr=8-1&keywords=andres+agostini+FUNDAMENTALLY+SOLVING+GLOBAL+C…+%28ASIN%3A+B00TJB73MY%29

A LOT OF KAIZEN? REUTERS: Record number of vehicles recalled in U.S. last year: regulator http://reut.rs/1FEKDR9

BBC FUTURE: ‘I emailed a message between two brains’. Could we one day hook up our brains to the internet? Rose Eveleth investigates a claim for the ‘first’ online message sent between two minds. https://lnkd.in/ejZjmXc

COMPUTERWORLD: Applied artificial intelligence: Mythological to neuroanatomical https://lnkd.in/eMeW89E

REUTERS: Record number of vehicles recalled in U.S. last year: regulator http://reut.rs/1FEKDR9

H-PLUS MAGAZINE: DARPA-funded Efforts in the Development of Novel Brain–Computer Interface Technologies http://hplusmagazine.com/2015/02/09/darpa-funded-efforts-development-novel-brain-computer-interface-technologies/

INTEL: Moving Data at the Speed of Light https://lnkd.in/eNuER68

WIRED: American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing/

COMPUTERWORLD: Applied artificial intelligence: Mythological to neuroanatomical http://www.computerworld.com/article/2879060/current-depths-of-ai-and-ml.html

TIME: China Is the Big Winner in the Conflict Between Russia and the West https://lnkd.in/eD2cTGD

THE ECONOMIST: Better than arms, the West must urgently give Ukraine as much aid as it needs to build a state http://econ.st/1J5eM1o

LINKEDIN: Scientific-Knowledge Doublings and Seven Canonical Milestones! https://lnkd.in/enFxDUb

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: New Particles Found at Large Hadron Collider. Two new “baryons” made of three quarks each are an exotic twist on normal protons and neutrons https://lnkd.in/ewyx88d

ABSOLUTE END.

Authored By Copyright Mr. Andres Agostini

White Swan Book Author (Source of this Article)

http://www.LINKEDIN.com/in/andresagostini

http://www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

By — Singularity Hub
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Last week, a man crash landed his drone on the White House lawn. Evidently, the individual, a member of a US intelligence agency, had been drinking and was showing off his drone to a friend when he lost control of the craft.

Any other house and lawn and no problem. Obviously, not the case here. The president called for more drone regulations. Headlines fretted White House security. And DJI, the drone’s maker, grounded drones in the Washington DC area with a GPS software patch.

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FUTURISM UPDATE (February 12, 2015) — Mr. Andres Agostini, Amazon, LinkedIn

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LINKEDIN: The Future of Scientific Knowledge Doubling, Today! https://lnkd.in/eEYn9dR

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Our Fear of Artificial Intelligence. A true AI might ruin the world—but that assumes it’s possible at all. https://lnkd.in/eHq-w_7

TRIBUNE-COM: ‘Pakistan Foresight Initiative’ launched https://lnkd.in/e2zui_e

BLOOMBERG: The Return of Artificial Intelligence. Google, Facebook, Amazon spur rebirth of industry after decades of little corporate attention https://lnkd.in/ei3yxam

POPULAR SCIENCE: Right Now, You’re Breathing A Potentially Dangerous Substance. Air: It’s one of the world’s most important, least understood, and possibly life-saving substances https://lnkd.in/enY-esy

PHYS-ORG: A collaborative of researchers from several U.S. universities has published a new paper that explains the major contradictions presented by the prevailing cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model, and proposes approaches for reconciling cosmological observations with the CDM model’s predictions. The paper, titled “Cold dark matter: Controversies on small scales,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December. https://lnkd.in/eyGzxCb

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Don’t Block the Sun to Cope with Global Warming https://lnkd.in/e6jkNir

PHYS-ORG: Britain starts public trial of driverless cars https://lnkd.in/efGgtsC

PHYS-ORG: Europe said it had launched a prototype space plane Wednesday in a strategy to join an elite club able to both launch a spacecraft and return it safely to Earth. https://lnkd.in/euewPkr

PHYS-ORG: Novel high-power microwave generator. High-power microwaves are frequently used in civil applications, such as radar and communication systems, heating and current drive of plasmas in fusion devices, and acceleration in high-energy linear colliders. They can also be used for military purpose in directed-energy weapons or missile guidance systems. https://lnkd.in/ehv-qYB

LINKEDIN: The Future of Biotechnology and The Future of Bravado Futures, Now! https://lnkd.in/ebmBDMW

Deloitte Review: The creation of products and services derived from crowd-based insights is the foundation of the “billion-to-one” experience. Taking your characteristics and behavior and contextualizing them with data from many thousands of other individuals allows designers to deliver products and services that are, or at least feel, unique. https://lnkd.in/eD4m_nv

NATURE-COM: Hubble successor will struggle to hunt alien life. Exoplanet researchers will vie with astrophysicists for access to James Webb Space Telescope, which is not optimized for studying Earth-like worlds. https://lnkd.in/emnUvTZ

NEWSWEEK: Off-World 3-D Printing Is How Humans Will Colonize Space https://lnkd.in/esuazmG

LINKEDIN: Homer Simpson on Rocket Science and Bart Simpson on Hi-Tech https://lnkd.in/e2ArRek

FOREIGN POLICY: Why Arming Kiev Is a Really, Really Bad Idea http://ow.ly/ITBF4

NATURE-COM: Brittle intermetallic compound makes ultrastrong low-density steel with large ductility https://lnkd.in/ey9Cdxf

FINANCIAL TIMES: Greek bailout talks with Europe break down http://on.ft.com/1FAh8zY

LINKEDIN: The Personal Cosmology of Southern Europe and Eastern Europe! https://lnkd.in/e5kTZhk

FINANCIAL TIMES: Australia jobs market worse than expected in January http://on.ft.com/1FAjxuk

THE ECONOMIST: War against Islamic State needs not just guns and planes but the waging of a battle of ideas http://econ.st/1DFms5T

THE ECONOMIST: Several studies suggest that when immigrants arrive, crime goes down, schools improve and shops open up http://econ.trib.al/WzCB2Zd

STRATFOR: Can Greece implement the strategy Argentina used to save its struggling economy? http://social.stratfor.com/zSS

THE ECONOMIST: After a while, like any feel-good drug, debt becomes addictive http://econ.trib.al/69kbYX9

FORTUNE MAGAZINE: Tesla hits a speed bump as sales and big spending disappoints http://for.tn/1zNbkCl

THE ECONOMIST: If freeing crude exports makes America richer, its allies stronger and the world safer, what stands in the way? http://econ.trib.al/hOf0cxH

FINANCIAL TIMES: Private banks must be more than laundries http://on.ft.com/1FzE0zr

THE ECONOMIST: In recent weeks US airlines have been the victims of a dramatic spike in social-media bomb threats http://econ.st/1D2iL9M

MONEY-COM: Apple and Tesla are battling for this critically important resource http://money.us/1ITEOod

REUTERS: SpaceX rocket blasts off to put weather satellite into deep space http://reut.rs/1IWMaY2

REUTERS: Apple deal, tax change could spark corporate solar stampede http://reut.rs/1FAjkaJ

GIZMODO: Saudi Arabia is building a 600-mile wall along the Iraq border. http://gizmo.do/APTIiM9

FINANCIAL TIMES: Opinion: Differences that divide union in Europe http://on.ft.com/1Fze2fn

THE ECONOMIST: If freeing crude exports makes America richer, its allies stronger and the world safer, what stands in the way? http://econ.trib.al/hOf0cxH

THE ECONOMIST: You, and me, and baby makes three. So who’s this other lady? http://econ.st/1zC76gX

FORBES: Datto deals in the coma-inducing — but profitable — business of information recovery: http://onforb.es/1Chlybt

THE MOSCOW TIMES: Analysts: A Simple Cease-Fire Won’t Bring Lasting Peace to Ukraine https://lnkd.in/eF2QdB3

SCIENTIFIC AMERICA: Nicaragua [through China] Constructs Enormous Canal, Blind to its Environmental Cost https://lnkd.in/eE_fh8p

INC-COM: Robots Are Replacing Us Faster Than We Expected. As robots learn to react to the unexpected, the need for human workers continues to diminish. https://lnkd.in/eptUZMV

Harvard B-school opens the flood gates with online courses http://fortune.com/2015/02/10/harvard-business-school-expects-3000-online-students-this-summer/?utm_content=buffer67267&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

ABSOLUTE END.

Authored By Copyright Mr. Andres Agostini

White Swan Book Author (Source of this Article)

http://www.LINKEDIN.com/in/andresagostini

http://www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

Leo Mirani — Quartz

In recent years, the banking and finance industries have not done a lot to earn the trust of consumers in the West. But in poor countries, basic financial services can be transformative.

Even in today’s wired world, many people still stash cash under the mattress, where inflation erodes it away. When they want to send money, they have to find a way to physically transport it. Loans are doled out in bundles or envelopes from moneylenders, at exorbitant rates. Emergencies or unforeseen circumstances can drive a family into penury.
The financial services these people need may come via mobile banking, as Bill and Melinda Gates wrote recently in their annual letter. Basic banking services—from simple payments and transfers to insurance, savings, and loans—are now possible on the simplest of mobile phones, as Quartz has reported.
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By — Newsweek
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The impact that 3-D printing is having on our world is impossible to ignore. It’s not new technology, but its 30-year history has been characterized by deceptively slow growth —until now. 3-D printing has recently emerged as a force poised to disrupt a significant portion of the $10 trillion global manufacturing industry.

Already, the printing of standard consumer products—bowls, plates, smartphone cases, bottle openers, jewelry and purses (made from mesh)—has gone from a hobby to a nascent industry. Dozens of websites now sell goods made with 3-D printers, and retailers are starting to get in on the action.

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by — Bloomberg Business
The artificial-intelligence industry, a field that conjures up images of humanoid robots and self-aware computer systems, is making a comeback at Silicon Valley companies like Scaled Inference Inc.
Inside a sparsely decorated office at the eight-month-old startup, founder Olcan Sercinoglu is developing an AI system that can help predict events, such as what website you’ll read next. While that’s far from the kind of AI found in science-fiction movies, there’s plenty of interest in this new generation of AI tools, which can help with everything from recognizing speech patterns to sorting through thousands of photos.“There was interest to invest from almost all of the investors that I spoke to,” said Sercinoglu, who raised $13.6 million in funding for his venture in just five months last year after spending 13 years on-and-off at Google Inc. working on AI projects. “Many AI companies have raised significant money without any product plans.”Read more

Georgina Prodhan, Reuters — Business Insiders
china robot
China will have more robots operating in its production plants by 2017 than any other country as it cranks up automation of its car and electronics factories, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said on Thursday.

Already the biggest market in the $9.5 billion (6 billion pound) global robot trade — or $29 billion including associated software, peripherals and systems engineering — China lags far behind its more industrialized peers in terms of robot density.

China has just 30 robots per 10,000 workers employed in manufacturing industries, compared with 437 in South Korea, 323 in Japan, 282 in Germany and 152 in the United States.

But a race by carmakers to build plants in China along with wage inflation that has eroded the competitiveness of Chinese labor will push the operational stock of industrial robots to more than double to 428,000 by 2017, the IFR estimates. Read more

Kurzweil AI
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At the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) this month, MIT computer scientists will present smart algorithms that function as “a better Siri,” optimizing planning for lower risk, such as scheduling flights or bus routes.

They offer this example:

Imagine that you could tell your phone that you want to drive from your house in Boston to a hotel in upstate New York, that you want to stop for lunch at an Applebee’s at about 12:30, and that you don’t want the trip to take more than four hours.

Then imagine that your phone tells you that you have only a 66 percent chance of meeting those criteria — but that if you can wait until 1:00 for lunch, or if you’re willing to eat at TGI Friday’s instead, it can get that probability up to 99 percent.
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By — Wired
carhack-ft
I spent last weekend elbow-deep in engine grease, hands tangled in the steel guts of my wife’s Mazda 3. It’s a good little car, but lately its bellyachings have sent me out to the driveway to tinker under the hood.

I regularly hurl invectives at the internal combustion engine—but the truth is, I live for this kind of stuff. I come away from each bout caked in engine crud and sated by the sound of a purring engine. For me, tinkering and repairing are primal human instincts: part of the drive to explore the materials at hand, to make them better, and to make them whole again.

Cars, especially, have a profound legacy of tinkering. Hobbyists have always modded them, rearranged their guts, and reframed their exteriors. Which is why it’s mind-boggling to me that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) just had to ask permission from the Copyright Office for tinkerers to modify and repair their own cars.
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