WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to quickly and easily tag foods and other products with sensors and other electronics that can be safely eaten could improve food safety and security.   James Tour believes anything can be turned into the wonder material, Graphene, a material so versatile it...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The classical view of an intelligent robot is one whose intelligence comes from a centralised location, such as a brain, or in their case, a centralised computing platform, but there’s no reason why this has to be the case.   The classical view of a...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI continues to be weaponised by military powers, getting it to explain its decision making, and actions, will be crucial, and it’s not going to be an easy task to achieve.   Intelligence agents and military operatives may come to rely heavily on Machine...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There is a race on to increase the speed of boring tunnels by at least ten fold, and if it can be achieved it will change the economics of energy generation and transportation.   Google announced recently, quietly, very quietly, that it’s carrying out research...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Epileptic seizures are debilitating, but they can also be fatal, this latest breakthrough pre-warns people before they have them.   Embrace is a smartwatch of a different kind. It’s able to tell time, analyse sleep patterns, and, more crucially, it’s also able to tell if you’re about...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI becomes increasingly adept at helping unlock the secrets of the brain it’s also becoming more adept at helping decode and visualise complex thoughts onto TV’s and other devices.   The capabilities and accuracy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) “mind reading” systems, as they are increasing...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Until now it has been hard, almost impossible, to identify how Cancer spreads around the body, and that’s made metastasising cancers harder to treat.   Following on from a recent announcement from another team that they’ve managed to use a simple blood test to detect...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the number of superbugs and anti-biotic resistant bugs increase, we need to find new novel ways of fighting them.   A research team composed of scientists from the A*Star Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, and IBM, have produced a new macromolecule that can target...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The ability to create semi-synthetic cells that have both organic and inorganic properties opens up a whole world of new use cases that span everything from biotech to new forms of manufacturing.   The more we study natural biological cells, the more we learn about...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI and blockchain are two incredibly powerful technologies, but for different reasons, however, when they’re combined their significance, and impact, becomes even greater.   The combination of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) “could bring significant improvements to a healthcare sector plagued by interoperability problems and...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Trying to demonstrate that new drugs don’t have any negative impacts on a patients heart is difficult, but this new technology provides research organisations with a fast, cheap way to test their new drugs without the risks.   Beating rhythmically and suspended in a jar,...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As brain machine interfaces become more capable, and as their use cases and adoption broaden, experts are worried that regulators will leave it to late to protect people from bad actors and misuse.   Ever since Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk announced his plans...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We are entering a new era of warfare, full of AI fuelled semi-autonomous weapons, hypersonic missiles and lasers.   The US military is increasingly ramping up its interest in, and spending on, new laser weapons, that will be positioned at forward operating bases, and on...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Millions of people around the world have eye problems, whether they’re severe, or slight, but now a new nanoparticle solution looks like it could help users bin eye glasses for good.   Today there are a number of ways, from using bionic eyes, gene editing...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sometimes you need crazy ideas because one day those crazy ideas change the world, in this case scientists think they can use a new approach to stop hurricanes from forming and wreaking havoc.   Recently I wrote an article about a new Artificial Intelligence (AI)...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to use lasers to create sound opens up a weird array of new use cases, from crowd control to just plain being able to freak people out…   Within three years, the US Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons lab hopes to have a direct energy...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Imagine not being able to program or code, but still being able to write a description or a script and have an AI create an HD image or video of it for you, this is the technology that’s now arriving.   In 2016 an Artificial...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI is, arguably, as transformational technology as the internet, and China wants to play its role in helping shape and lead the global standards for the technology.   It turns out that China isn’t just investing heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI), it’s also aiming to set...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Photonic computers will boost the speed of modern day computing by at least twenty fold, but while converting data into light is easy, getting it back again has proved a challenge.   So far in the past few years we’ve turned light into a superfluid...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The more centralised the mining of an individual cryptocurrency becomes, especially if it leverages new, more powerful technology, the greater the impact on a cryptocurrencies value.   Rumors of a new ASIC mining  rig from Bitmain have driven Ethereum prices well below their one week high of...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to detect fatal heart conditions before they kill you is a good thing… enough said.   The most common type of Arrhythmia, a form of atrial fibrillation, is an irregular beating of the heart that can lead to stroke, blood clots, or heart...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When patients loose part of a bone, for example, to Cancer, often there is no way to get the bones to grow or fuse together again resulting in amputation, this breakthrough will prevent that.   Medical history was made at Emek Medical Center in Afula...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The world of finance is being automated faster than almost any other industry and JPMorgan is leading the charge.   At JPMorgan Chase a learning machine is parsing financial deals that once kept legal teams busy for thousands of hours. The program, called COIN, for...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As computers continue to shrink it allows organisations to dream up new ways of using them, and in IBM’s case they want to use their new tech to help cryptographically secure the Internet of Things.   Each year IBM showcases “5 in 5” technologies coming...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to fully automate the American energy grid could reduce regulatory burden, improve resilience and reliability, and make it more efficient.   The US Department of Energy, whose supercomputers are already building their own AI’s, has announced it will explore a first of a...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In 2050 there will be 10 billion people on the planet who need energy, and while renewable energy will help reduce energy poverty some think solar energy beamed from space, or satellites, could also help.   Infalling solar radiation constantly illuminates the Moon’s surface with...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As we produce more systems that rely on machine vision to do their jobs or keep people safe, systems that can’t see the world accurately pose both a danger and a risk.   Machine Vision has come a long way since Imagenet, a large repository of labelled...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Bots are evolving and increasingly it’s going to get more difficult to tell bots from real people, whether they’re just text bots or, in this case, life like looking avatars.   New Zealand based company Soul Machines, the company behind a sophisticated high definition digital...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Technology is a tool, it’s down to governments and individuals how they use and deploy it, and as such it can be used to do great good, or great harm.   In another nod to Black Mirror, and to show it isn’t just a sci-fi...

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Millions of people around the world don’t have regular access to clean drinking water, and this breakthrough could help them.   Every year millions of people around the world die from diseases they’ve contracted from drinking unclean water but now researchers in Australia have developed...