Thomas Cook lets you experience your holiday in virtual reality before you buy
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Virtual reality holidays come to the high street. Virtual reality content is being trialled for the first time by Thomas Cook at a new concept store at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Customers will be able to ‘enter’ a virtual world where they...
Stephen Hawking says creating AI is the biggest event of our civilisation
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence can do great good, or great evil. Speaking at the launch of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), a new artificial intelligence (AI) think tank based in Cambridge, that aims to help shape how AI is developed, used and...
Scientists are creating a detailed map of all 35 trillion cells in the human body
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The Human Cell Atlas will exponentially accelerate our understanding of disease and “the Human Condition.” Last week in at a meeting in London, convened by the Broad Institute of MIT, Harvard University, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Wellcome Trust, a group of international scientists...
US Government unveils CAUSE, a program to predict cyber attacks before they happen
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The security industry faces a paradigm shift as the US Government moves to predict cyber attacks before they happen. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the sister organisation to DARPA, the Pentagons bleeding edge military research and development organisation, which invests in high-risk, high-payoff...
Google’s DeepMind team have created a human like memory for their AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Memory fills the gaps in information that even todays best AI algorithms can’t. Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab does more than just develop computer programs capable of beating the world’s best human players in the ancient game of Go. The DeepMind unit has also been working...
Scientists may have identified the genes responsible for ageing
Researchers have discovered a link between a protein and aging A protein found within the powerhouse of a cell could be the key to holding back the march of time, research by scientists at The University of Nottingham has shown and the discovery could offer a new target for drugs that...
Futurist keynote, London: The Future of Blockchain, Marketforce Blockchain Summit
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Blockchain is turning into a force of nature that’s changing the world and as the hype around the technology reaches fever pitch everyone wants in. It’s always a great privilege to be invited to take part in Marketforce’s wonderful events and the Blockchain Summit...
Day of reckoning as UK scientists eliminate HIV from “Patient X”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five UK universities. Around the world there are thousands of researchers and scientists trying to find a cure...
Google and UK NHS team up to use AI to improve cancer treatment
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Machine learning could cut the time it takes to plan a patient’s radiotherapy treatment by hours. Working out how to zap a tumour with radiation is a laborious process for physicians and Google’s machine learning division, DeepMind, thinks AI can help ease the burden. When...
From line to plate, Tuna gets its own blockchain
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Tuna becomes the world’s first fish to get its own blockchain to track it’s provenance from net to plate. Most people have heard of bitcoin but fewer people are familiar with blockchain, the revolutionary technology that underpins it. And now this technology, which ostensibly began life in the...
World first as virtual reality helps legally blind man see for the first time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF An unlikely union – VR and a blind man – makes history. A solitary plinth stands in the center of a dark room. It is surrounded by glowing computer screens of various sizes. Each of these screens is a portal to a different experience, a different...
Researchers build a wirelessly powered drone that can fly forever
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Now drones never need to “sleep” again. Quadcopter drones are great for all kind of things from filming to delivering small, sometimes dubious, packages but every drone, irrespective of whether it’s a hobbyists DJI drone or a US military MQ-9 Reaper, is limited by...
London boroughs new face of customer services is a bot
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The London borough of Enfield has enlisted artificial intelligence Amelia to take on customer service tasks for its residents starting late this year. Developed by IPSoft, Amelia is a cognitive agent – that’s bot to you, I and most people, capable of automating certain...
New medical breakthrough restarts hearts with light
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Researchers have jump started hearts with light paving the way to get rid of electrical defibrillators for good. Current treatments for arrhythmia, a dangerous irregular heartbeat, involve administering an intense burst of electricity from a defibrillator in times of cardiac arrest, but these pulses...
NASA MinION ushers in a new era of space healthcare
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF NASA successfully sequences DNA in space, ushering in better healthcare for astronauts and a new era in space biology. For the first time ever, DNA was successfully sequenced in microgravity as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment performed by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins this weekend...
Futurist keynote, London: Building Disruptive Organisations, Clearvision BBQ in the Clouds
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The world is going “Digital” and the majority of companies in today’s world are either already becoming software companies, or thinking about it, and DevOps is an increasingly important tool in today’s corporate arsenal. Firstly, a big thank you to George the event organiser...
Nerve zapping dust sized electrical implants could be the future of medicine
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Hundreds of millions of people suffer every day from chronic disease, pain and illness but now a new class of medicine is on the horizon Imagine a world where we can treat diabetes, chronic pain and autoimmune disorders with a small zap of electricity delivered by...
Researchers find evidence that ancestors memories are passed down in DNA
Researchers have shown for the first time that our ancestors memories can be passed down in DNA
DoNotPay’s famous robo-lawyer helps people avoid homelessness
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The power of Bots is only just starting to be realised and it’s looking increasingly likely that the first industry they’ll disrupt is the legal profession. The idea started with a desperate email from a woman in a UK hospital. She was scared of being discharged at...
Team GB cyclists get ready to unveil their seven percent advantage at Rio 2016
Olympic teams used to look for marginal gains but now new technology gains appear to be anything but marginal Update Team GB win gold and set new World Record of 3:50:570, a time that “shocked the world of cycling” Great Britain’s cyclists are pursuing Olympic gold in Rio...
