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    Intel, Google, UC Berkeley AI team Trains Robot to do sutures

    June 18, 2020, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    The next time you go to a hospital for surgery, the surgeon’s assistant may be a robot.

    In a collaboration between Google Brain, Intel Corporation and the University of California, Berkeley, researchers have ‘trained’ robots to mimic surgical procedures through the use of instructional videos.

    UC Berkeley professors have previously used YouTube videos as a guide for robots to learn various motions such as jumping or dancing, while Google has trained robots to understand depth and motion. The team applied that knowledge to their latest project, Motion2Vec, in which videos of actual surgical procedures are used for instruction...

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    Astronomers detect Regular Rhythm of Radio Waves, with origins unknown

    June 18, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    CHIME, pictured here, consists of four large antennas, each about the size and shape of a snowboarding half-pipe, and is designed with no moving parts. Rather than swiveling to focus on different parts of the sky, CHIME stares fixedly at the entire sky, looking for fast radio burst sources across the universe.
    Image: CHIME Collaboration

    Signal from 500 million light years away is the first periodic pattern of radio bursts detected. A team of astronomers, including researchers at MIT, has picked up on a curious, repeating rhythm of fast radio bursts emanating from an unknown source outside our galaxy, 500 million light years away.

    Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are short, intense flashes of radio waves that are thought to be the product of small, distant, extremely dense objects, though exac...

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    ‘Relaxed’ T Cells Critical to Immune Response

    June 17, 2020, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Rice University scientists’ simple model of T cell activation of the immune response shows the T cell binding, via a receptor (TCR) to an antigen-presenting cell (APC). If an invader is identified as such, the response is activated, but only if the “relaxation” time of the binding is long enough. Illustration by Hamid Teimouri

    Like finding that needle in the haystack every time, your T cells manage what seems like an improbable task: Quickly finding a few invaders among the many imposters in your body to trigger its immune response.

    T cells have to react fast and do so nearly perfectly to protect people from diseases. But first, they need a little “me” time.

    Rice University researchers suggest that has to do with how T cells “relax” in the process of binding to ligands—shor...

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    Turning Faces into Thermostats: Autonomous HVAC system could provide more Comfort with Less Energy

    June 17, 2020, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

    As lockdown requirements ease, COVID-19 is changing the way we use indoor spaces. That presents challenges for those who manage those spaces, from homes to offices and factories.

    Not least among these challenges is heating, ventilation and cooling (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning—HVAC), which is the largest consumer of energy in American homes and commercial buildings. There’s a need for smarter, more flexible climate control that keeps us comfortable without heating and cooling entire empty buildings.

    Now, a group of researchers at the University of Michigan has developed a solution that could provide more efficient, more personalized comfort, completely doing away with the wall-mounted thermostats we’re accustomed to...

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