LawnBott: a Roomba for your backyard?

csmonitor.com LawnBott: a Roomba for your backyard?: "Don't like to mow during the dog days? The electric LawnBott – a device from Paradise Robotics that looks like the child of R2D2 and a tiny Ferrari – can roam a yard solo, its mulching blades whirring quietly, then dock and recharge until its timer awakens it."

Computers to Reassemble Shredded East German Secret Police Files

FOXNews.com Computers to Reassemble Shredded East German Secret Police Files: "German researchers said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms."

"Some 16,250 sacks containing pieces of 45 million shredded documents were found and confiscated after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Reconstruction work began 12 years ago but 24 people have been able to reassemble the contents of only 323 sacks."

"Using algorithms developed 15 years ago to help decipher barely legible lists of Nazi concentration camp victims, each individual strip of the shredded Stasi files will be scanned on both sides.

"The data then will be fed into the computer for interpretation using color recognition; texture analysis; shape and pattern recognition; machine and handwriting analysis and the recognition of forged official stamps..."

Vernor Vinge explored a similar idea in his novel Rainbow's End -- see excerpt at technovelgy.

New devices promise touchy-feely computing

New Scientist Tech New devices promise touchy-feely computing: "Is it possible to 'feel' an object while being in another location? This is a question addressed by several technologies on show at the SIGGRAPH 2007 computer conference in San Diego, California, US, earlier this month. Haptic technology, which exploits the sense of touch, could have a range of applications, researchers say, from telesurgery and robotic remote control to more immersive computer games."

Scientists Train Nano-'Building Blocks' to Self Assemble

Medgadget Scientists Train Nano-'Building Blocks' to Self Assemble: "Researchers from the University of Delaware and Washington University in St. Louis have figured out how to train synthetic polymer molecules to behave--to literally 'self-assemble' --and form into long, multicompartment cylinders 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, with potential uses in radiology, signal communication and the delivery of therapeutic drugs in the human body."

Software Identifies Users By Typing Style

ScienceDaily Hey ... You're Not My User! Software Identifies Computer Users By Typing Style: "Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed software that is able to identify computer users with high accuracy by their individual, distinct typing styles. This 'behaviometric' technology may one day be part of security systems to prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to computers and sensitive data."

Falling Prey To Machines?

ScienceDaily Falling Prey To Machines?: "It's coming, but when? From Garry Kasparov to Michael Crichton, both fact and fiction are converging on a showdown between man and machine. But what does a leading artificial intelligence expert--the world's first computer science PhD--think about the future of machine intelligence? Will computers ever gain consciousness and take over the world?"

"Comparisons between the brain and electronic hardware are also difficult to draw. For example, the issue of 'fanout' demonstrates the complexity of the brain over even today's most sophisticated computers. Fanout refers to the number of connections an element in a network can have to another element of a network. Today's most complicated computers have a fanout factor of about 10. The human brain, however, has a fanout of 10,000.

'We don't have the faintest idea of what machines with that kind of fanout would be like, so inference from the capabilities of present machines to such machines is feeble at best,' notes Holland. 'As Nobel Laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann says, three orders of magnitude is a new science.'"

Miniature Implanted Devices Could Treat Epilepsy, Glaucoma

ScienceDaily Miniature Implanted Devices Could Treat Epilepsy, Glaucoma: "Purdue University researchers have developed new miniature devices designed to be implanted in the brain to predict and prevent epileptic seizures and a nanotech sensor for implantation in the eye to treat glaucoma."

"The transmitter consumes 8.8 milliwatts, or about one-third as much power as other implantable transmitters while transmitting 10 times more data. Another key advantage is that the transmitter has the capacity to collect data specifically related to epileptic seizures from 1,000 channels, or locations in the brain"

Also reported on MedGadget