Engineering
We all mark days with clocks and calendars, but perhaps no timepiece is more immediate than a mirror. The changes we notice over the years vividly illustrate science's "arrow of time"—the likely progression from order to ...
Mar 14, 2019
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8
Robotics
A novel system developed at MIT uses RFID tags to help robots home in on moving objects with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The system could enable greater collaboration and precision by robots working on packaging and ...
Feb 19, 2019
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24
Engineering
Researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina and Arizona State University have developed an intelligent system for "tuning" powered prosthetic knees, allowing patients to walk comfortably ...
Jan 17, 2019
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40
Computer Sciences
Artificial intelligence is already a part of everyday life. It helps us answer questions like "Is this email spam?" It identifies friends in online photographs, selects news stories based on our politics and helps us deposit ...
Jan 3, 2019
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37
Computer Sciences
UCLA and Stanford University engineers have demonstrated a computer system that can discover and identify the real-world objects it "sees" based on the same method of visual learning that humans use.
Dec 18, 2018
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606
Computer Sciences
Researchers at Fukuoka University, in Japan, have recently proposed a design methodology for configurable approximate arithmetic circuits. As part of their study, published on ResearchGate, they applied their method to a ...
Other
Nostalgia and reflection rule as emotional tugs and pulls as any year draws to its close and in 2018 there is a lot being said about Doug Engelbart.
Computer Sciences
Computer vision algorithms have come a long way in the past decade. They've been shown to be as good or better than people at tasks like categorizing dog or cat breeds, and they have the remarkable ability to identify specific ...
Jul 30, 2018
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42
Computer Sciences
You hear the buzzwords everywhere—machine learning, artificial intelligence—revolutionary new approaches to transform the way we interact with products, services, and information, from prescribing drugs to advertising ...
May 17, 2018
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49
Hi Tech & Innovation
A pair of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University has developed a way to make ordinary paper touch sensitive. Yang Zhang and Chris Harrison have written a paper describing their technique and have posted it on their website. ...
A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions.
Although mechanical examples of computers have existed through much of recorded human history, the first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century (1940–1945). These were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers (PCs). Modern computers based on integrated circuits are millions to billions of times more capable than the early machines, and occupy a fraction of the space. Simple computers are small enough to fit into a wristwatch, and can be powered by a watch battery. Personal computers in their various forms are icons of the Information Age and are what most people think of as "computers". The embedded computers found in many devices from MP3 players to fighter aircraft and from toys to industrial robots are however the most numerous.
The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile, distinguishing them from calculators. The Church–Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore computers ranging from a mobile phone to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks, given enough time and storage capacity.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
