 | IT building blocks for the ordinary person Nov 21st 2012, 12:57 Would you like to create your own tourist guide? Or put together telecom services that give you better control of the everyday functions on your phone? We seem to be drowning in 'intelligent things' and IT services. In our smart home, we can use various applications to control the front door, TV, washing machine, vacuum, heating and blinds. Other apps enable us to find out what time the bus is leaving, or book a table at a restaurant. On the medical side, there are sensors that can monitor your heart rate, intelligent pill boxes that remember when you should take your medicine, and applications to notify relatives if an elderly person doesn't get out of bed at their normal time. But what if you go on holiday, and want to be able to water the plants in your garden, or turn the heating on or off in a certain room when the weather changes? | | Robots using tools: Researchers aim to create 'MacGyver' robot Oct 9th 2012, 14:13 Robots are increasingly being used in place of humans to explore hazardous and difficult-to-access environments, but they aren't yet able to interact with their environments as well as humans. If today's most sophisticated robot was trapped in a burning room by a jammed door, it would probably not know how to locate and use objects in the room to climb over any debris, pry open the door, and escape the building. A research team hopes to change that by giving robots the ability to use objects in their environments to accomplish high-level tasks. | | Education: Get with the computer program Oct 5th 2012, 17:46 From email to Twitter, blogs to word processors, computer programs provide countless communications opportunities. While social applications have dominated the development of the participatory web for users and programmers alike, this era of Web 2.0 is applicable to more than just networking opportunities: it impacts education. | | Artificially intelligent game bots pass the Turing test on Turing's centenary Sep 26th 2012, 17:32 An artificially intelligent virtual gamer has won the BotPrize by convincing a panel of judges that it was more human-like than half the humans it competed against. The victory comes 100 years after the birth of mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, whose "Turing test" stands as one of the foundational definitions of what constitutes true machine intelligence. | | A Travelling Salesman Problem special case: 30-year-old problem solved Sep 13th 2012, 13:19 The science of computational complexity aims to solve the TSP -- the Travelling Salesman Problem -- when the time required to find an optimal solution is vital for practical solutions to modern-day problems such as air traffic control and delivery of fresh food. Researchers have now solved a 30-year-old TSP special case problem. | | Popularity versus similarity: A balance that predicts network growth Sep 13th 2012, 13:19 Do you know who Michael Jackson or George Washington was? You most likely do: they are what we call "household names" because these individuals were so ubiquitous. But what about Giuseppe Tartini or John Bachar? That's much less likely, unless you are a fan of Italian baroque music or free solo climbing. In that case, you would have heard of Bachar just as likely as Washington. The latter was popular, while the former was not as popular but had interests similar to yours. A new paper explores the concept of popularity versus similarity, and if one more than the other fuels the growth of a variety of networks, whether it is the Internet, a social network of trust between people, or a biological network. | | Web-TV: A perfect match? Sep 3rd 2012, 18:31 Do you surf the web in front of the TV, or tweet what you are watching? Researchers are creating technologies that combine web, social media and TV to enhance our experience and interactions across media. | |
