The robot, known as BatiPrint3D, uses a special polymer material that should keep the building insulated effectively for a century.

It took BatiPrint3D around 18 days to complete its part of the work on the house – creating hollow walls that were subsequently filled with concrete for insulation.

“Is this the future? It’s a solution and a constructive principle that is interesting because we create the house directly on site and in addition thanks to the robot, we are able to create walls with complex shapes,” said Benoit Furet, a professor who worked on the project.

The 95 square meter (1000 square feet), five-room house will be allocated to a local family which qualifies for social housing, authorities said.

The Y-shaped home is equipped with multiple sensors that monitor air quality, humidity and temperature, as well as equipment to evaluate and analyze the thermal properties of the building.

Researchers believe this technology will enable tenants to save on energy costs.

Authorities in Nantes are planning further 3D-printed building projects, including a public reception building and a housing estate.

Reuters

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Grantham is 99 years old and lives in Templeman House, a British care home, which brought in Biscuit. Staff there say dogs – even robotic dogs – can help to elicit memories from residents and spark conversations with care providers.

“I found out today that Ron used to go fly fishing when he finished work and take the dog across the fields with him while he fished,” said Deanna Barnes, home manager at care home, told Reuters. “We didn’t know that before. So obviously the dog brings out memories that they can reflect on and tell us.”

Biscuit stands around two feet tall and looks something like a labradoodle. He’s equipped with sensors in various places on its body that allow him to react when a human interacts with it.

Simon Bird, the deputy chief executive at Care South, which owns Templeman House and several other care homes in the south of England, said Biscuit was particularly effective at reducing stress and anxiety in residents with dementia.

“When we do have residents that are getting particularly stressed or very anxious, the manager or the staff will bring Biscuit out. He’s a good distraction. He reduces stress levels,” Bird said.

“He does stimulate memory and also encourages a lot of social interaction and recollection and reminiscence.”

Though Biscuit may ultimately be nothing more than a collection of plastic, wiring and sensors wrapped in synthetic fur, residents still have an emotional reaction to him.

As resident Elsie Proctor, 94, petted Biscuit, she told the dog “You’re beautiful. Yes, you are a beautiful one, yes, that’s lovely.”

Reuters

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The J2 Pro does not have access to the 3G and 4G data networks, although it can be connected to the internet on WiFi networks.

It is also equipped with front and rear cameras and a high-resolution five-inch screen.

The model is targeted at students to avoid exam distractions caused by permanent connection to the network and elderly people who do not use the internet regularly, according to a Samsung statement.

The phone has launched at 1,99,100 won ($185) in South Korea, and with a promotional scheme for students which allows them to exchange it for a high-end model after exams finish.

Tens of thousands of students take the university exams that are usually held in November.

The exams are considered so important that South Korea streamlines public transport and deploys law enforcement agencies during the period.

IANS

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It has two experiences to enjoy and the third one is for developers to help them create their own experience.

The first two experiences are called “Talk to Books” in which users can explore a new way to interact with books, and “Semantris” where people can play word association games powered by semantic search.

In “Talk to Books” experience, users can simply type in a statement or a question and the AI will find whole sentences in books related to what they have typed.

Google Research Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil and Product Manager Rachel Bernstein said the system does not depend on keyword matching.

They trained its AI by feeding it a “billion conversation-like pairs of sentences,” so it can learn to identify what a good response looks like.

For example, if you type “Best detective in the world”, the AI responds with several paragraphs and sentences that are related to the word “detective”.

This way users can find exact lines from books which they mildly remember.

The second section Semantris offers word association games like a Tetris-like break-the-blocks experience.

The AI would display random blocks with text written on them. Users have to “break” those blocks by typing a word which can relate to any of the text written on them.

For example, if the AI displays “Football” on any block, users could write “Lionel Messi” in the space provided below the blocks.

The AI processes and matches the word with the text displayed on the blocks. Once the AI matches with the word, it “breaks” the block and some points are awarded.

According to Engadget, the development in word vector, an AI-training model that enables algorithms to learn relationships between words based on actual language usage, led to the advancement in natural language processing over the past few years.

Kurzweil and Bernstein said that these websites show how AIs’ “new capabilities can drive applications that were not possible before”.

They said other potential applications include “classification, semantic similarity, semantic clustering, whitelist applications (selecting the right response from many alternatives) and semantic search (of which Talk to Books is an example).”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been “betting big” on advances in AI and machine learning.

Earlier this year, Pichai said that AI is one of the most profound things that humanity is working on right now and compared it to basic utilities in terms of its importance.

”AI is ‘one of the most important things that humanity is working on. It’s more profound than, I don’t know, electricity or fire,” The Verge quoted Pichai as saying.

Pichai also said that AI could be used to help solve climate change issues or to cure cancer.

IANS

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The new app called “HopkinsPD”, developed by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University, helped Parkinson’s patients to objectively monitor symptoms in the home and then share data to doctors.

“A smartphone-derived severity score for Parkinson’s disease is feasible and provides an objective measure of motor symptoms inside and outside the clinic that could be valuable for clinical care and therapeutic development,” said the research team including Srihari Mohan, undergraduate student at the varsity.

Typically, patients with Parkinson’s disease are evaluated by medical specialists during three or four clinic visits annually, and patients are asked to fill out a cumbersome 24-hour “motor diary” at home to record their mobility, involuntary twisting movements, etc.

The doctor then uses this self-reported or imprecise data to guide treatment.

In the new study, published in the journal JAMA Neurology, the team collected the data with the help of “HopkinsPD” app and then using a machine learning technique, they converted it into an objective Parkinson’s disease severity score—that better reflected the overall severity of patients’ symptoms and how well they were responding to medication.

This smartphone evaluation does not rely on the subjective observations of a medical staff, and can be administered any time or day in a clinic or within the patient’s home.

The app is available both for Android as well as iOS smartphones.

IANS

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Genrobotics launched the robot in Thiruvananthapuram on an experimental basis in March.

The startup was among the participants of the two-day Huddle Kerala conclave, which concluded here Saturday as their stall at the expo drew much attention.

The Kerala Water Authority (KWA) and Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) have signed a MoU for the transfer of technology and products, including the use of robots for cleaning up sewers.

They told the media they have received an invitation to present Bandicoot in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Of the five new robots, one each will be used in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka for pilot projects, two will go to KWA, and one will be used by the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL).

The Bandicoot has four limbs and a bucket system attached to a spider web-like extension, which can go inside the manhole.

The waste at the bottom of the manhole is shovelled into the bucket system and lifted out. The robot has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules.

Apart from the state-owned Kerala Financial Corporation (KFC), Genrobotics is getting funds from venture capitalist Unicorn India Ventures for the production of the robots.

Founded in 2015, by four young engineering graduates, Genrobotics specialises in powered exoskeletons and human-controlled robotic systems and at the two-day event, they said they have got a good number of enquiries from the UAE.

IANS

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The system consists of a wearable device and an associated computing system.

The signals are fed to a Machine Learning (ML) system that has been trained to correlate particular signals with particular words.

“The motivation for this was to build an IA device—an intelligence-augmentation device,” said Arnav Kapur, graduate student at the MIT Media Lab who led the development of the new system.

“Our idea was: Could we have a computing platform that’s more internal, that melds human and machine in some ways and that feels like an internal extension of our own cognition?” he added.

Kapur is first author on the paper. Pattie Maes, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences is the senior author and he is joined by Shreyas Kapur, an undergraduate major in electrical engineering and computer science.

The device is part of a complete silent-computing system that lets the user undetectably pose and receive answers to difficult computational problems.

The idea that internal verbalisations have physical correlates has been around since the 19^th century, and it was seriously investigated in the 1950s.

One of the goals of the speed-reading movement of the 1960s was to eliminate internal verbalisation, or subvocalisation, as it’s known.

According to Kapur, the system’s performance should improve with more training data, which could be collected during its ordinary use.

“We’re in the middle of collecting data, and the results look nice,” Kapur said. “I think we’ll achieve full conversation someday.”

The researchers have described their device in a paper presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s “ACM Intelligent User Interface” conference.

IANS

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Likewise, many businesses around the world are pondering if consumers could actually chomp on their water bottles, plates and spoons once they have consumed the food packed in them.

There were reports in March of nano-plastic particles present in water bottles from well-known brands posing serious threats to consumer health. This could well be the solution to such threats, the report said.

Ooho water pouches from Skipping Rocks Lab, a UK-based sustainable packaging startup, are being made from seaweed for an esoteric post-beverage snack.

Though eating the water pouches might not be a reality at this point, they have received the thumbs up from French President Emmanuel Macron in December, as they offer a glimpse of a plastic-free future, the report said.

These containers could also help save the oceans. The pouches encase a serving of water in a thin membrane made from brown algae. They were developed in London by Pierre-Yves Paslier and Rodrigo García Gonzalez, who claim seaweed is safe to eat and regrows quickly, too.

Ooho’s edible capsule and (another UK-made product) Herald’s edible straw have both been pitched as potential alternatives to plastic, said Philip Chadwick, editor of Packaging News. “The ongoing plastics debate could mean that more edible packs will be developed.”

Besides the UK firm, Indonesia’s Evoware launched seaweed packaging in September that can wrap a burger or noodles. In New York, Loliware has come up with a cup you can eat, made from agar seaweed, and is working on an edible seaweed straw.

Herald’s edible straw is made in Barking. It is a sweet proposition, made from sugar, corn starch and jelly, and lasts 40 minutes inside a mojito before it starts to fall apart.

Peesapaty’s edible spoons can be eaten up after polishing off a bowl of daal (pulses). In Poland, there are Biotrem’s wheatbran plates you can scoff.

However, Chadwick is not sure whether consumers would be comfortable eating the packaging? “Will it taste good? Would anyone want to eat packaging that has been handled by other shoppers,”, the Guardian report wondered.

IANS

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Researchers who developed the device and published their results in the journal Nature said they hoped the new scanner would improve research and treatment for patients who can’t use traditional fixed MEG scanners, such as children with epilepsy, babies, or patients with disorders like Parkinson’s disease.

“This has the potential to revolutionize the brain imaging field, and transform the scientific and clinical questions that can be addressed with human brain imaging,” said Gareth Barnes, a professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Neuroimaging at University College London, who co-led the work.

Current MEG scanners are cumbersome and weigh as much as half a tonne, partly because the sensors they use to measure the brain’s magnetic field need to be kept very cold – at minus 269 degrees Celsius, Barnes’ team explained.

They also run into difficulties when patients are unable to stay very still – very young children or patients with movement disorders for example – since even a 5-millimeter movement can mean the images are unusable.

In the helmet scanner, the researchers overcame these problems by using quantum sensors, which are lightweight, work at room temperature and can be placed directly onto scalp – increasing the amount of signal they are able to pick up.

Matt Brookes, who worked with Barnes and built the prototype at Nottingham university, said that as well as overcoming the challenge of some patients being unable to stay still, the wearable scanner offers new possibilities in measuring peoples’ brain function during real world tasks and social interactions.

“This has significant potential for impact on our understanding of not only healthy brain function but also on a range of neurological, neurodegenerative and mental health conditions.”

Reuters

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“The significance of the work lies in the fact that we have for the first time developed a useful PET ‘radioligand’ (a radioactive bio-chemical substance) that can be applied to image the ‘GluN2B’ receptor subunit of the ‘NMDA’ receptor complex in humans,” said co-author Simon M. Ametamey from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

For the study, published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, the agent was used in live rats to investigate the dose and effectiveness of “eliprodil”—a drug that blocks the “NMDA GluN2B” receptor.

PET scans with the new “radioligand” successfully showed that the receptors are fully occupied at neuro-protective doses of “eliprodil”.

“These results mean that a new radio-pharmaceutical tool is now available for studying brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and MS, among others,” Ametamey said.

IANS

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