Technology

A small cylinder called Le Grand K has defined the kilogram for more than a hundred years.

Le Grand K was forged in 1879 and is held in a locked vault outside Paris—revered and kept under lock and key because its mass, a little over 2 pounds, is the official definition of the kilogram.

If Le Grand K gets heavier or lighter—or absorbs atoms of something from the air—the definition of the kilogram literally changes.

Bill Phillips, a Nobel laureate from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, told the assembled delegates at the international General Conference on Weights and Measures that basing the kilogram's official definition on a hunk of metal held in a vault was "a situation that is clearly intolerable." His colleagues clearly agreed, as no country voted to keep the old definition. 

The internet today isn’t what Tim Berners-Lee pictured when he invented the World Wide Web nearly three decades ago.

Berners-Lee says the web is “at a tipping point” as it faces threats like market concentration, data breaches, user frustration with ads and privacy, hate speech and so-called “fake news.”

“If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have said humanity is going to do a good job with this,” he said. “If we connect all these people together, they are such wonderful people they will get along. I was wrong.”

Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web Foundation has unveiled a “Contract for the Web” outlining principles to protect the internet as a basic right for everyone. One key pillar of this initiative is that companies respect consumers’ privacy and personal data.

There are few technologies being more rapidly adopted and expanded in 2018 than voice A.I. In just a few years, the use of voice systems has evolved from simple voice commands to entire ecosystems of applications and interactions.

We’ve only begun to predict the ways voice A.I. will influence interactions between humans and technology in the decades to come. For instance, consumer behavior may shift to verbally purchasing items through smart speakers as they realize they’re running low, rather than creating a shopping list and then purchasing them all at once later. One possibility in the health care space is self-directed physical and occupational therapy done through A.I. voice assistants.

In a survey by Edison Research and NPR, 39% of respondents indicated they're very interested in having smart speaker technology in their televisions and 24% want it in their cars—two environments that are not conducive to using smartphones.

Japan landed two unmanned rovers on a 1-kilometer-wide asteroid named Ryugu in late September, 2018. It was the first time robot rovers have successfully landed on an asteroid surface.

"I felt awed by what we had achieved in Japan. This is just a real charm of deep space exploration," Takashi Kubota, a spokesman for the space agency, told CNN. The two rovers together are called MINERVA-II1 and came from the spacecraft Hayabusa2.

The rovers hop and float across the asteroid—thanks to its low gravity—to capture information including photos and the asteroid's temperature. Since landing, the rovers have sent back photos and data. This asteroid is believed to be a particularly early one, with a wealth of water and organic material that will shed light on the "Building blocks of Earth."

Steep tariffs, challenging geography and government subsidies come to mind when we think about the barriers to international trade. But there are lots of different languages in the world, and translation problems can slow things down, too.

Evidence from a new translation technology powered by artificial intelligence might be able to help clear those hurdles. In 2014, eBay mediated over $14 billion of international trade in more than 200 countries. That same year, the company introduced eBay Machine Translation, or eMT, an in-house machine learning system that translates between languages when users search or view listings on its website.

The system was about 7 percent more accurate than the previous translation service the company was using, and that led to a 17 to 20 percent increase in exports through the platform to Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.

Until now, generating nuclear power has required massive facilities surrounded by acres of buildings and infrastructure. The nuclear industry is trying to change that picture—by going small. Efforts to build the nation’s first "advanced small modular reactor" (SMR) in Idaho, U.S.A., are on track for it to become operational by the mid-2020s.

Proponents of these advanced SMR say they will be easier to build and more flexible in terms of where they can be located than the larger kind. The word "modular" refers to how they will be built in factory-like settings, ready for hauling either fully assembled or in easily connected parts by truck, rail or sea.

Bernice Belcher needed an artificial aortic valve replacement. Her surgeons decided to use a new 3D modeling technique.

Using CT scans that are manipulated via special software, a team of engineers creates a model fashioned from flexible materials that re-create the texture of the aorta and its surrounding structures. Then the model is loaded into a heart simulator: a box filled with pumps and bloodlike fluid.

The engineers watch as simulated blood flows through the printed heart, and they monitor blood flow, pressure and other effects using lasers and high-speed cameras. Next, they insert the replacement valves and see what changes. Computer models predict how blood flow would respond to each patient’s unique anatomy. The process helps doctors decide how to approach the surgery and which valve to use.

Scientists have recently discovered two exoplanets, Kepler-62f and Kepler 186f, which are located within the habitable zones of their respective stars, and the best part is that the planets probably have stable climates and regular seasons. The astronomers also believe that one of them is similar in size to our home planet. 

Researchers from the Georgia Tech and Harvard University found out that both Kepler-186f and Kepler-62f seem to be steadily tilted on their axis, just like Earth, giving them stable climates and seasons. "Our calculations show that their spin would have remained constant over tens of millions of years," said Georgia Tech's Assistant Professor Gongjie Li. According to the scientists, these exoplanets are capable of harboring life.

With the rise of A.I. and an endless sea of personal data available, some start to question, "How free are we?" Yes, it is true that A.I. will free us from many of the meaningless tasks that we are saddled with on a daily basis. However, there are serious concerns as to how our data is used for both positive and negative reasons.

We continue to see China using nearly every tool imaginable to monitor and control the lives of their citizens. Sesame Credit started just a few years ago but is now becoming mainstream in China. For those of you who are not familiar with the system, it is one where citizens are graded by their actions, things they buy, and other factors such as support of their government's policies. If you have a low credit score, you can be prevented from buying a house, sending your kids to private school, and other actions that restrict your freedom.