Daily Archives: October 28, 2019

Brush AI

These days, it seems like every brand is trying to leverage machine learning to imbue their products with special powers and, most importantly, make an extra buck in the process.

But does your next electric toothbrush really need a dose of AI? Oral-Bssays its new $220 electric toothbrush, called Oral-B GENIUS X with Artificial Intelligence, will leverage data from sensors inside the brush head and Bluetoothto deliver AI-derived brushing tips through an app. The future is now, huh?

The company claims to have learned how to brush teeth real good by deepening our understanding of consumer behavior across 60 countries.

Oral-B has created an algorithm from more than 2,000 brushing sessions to gain exclusive insights into brushing behaviors from around the world, reads an incredulous press release.

If that doesnt sound overbearing enough, its at least a little simpler than having to set up your smartphone to literally watch you brush your teeth every time, like Oral-Bs earlier attempt at leveraging smart tech from 2015.

READ MORE: This Electric Toothbrush Uses AI Because Nothing is Sacred Anymore [The Verge]

More on AI: In This Browser Game, Your Opponents Are Neural Networks

Follow this link:
This Electric Toothbrush Uses AI Because Nothing is Sacred Anymore - Futurism

Three Suns

A team of Harvard astronomers have spotted a rocky planet with three suns using data from NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and, tantalizingly, they think it could have an atmosphere.

It could give us a glimpse of the conditions on interstellar planets which, like Earth, have their own atmospheres. But unfortunately, this super-Earth is simply too hot to contain the ingredients for life.

The rocky planet is roughly 1.38 times the size of Earth and over 22 light-years away. A paper detailing the discovery was published in the Astronomical Journal back in June.

As for the chance it could feature oxygen in its atmosphere, lead researcher Jennifer Winters is not hopeful. Its not in the habitable zone of its star, she said in a statement. Its too close. Its too hot. But if its possible that theres oxygen in the atmosphere that could come from other sources than life, thats good to know.

Still, the rocky orb is worth studying. Its one of the best examples of a rocky planet that might have an atmosphere that we can study to see what its made of, Winters added.

The team is hoping to spot the planet and analyze its atmosphere when the planet passes in front of its main star. That will happen in a couple of months time, but until then theyll use data from the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile to probe its mysteries further.

READ MORE: Why a rocky planet with three suns has astronomers attention [Harvard University]

More on exoplanets: Newly Discovered Exoplanet Is Unlike Any Other

View original post here:
This Rocky World With Three Suns May Have an Atmosphere - Futurism

Emma doesn't look so great.

Her legs are puffy and covered in varicose veins. Her eyes are flat and dead, and her back looks like she spends her days ringing the bell at Notre-Dame Cathedral.

It's harsh but true. Emma is a life-sized doll depicting what the team think an average office worker in the United Kingdom could look like in 20 years if changes aren't made to the workplace environment.

For a new report titled The Work Colleague of The Future, a team of health experts led by behavioral futurist William Higham looked at survey data submitted by more than 3,000 office workers in France, Germany, and the UK.

The percentages of UK office workers who said they already suffered from sore eyes (50 percent), sore backs (48 percent), and headaches (48 percent) as a direct result of their work environment informed the design of the sickly Emma, who also suffers from stress-related eczema, excess weight, and swollen limbs.

If we don't majorly shake-up the standard office environment, according to Higham, we're headed toward a future rife with Emmas.

"Unless we make radical changes to our working lives, such as moving more, addressing our posture at our desks, taking regular walking breaks, or considering improving our workstation setup, our offices are going to make us very sick," he said, according to The Independent.

Of course, this isn't a peer-reviewed study, and Fellowes the office furniture company which commissioned the report is undoubtedly trying to promote its own products here. But it's still an interesting concept looking into exactly what our office spaces could be doing to our bodies.

This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.

Read the original here:
This Creepy Life-Sized Doll Is a Warning About What Office Life Is Doing to Us - ScienceAlert

Thinking With Portals

Scientists think theyve come up with a way to detect traversable wormholes, assuming they exist.

Theres never been any sort of evidence that traversable wormholes portals between two distant parts of the universe, or two universes within a theoretical multiverse are real. But if they are, a team of scientists think they know what that evidence might look like, breathing new life into a far-out theory that could finally achieve faster-than-light travel.

If a wormhole were to exist, then the gravitational pull of objects on one side, like black holes or stars, would influence the objects on the other side.

If a star wobbled or had otherwise inexplicable perturbations in its orbit around a black hole, researchers could hypothetically argue that theyre being influenced by the gravity of something on the other end of a wormhole, according to research published this month in the journal Physical Review D.

If you have two stars, one on each side of the wormhole, the star on our side should feel the gravitational influence of the star thats on the other side, said University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic. The gravitational flux will go through the wormhole.

While the researchers hope to look for wobbles in the orbits of stars orbiting near Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Stojkovic concedes that spotting some wouldnt guarantee that a wormhole exists there.

He added we cannot say that, Yes, this is definitely a wormhole. There could be some other explanation, something else on our side perturbing the motion of this star.

READ MORE: How to spot a wormhole (if they exist) [University at Buffalo via Phys.org]

More on wormholes: Physicists Publish Instructions For DIY Wormhole

The rest is here:
Scientists Say They Finally Figured Out How to Spot Wormholes - Futurism

Hole New World

The hole in Earths ozone layer a part of the stratosphere that shields the planet from harmful ultraviolet radiation is the smallest its been since scientists first began observing it in 1982, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have announced in a joint statement.

However, human efforts to heal the hole seemingly had nothing to do with the welcome development.

The holes size fluctuates over time. According to satellite measurements, it typically reaches a size of about 20 million square kilometers (8 million square miles) in late September or early October.

But this this year, it peaked at a size of 16.4 million square kilometers (6.3 million square miles) on September 8 before shrinking to less than 10 million square kilometers (3.9 million square miles) for the rest of September and October.

In 1989, the Montreal Protocol an international treaty banning the use of ozone-depleting chemicals went into effect, and researchers expect the ozone to completely heal as a result of that agreement by 2070.

However, this years measurements of the ozone hole seem to have less to do with human efforts and more to do with unusually warm stratospheric temperatures, which the researchers could not link to climate change.

Its a rare event that were still trying to understand, atmospheric scientist Susan Strahan said in a NASA news release. If the warming hadnt happened, wed likely be looking at a much more typical ozone hole.

READ MORE: The Antarctic ozone hole is the smallest since it was discovered [CNN]

More on the ozone: Our Efforts to Heal the Ozone Layer Are Finally Paying Off

Visit link:
Good News: The Ozone Hole Is Smaller Than Weve Ever Seen It - Futurism

Military Money

On Thursday, To the Stars Academy (TTSA) an alien and UFO research group founded by former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge announced that it had entered into a partnership with the U.S. Army.

Now, new details on the partnership have emerged including that the Army is planning to spend at least $750,000 on the partnership.

As noted in a new Motherboard story, government document archivist John Greenewald has posted the entire Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between TTSA and the Army online.

The document reveals that the partnership will expire in five years unless the parties choose to renew it, and the government will not directly pay TTSA any money under the terms of the deal.

Instead, it will spend an estimated $750,000 on personnel, facilities, equipment, and other resources that TTSAs COO Kari DeLonge told Motherboard would be cost-prohibitive to a small startup-like TTSA.

The contract also makes clear what the Army hopes to get out of the partnership: to see if it can use TTSAs materials and technologies to advance its ground vehicles.

What the document doesnt mention, however, is TTSAs claim that some of the materials in its possession are extraterrestrial. Now that the group is getting the resources it needs to study those materials, maybe itllhave a better chance of figuring out just what exactly its gotten its hands on.

READ MORE: Tom DeLonges UFO Research Group Signs Contract With U.S. Army to Develop Far-Future Tech [Motherboard]

More on the partnership: Tom DeLonges UFO Research Group Partners With US Army

More here:
The US Army Is Spending $750K to Partner With UFO Research Group - Futurism