January 2018 Ideas and Innovation
Read the articles selected in January 2018
Deux singes ravivent le débat sur le clonage
by Florence Rosier
Source: Le Temps, 25 January
The cloning of primates is an important step toward the human cloning, so it raises many medical, scientific, and ethical concerns also because of the technical characteristics of the procedure. Though still inapplicable to humans, it already allows delivering more reliable models on human diseases.
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DARPA wants to build an image search engine out of DNA
by Megan Molteni
Source: Wired, 24 January
A team of researchers has launched a campaign to collect big data of images to be stored in molecules. Instead of algorithms and electronic devices, the memory of the future is chemical. The DNA structure will be harnessed for information processing.
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https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-wants-to-build-an-image-search-engine-out-of-dna/
One of history’s worst epidemics may have been caused by a common microbe
By Angus Chen
Source: Science, 16 January
Recent DNA evidence suggests that an epidemic that killed 45% of the Aztec population in the 16th century and historically recorded as a kind of hemorrhagic fever was caused by Salmonella enterica, a common food poisoning infection not to undervalue.
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Quand les robots auront un karma
By Judith Duportail
Source: Le Temps, 20 January
The Buddhist religion lives the faith technologically. The conceptualization of other forms of conscience and intelligence, which overcomes the dichotomies real-virtual, human-robot, implies the respect to the machines, which improves our behavior to our similar.
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Global warming predictions may now be a lot less uncertain
By Matt Simon
Source: Wired, 17 January
The future outlook for global warming seems more optimistic. New studies on the environmental system dynamics, based on the metric of equilibrium climate sensitivity narrow the range of the potential temperature increase from 3° to 1.2°C.
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https://www.wired.com/story/the-dizzying-science-of-climate-change-gets-a-bit-clearer/
Is art-connoisseur yet another job threatened by technology?
Source: The Economist, 15 January
Although objective and fast, technology will not be able to replace the skills trained along centuries and passed down through generations by art connoisseurs. However, the scientific tools today decide the market of prices and change the history of art.
Woher kommt das Neue?
By Nils Markwardt
Source: Die Zeit, 15 January
We live the change, whether technological, or political, climatic or sentimental, and if we think back who we were before we wonder how it could happen. This universal question began with the myth of the Creation and reach us, who only believe in our imagination.
Demain, la guerre dans l’espace
By Alain Barluet
Source: Le Figaro, 12 January
The conquest of the space is a stake too important not to become a military field. The satellites around the Earth will triplicate within twenty years and with them the debris and the intentional threats. World safety requires international solutions shared also outside Europe.
Fundamental physics is frustrating physicists
Source: The Economist, 11 January
The history of the search for fundamental forces that bind matter together goes further. Several theories remain unsupported by the big experiments testing them, though their beauty and explanatory power. But mathematical elegance is not necessarily true.
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Jeux vidéo, une exception culturelle
By Erwan Cario
Source: Libération, 21 December
The videogame, after a life on the margin of the cultural legitimity for its violent contents, then object of interest for university research, even though transgressive, is now counted by the French institutions among the forms of art that benefit from the cultural exception.
Scientists discover clean water ice just below Mars’surface
By Robbie Gonzalez
Source: Wired, 11 January
The vast quantities of water ice discovered by a Nasa mission under the surface of Mars are essential to survival for their future settlers. Of particular interest are the depth of the deposits and the proportion of pure ice to determine how much energy it will take to mine and use it.
Read more:
https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-discover-clean-water-ice-just-below-mars-surface/
Ein deutsch-französisches Zentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz
Source: Die Faz, 10 January
Before the expansionist Chinese industry and the Silicon Valley’s monopoly of talents, in Germany a party coalition has launched a project for a German-French center for the artificial intelligence under public responsibility, calling for a special protection for the enterprises in this sector.
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- Pubblicato il : 05/02/2018 Modificato il : 04/04/2019