W3C wants IoT less fragmented...

W3C is working on new protocols for try to solve the lack of interoperability IoT across platforms.

Sources

W3C Begins Standards Work on Web of Things to Reduce IoT Fragmentation | W3C News

Web of Things Interest Group

AI with self-learning facilities...

Convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures can be auto generated by a new meta-modeling algorithm based on reinforcement learning.

Sources

AI Software Learns to Make AI Software - MIT Technology Review

[1611.02167] Designing Neural Network Architectures using Reinforcement Learning

Self-Healing chips for long space travels

A far better approach, argues Moon, is to let the devices suffer damage but then to add a an extra contact to the transistors, and use this contact to heal the devices with heating.

Sources

Self-Healing Transistors for Chip-Scale Starships - IEEE Spectrum
2016 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) 2016 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM)

Satellite for quantum communications

Qbits in orbit...

The technology on board China's new satellite is simple in design and almost magical in operation. A special crystal divides a laser into two beams that are then directed to independent receiving stations on Earth. These beams share a property of quantum mechanics known as entanglement, which links them together even when they are far apart. Actions performed on one beam will also affect the other beam.

Sources

China's quantum satellite could make data breaches a thing of the past

The best practices on AI

Established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.

Sources

Home | Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society

Google, Facebook, Microsoft team up to clear the air about AI

10bits for each photon...

New research provides encoding technique for transport 10 bits of informatino into a photon.

Encoding information in the position of single photons has no known limits, given infinite resources. Using a heralded single-photon source and a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM), we steer single photons to specific positions in a virtual grid on a large-area spatially resolving photon-counting detector (ICCD).

Sources

[1609.04200] Transmitting more than 10 bit with a single photon

Single Photon Carries 10 Bits of Information

Soft robots

“Through our hybrid assembly approach, we were able to 3-D print each of the functional components required within the soft robot body, including the fuel storage, power, and actuation, in a rapid manner,” said Lewis. “The octobot is a simple embodiment designed to demonstrate our integrated design and additive fabrication strategy for embedding autonomous functionality.”

Sources

The first autonomous, entirely soft robot | Harvard Gazette