New Florence. New Renaissance.

Digital autopsies

A medical examiner puts on a pair of augmented-reality goggles and brings up a computer simulated image of a body that appears to hover steps away. Nearby on a metal autopsy table lies the body of a person brought into the lab after a fatal shooting. Instead of cutting into the victim, the examiner slices through the 3-D image, mapping the bullet’s trajectory and determining the cause of death without making a single incision.

This is one vision of the virtual future of autopsies, based on interviews with forensic and digital health-care experts: Using digital reconstructions and machine-learning algorithms to diagnose the cause of death, identify a victim, and even triage battlefield or motor-vehicle injuries in live patients by analyzing images of victims who died in similar incidents. It would mark a step change for the field of forensic science, where the standard methods of autopsy have remained nearly unchanged for a century.

WSJ

 

New security jobs for the digital world

WSJ highlights 5 new jobs for the digital world

• Deepfake analyst
• Driverless-Car Security Specialist
• Implanted-Device Guardian
• Anti-Cheat Referee (for video games)
• Chief Digital Identity Officer

Video on Trend Micro's threat research

Mathematical Library of the Future

Digitizing mathematics is a longtime dream. The expected benefits range from the mundane — computers grading students’ homework — to the transcendent: using artificial intelligence to discover new mathematics and find new solutions to old problems. Mathematicians expect that proof assistants could also review journal submissions, finding errors that human reviewers occasionally miss, and handle the tedious technical work that goes into filling in all the details of a proof.

But first, the mathematicians who gather on Zulip must furnish Lean with what amounts to a library of undergraduate math knowledge, and they’re only about halfway there. Lean won’t be solving open problems anytime soon, but the people working on it are almost certain that in a few years the program will at least be able to understand the questions on a senior-year final exam.

Quanta

More on Lean and the future of mathematics below

Autonomous medical robots

A fully autonomous robot surgeon is the Holy Grail—and many years off, says Dr. Tee, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the National University of Singapore. He and other researchers are developing devices that can perform surgical tasks with minimal human oversight.

Dr. Tee’s latest project is an “artificial skin” that would give robots a sense of touch, allowing them to do things like differentiate between healthy tissue and tumors and make surgical incisions. Other researchers are working on robots that stitch up incisions and navigate to repair organs.

WSJ

 

Combat armor designed for females

From helmets to accommodate a hair bun to maternity flight suits, gear designed for women is being developed and issued, changing the way the previously one-male-size-fits-all military outfits troops.

The Air Force has the highest percentage of women service members at 21% of its active-duty force. The Navy is next at 20.2% followed by the Army at 15.4% and the Marine Corps at 9.1%, according to Pentagon figure. The services combine efforts at times to develop equipment, such as a new combat flight suit for women in the Army, Air Force and Navy, according to Army Lt. Col. Naim Lee, a project manager for Soldier Clothing and Individual Equipment. It is scheduled to be delivered to aviators in Oct. 2021.

USA Today

This video gives you an idea into all the combat jobs opened up to ladies 5 years ago

AI and Battery Development

In 2019, a team of researchers from Stanford, MIT, and the Toyota Research Institute used AI trained on data generated from these machines to predict the performance of lithium-ion batteries over the lifetime of the cells before their performance had started to slip. Ordinarily, AI would need data from after a battery had started to degrade in order to predict how it would perform in the future. It might take months to cycle the battery enough times to get that data. But the researchers’ AI could predict lifetime performance after only hours of data collection, while the battery was still at its peak. “Prior to our work, nobody thought that was possible,” says William Chueh, a materials scientist at Stanford and one of the lead authors of the 2019 paper. And earlier this year, Chueh and his colleagues did it again. In a paper published in Nature in February, Chueh and his colleagues described an experiment in which an AI was able to discover the optimal method for 10-minute fast-charging a lithium-ion battery.

Wired

 

The "going-out" blanket

For the first time in recent history, the preferred environment for socializing has become “anywhere outside.” And during a pandemic and period of worldwide unrest, most people are seeking comfort more than ever. As a replacement for the timeworn going-out top—obviously better suited to the indoors—the going-out blanket suddenly makes sense.

Blankets have always been at the heart of the knitwear brand The Elder Statesman. Founder Greg Chait started the company in 2007 with a series of cashmere blankets, and now sells a full range of clothing for men, women and children, as well as accessories and home goods. Chait thinks carrying some sort of blanket for outings is a good idea. In fact, The Elder Statesman has had a blanket scarf in its collection for years for that very purpose. “Very handy,” he said in an email. Like Bode, he’s a fan of the car blanket and also keeps his brand’s socks and sweaters with him on the go.

WSJ

Talking of Bode, here is a video on her Vault, in collaboration with Microsoft AI on a digital quilt archive.

Hum to Search

You can hum, whistle or sing a melody to Google to solve your earworm. On your mobile device, open the latest version of the Google app or find your Google Search widget, tap the mic icon and say “what's this song?” or click the “Search a song” button. Then start humming for 10-15 seconds. On Google Assistant, it’s just as simple. Say “Hey Google, what’s this song?” and then hum the tune. This feature is currently available in English on iOS, and in more than 20 languages on Android. And we hope to expand this to more languages in the future.

After you’re finished humming, our machine learning algorithm helps identify potential song matches.

Google

 

Skyscrapers inspired by sea sponges

The next generation of skyscrapers could be, well, spongey. Researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences say a lattice reinforced with diagonals, inspired by the structures built by sponges, could mean lighter, but stronger skyscrapers and bridges.

Popular Mechanics

Video on how biomimicry increasingly influences design in many fields

Goodbye, Spark Plugs

Transient Plasma System (TPS) proposes employing a different kind of plasma to initiate combustion in a completely different way. Leveraging recent advances in solid-state high-voltage switching capability, voltage similar to that built up in an old-fashioned coil is summoned in a matter of 10-50 nanoseconds and dispersed not across a discrete gap but rather in streamers and sheets between an electrode and the plug's peripheral housing.

Motor Trend