New Story, a housing non-profit based in San Francisco, and Icon, a construction-technology company that designs 3D printers produced first 3D printed house, that costs 10000. The printing of the prototype took only 48 hours.

At 350 square feet, the house was far cheaper than the average tiny home, which has a price tag hovering at around $25,000.

Half a year later, the first 3D printed neighbourhood has its first complete houses. Residents of a rural part of Mexico are now moving into 500-square-foot homes with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room space, and an indoor bathroom with plumbing. They’re all built in one sweep of the 3D printer, ICON’s Vulcan II, which pipes a special concrete mixture to form exterior and interior walls. Software monitors the weather conditions, and the machine can adjust the mixture. “In the morning it might be drier, and then late in the afternoon, maybe it’s more humid, and then you’ll adjust that mixture a little bit in accordance to that that you get the viscosity that you need in order to have the same print quality throughout the day,” says New Story cofounder Alexandria Lafci.

Choosing to go into rural Mexico for the company’s first project was intentional, too. The organization wanted to show it could get to a challenging location that also had regular earthquake activity. Where makeshift shacks are extremely vulnerable to any seismic activity, the New Story homes are more resilient.

Based on national reports, it’s estimated that no less than 150 million people, or about 2 percent of the world’s population, are homeless. However, about 1.6 billion, more than 20 percent of the world’s population, may lack adequate housing. New Story believes that the new construction process could be part of the solution for affordable housing in some of the poorest communities in the world.

New Story considers its homes in Mexico to be proof of concept in a way, both as a sign that its 3D printer technology is sound, and as encouragement to other groups that may enter the affordable housing fray and solve homelessness problem forever.

References:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a30198742/3d-printed-houses-neighborhood/

https://www.fastcompany.com/90440406/the-worlds-first-3d-printed-neighborhood-now-has-its-first-houses

Smart glasses or smart glasses are computer glasses that add information along with what the owner sees. In addition, smart glasses are sometimes referred to as wearable computer glasses that are capable of altering their optical properties during runtime. Smart Sunglasses programmed with electronic tint change are an example of the latest type of smart glass.

There’s a race to be the first to make a set of glasses that everyone will wear, which means they have to be fashionable and sleek enough to wear all day and everywhere you go. Advocates of the technology hope that you’ll one day be able to replace every screen in your life with just one pair of smart glasses.

Overlay is achieved through an optical head-mounted display (OHMD) or built-in wireless glasses with transparent display (HUD) or augmented reality (AR). These systems have the ability to display predicted digital images and also allow the user to view or better view them.

Like other computers, smart glasses can collect information from internal or external sensors. It can control or retrieve data from other tools or computers. It can support wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS. Few models work with the mobile operating system and function as a portable media player for transferring audio and video files to a user via Bluetooth or WiFi. Some smart glass models also have full logging and activity tracking capabilities.

How they work

Smart glasses work through a combination of display, sensors and accelerometers, coupled with smart software and internet connectivity to make them really useful. They tend to come with touchpads and/or voice controls to help users navigate the software that powers them, which can be embedded into the glasses themselves or incorporated into a handset – or both.

Do they work?

They’re still in early stages of development and there are lots of issues to overcome, such as security and privacy. Do we want a society where people can be filmed by others unknowingly?

In addition, there are problems with battery life. With smartphones still draining energy fairly quickly, smart glasses are yet to deliver a usable consumer experience from a battery-life perspective.

Prices

On Amazon prices are from 799$ to 17$.

References:

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Glasses/b?ie=UTF8&node=10048708011                                                https://www.lifewire.com/best-smart-glasses-4172796                                                                                        https://www.wareable.com/ar/the-best-smartglasses-google-glass-and-the-rest                                            https://newatlas.com/eye-tracking-autofocal-glasses/60375/

Human error has been a big issue in surgeon rooms worldwide. According to statistics in the USA nearly 4,000 patients are injured annually during the surgeries. From 1990 to 2010 there were 9,744 registered court cases against doctors who have conducted the surgery, the plaintiffs were awarded approximately $1.3 billion in damages over the course of this period [2]. To improve the outcomes of the surgeries we can benefit from the usage of AI systems. On one hand, IT systems can assess the surgical execution in over 85% cases and present a detailed evaluation of skills of a given surgeon that helps humans to understand their weak sides and boost their performance [4]. Robots also help young and inexperienced surgeons to improve their results and enhance their development and self-confidence. On the other hand, AI can completely substitute humans in carrying out surgeries. For instance, surgeons are required to inform each patient personally about a possible recovery chance or predicted risks. Sometimes these calculations go way beyond humans’ calculation abilities, but AI will be able to name all of these figures with very definite accuracy [3]. Furthermore, today’s medicine is highly dependent on the da Vinci System that has been used for over two decades, but there are several modern tools tackling the precise surgery process. While conducting the surgery, suturing is believed to be one of the most important parts that decide the successful completion of surgery [4]. Very often due to human fatigue surgeons are failing to deliver the best outcome possible. However, robots today require humans only to enter the parameters like suture size to complete the surgery. Moreover, AI can self-learn while conducting the work in real-time. Surgical robots are supplied with embedded machine learning algorithms that allow them to spectate at surgeon’s actions during a surgery which allows them to find a better and a more accurate way to perform surgery than a human [1]. Computer systems reduce the bureaucracy burden laid on hospital workers. For instance, analytical tools are used for completing the reports, organize and follow the individual curriculum of each patient allowing doctors and nurses to spend more time with their patients resulting in better treatment. This looks to be a very promising solution to reduce the number of fatal instances during surgery. The AI systems in medicine are predicted to grow annually by 10.4%, from the value of $3.9 billion in 2018 to $6.5 billion by 2023 [4]. Although, surgical robots are still being developed and several flaws are being solved in their operational systems. There is a very high chance that AI and robots will substitute human surgeons in the operating room.

Works Cited

1. Robotic Surgery: The Role of AI and Collaborative Robots. (2019, September 7). Retrieved December 17, 2019, from https://www.robotics.org/blog-article.cfm/Robotic-Surgery-The-Role-of-AI-and-Collaborative-Robots/181.
2. Shocking Surgical Error Statistics Show 4,000 Victims Annually. (2017, February 16). Retrieved December 17, 2019, from https://www.seattlemalpracticelawyers.com/blog/2017/02/shocking-surgical-error-statistics/.
3. Shugalo, I. (2018, September 18). How Can Machine Learning Improve Surgery? Retrieved December 17, 2019, from https://www.technologynetworks.com/informatics/articles/how-can-machine-learning-improve-surgery-309645.
4. Taking Surgery to the Next Level with Machine Learning. (2019, September 15). Retrieved December 17, 2019, from https://www.hackernoon.com/taking-surgery-to-the-next-level-with-machine-learning-qj3fo3zg4.

Scientists from the University of Bath have lately created an artificial neuron that could change the lives of numerous people.

For many years researchers and scientists were trying to find a cure for chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s or heart failure. Now they finally came up with a way to possibly heal all of those related to nervous systems with the help of a device smaller than a fingertip.

It is basically an artificial neuron with silicon chip that can imitate real living neurons in our bodies.

But what really is a neuron? It is a cell in a nervous system. It receives and transports electric impulses with information throughout the body.  There are about 100 billion of them in our bodies and failure of at least one of them can change your life completely from what it was right before. On the other hand, if anything happens to your neurons it could be life-changing to have technology that could fix it and help your life get back to how it was.

“Until now neurons have been like black boxes, but we have managed to open the black box and peer inside […] Our work is paradigm-changing because it provides a robust method to reproduce the electrical properties of real neurons in minute detail”, said Alain Nogaret from the University of Bath.

They have demonstrated two types of artificial neurons (respiratory and hippocampal). To test them they tried about 60 protocols and compared how artificial chips react comparing to the real ones. 94% of attempts ended up successfully.

Even though it still needs years to possibly start being used in medical treatments, it is a huge step forward in technology and creates new possibilities for future researchers.

References:

https://newatlas.com/science/first-artificial-neurons-ever-created-chronic-brain-disease/

https://singularityhub.com/2019/12/06/first-ever-artificial-neuron-could-let-us-repair-brain-injuries-with-silicon/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/sciencetechGhost/video-2061980/Video-University-Bath-scientists-reveal-cases-artificial-neurons.html

Admit, many of you dreamed of going to the store, taking the right products – and quietly leaving. No need to queue where the cashier makes each purchase in front of a barcode scanner. Shop without queues. Shop without cash registers and cashiers. Just goods. You can jump in for a minute, take what you need – and leave.

Amazon GO – shopping without shop workers.

How it works?

Shopping in the store is organized exactly as it should be in perfect self-service. You go around the store, choose the right products, put them in a bag, in a backpack or just put them in your pockets. Then exit the store through special turnstiles – and the purchase amount is automatically debited from your Amazon account.

The magic begins to work at the entrance to the store, where the buyer must immediately log in. Authorization is carried out through a QR code in the Amazon mobile application on a smartphone. At the entrance to the store, you should show the scanner the code on the screen. At the moment, turnstiles are by default open for passage. People just show the barcode and go in. There are no barriers blocking the entrance for unauthorized visitors.
The mobile application on the smartphone runs in the background and tracks the list of purchases that you put in your basket (or in your pockets). The exact tracking mechanism has not been disclosed, but Amazon is known to use RFID tags and camcorders. Apparently, the surveillance system tracks the location of each customer in the store, and the RFID tag scanners on the shelf determine when the goods were taken from the shelf. The system combines information from two channels – and concludes that a certain buyer took a specific product.

There are only 4 cities with Amazon GO shops: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. But the company says that in the future their shops will be situated across the whole world.

I personally think that it is a great idea to provide costumers with a convenient way of shopping. And what do you think about this fantastic idea from Amazon? Would you like to buy products there? Leave your comments below!

References:

https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16008589011

and my own words))

This fall new Martin Scorsese’s film came out. “The Irishman” is said to be a great comeback to the most loved genre of Scorsese – dark, crime, mob story. Stars from movies like “Good fellas” including De Niro, Al Pacino or Pesci are also playing now. However one thing has drastically changed, they are really old.

Three main actors are now almost 80 years old. This is a huge problem because in a story they play characters that are much younger. That is why Scorsese needed the help of the artificial de-aging system.

Regular de-aging methods

There are several ways to make actors look younger or older. The most popular include makeup or stuntman. Also, there is a method of de-aging in post-production. However, it comes with many drawbacks. First of all, actors are supposed to wear big helmets or many small objects on their heads. It completely enables them to perform high-quality acting or to be in any way natural. Secondly, actors mostly don’t like working with this equipment and simply don’t agree to take part in a film. Main actors and Martin Scorsese didn’t want to work this way.

New approach

Pablo Helman from Industrial Light and Magic decided to help with “The Irishman” de-aging process. The goal was to come up with a new approach without helmets or tracking dots. After many attempts, they finally created a completely new method. Instead of one camera, they were using additional two to capture all possible data about the facial expressions of actors. This way the could create artificial image of an actor in various scenarios and including different lighting or camera movement. Next, they designed a special gear to use it in a practical way, due to enormous weight it was rather difficult. The whole structure was only 2 inches smaller than a regular width of a door. After that, each scene was recreated in special post-production program and this program de-aged actors. Most of the work was done with De Niro as the main character. Also, the program included AI algorithms to recognize the demanded age of an actor and character. Surprisingly not only was changed in actors. Second most import part of the body were hands. There are many scenes were we main characters smoking or showing something in a close-up. That is way hands needed to be de-aged too. In this way, actors almost didn’t feel any change at all and the effects were far better. However to proceed with this method it took much more time and effort than regular ones.

References:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-irishman-netflix-ilm-de-aging/#

Netflix’s ‘The Irishman’ gets its first trailer starring a digitally de-aged De Niro

De-aging the Irishman (updated)

https://nofilmschool.com/the-irishman-de-aging-behind-the-scenes

https://collider.com/the-irishman-de-aging-explained/

Have you ever thought about being spied on? Nowadays, as technology is developing really fast, it is hard to say if the devices we use on a regular basis are some kind of data conveyor or not. Can we say that nobody sees us through cameras placed on the screen of our telephones or laptops? We can’t take our security for granted. Our devices may even have a tap to listen if we say certain words, for instance a bomb, terrorism, etc. But what about cameras, which could be placed on every street in your country? Would you have neutral feelings, like to your devices? Would you like the idea of somebody else knowing who you are, what are you doing outside, knowing if you committed a crime in the past?

George Orwell, the author of ,,Rok 1984’’ (“Nineteen Eighty-Four”), created his version of future. Like in the book, the eye of the big brother was everywhere, today it is present in certain places.

You may have heard that more and more countries introduce spying systems to invigilate citizens. Chinese scientists have implemented AI in the system of cameras, which is able to catch thousands of faces at once, in details. Then the system generates data which are attached to faces stored in cloud and immediately localising the person which is wanted.

The system of cameras was created in Shanghai. It is several times higher than the resolution of 120 million pixels of the human eye.

There is no doubt that everyone knows that China Is a country of universal surveillance. But the authorities of this country want to have even more control over Chinese citizens, so they are searching for new technology solutions. The already have a biometric identification of passengers in the beijing metro and intelligent glasses which are being used by the police.

There are even drones which look like birds. People can’t tell the difference between the real one and the drone, because the drones can do the same movements as the real birds.

Democratic countries are also interested in spying. China is spreading its technology to other countries for instance by Huawei. USA is selling artificial intelligence technologies for spying (with IBM as the main seller). At least 75 countries are introducing AI systems in citizens monitoring.

Although the police in China say that normal citizens do not have to worry about anything, as the their data will be used when they will be needed and if citizens ask for it, I myself wouldn’t like the idea of constantly being watched. What is your opinion on that?

Written by Karolina Rudko

References:

https://www.newsweek.pl/swiat/chinski-system-monitoringu-oko-wielkiego-brata-170-mln-kamer/hb6fmzm

https://mlodytechnik.pl/technika/29920-swiat-szpieguje

https://www.google.com/search?q=kamery+w+miastach&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjm7vr2n7jmAhWZcVAKHYkiCSwQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=kamery+w+miastach&gs_l=img.3..0i24l2.51338.83637..83842…0.0..0.89.1389.17……0….1..gws-wiz-img…..0..0j0i131j0i8i30.CB7bK_82Jqc&ei=13b2XaanEpnjwQKJxaTgAg&bih=663&biw=767&safe=active#imgrc=JQbwNEeSbBL_sM

Doubtlessly, each of you had some thoughts to invest money. At least I had a huge desire to do that. But each sector has huge risks. Once I asked one financial specialist «Where to invest money nowadays?». And his answer was: «Gold». Actually sounds quite promising, this sector is with really low volatility level. Gold will be stable for a long period. However, 1 kilogram of gold costs 43.000$. If you don’t have such amount of money, here is a solution. It is understandable that we are students and education is our top priority right now. But, we all want to earn money, isn’t it?

«ROOBEE — is a blockchain based investment platform, that uses AI and transparent statistics in order to help people make smart investments starting from $10 in the investment products with high threshold, such as real estate, ambitious startups, investment funds, IPO, stocks, crypto projects and others»(1). Generations Z and Y are the main audiences of this platform. Moreover, they already have more that 300.000 users. Roobee shows gradual increase in total assets under management. By 2020 this number will reach 109 trillions of dollars. It means that this project will be the strongest competitor on the market. 

How basically it works?

1. Certainly, we need to register through web service. 
2. We need to get personal RoobeeID – secured decentralization of the data. So we go through the KYC procedure.
3. Now we go through profiling, that will create for us investment portrait. RoobeeScore will learn all the details and targets, using AI, will provide individual portrait. 
4. Add payment methods. By the way, we can pay by credit card or also use crypto currency. Or to launch RoobeeWallet but it will be connected directly with Roobee.
5. Money of each user will automatically be allocated to investment products with clear statistics. All transactions will be confirmed in blockchain for transparency.
6.  Then you earn money. 

Why it is so special?

1. You can enter the investment market having 10$ and invest it in IPO, real estate and etc. Before only owners of huge capitals were able to invest money there.
2. If you have only common knowledge about investments, AI in Roobee will create for you something that is called portfolio composition – details where it is better for you to invest money. 
3. Transparency – everything is clearly represented in blockchain. You can find all the confirmations regarding transactions. 
4. No commission from Roobee. 
5. Money can be invested in passive regime. You need to confirm what amount of money you want to invest from your credit card or from incomes from investments. Then Roobee will do everything for you. 

From what exactly you can earn money?

1. Digital currencies
2. Shares in venture capital funds 
3. ETF – Exchange Traded Fund
4. IPO – Initial Public Offering
5. Commercial real estate

What also I found appealing is that each person can get a free access to the platform. And this platform will not have enormous number of investment products, only selected ones. You will not definitely face weird companies that are not appropriate according to the portfolio composition. So it is investing process with quality. To confirm that it is a trustworthy platform I’ve found an interview from the main investor 200m_trader:

“I only invest in projects that can reach a capitalization of $1bn within the time frame of 5 years. I see this potential in Roobee project, that’s why I invested $4.5 million into this blockchain-based investment platform. I’ve been following the same guidelines investing in Ethereum, EOS and other projects. In 2017 this strategy allowed me to transform $55m into $283m within a month. Moreover, I’ve seen a lot on the cryptocurrency market over the past three years, and in 2019 only products with tested business models, solving real tasks facing our world, take the lead “, explains the investor.(2)

1. https://roobee.io/ru/
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5142357.0

Other sources:

https://goldprice.org/ru/gold-price-chart.html

https://roobee.io/docs/whitepaper_ru.pdf

https://news.rambler.ru/other/42610798-top-10-innovatsionnyh-tehnologicheskih-kompaniy-2019-goda/?updated

https://cryptonet.biz/ru/kriptovalyuta-roobee-roobee-obzor-prognoz-i-rukovodstvo-investora/