Eric Horvitz forecasts the future

New Scientist Eric Horvitz forecasts the future: "Within 50 years, lives will be significantly enhanced by automated reasoning systems that people will perceive as 'intelligent'. Although many of these systems will be deployed behind the scenes, others will be in the foreground, serving in an elegant, often collaborative manner to help people do their jobs, to learn and teach, to reflect and remember, to plan and decide, and to create. Translation and interpretation systems will catalyse unprecedented understanding and cooperation between people. At death, people will often leave behind rich computational artefacts that include memories, reflections and life histories, accessible for all time."

Computer discovers more accurate medical test

The Register Brains, cancer and computers: "The race is on to apply machine learning to biology. The starting gun was fired in 2002 when research company Correlogic stunned the medical world with the announcement of a vastly improved test for detecting ovarian cancer. The new test was simple - a few drops of blood are all that's required - yet reliable. What made it truly remarkable was that the test was discovered by machine."

Translation Tools: New Approaches to an Old Discipline

Translation Tools: New Approaches to an Old Discipline: "Language translation software isn’t likely to allow you to lay off your bilingual staffers — at least not right away. But applied with discrimination and lots of preparation, translation tools can be fantastic productivity aids. And researchers say new approaches to this old discipline are greatly improving the performance of the tools."

"Ford Motor Co. began using “machine translation” software in 1998 and has so far translated 5 million automobile assembly instructions into Spanish, German, Portuguese and Mexican Spanish. Assembly manuals are updated in English every day, and their translations — some 5,000 pages a day — are beamed overnight to plants around the world. “It wouldn’t be feasible to do this all manually,” says Nestor Rychtyckyj, a technical specialist in artificial intelligence (AI) at Ford."

LawnBott: a Roomba for your backyard?

csmonitor.com LawnBott: a Roomba for your backyard?: "Don't like to mow during the dog days? The electric LawnBott – a device from Paradise Robotics that looks like the child of R2D2 and a tiny Ferrari – can roam a yard solo, its mulching blades whirring quietly, then dock and recharge until its timer awakens it."

Computers to Reassemble Shredded East German Secret Police Files

FOXNews.com Computers to Reassemble Shredded East German Secret Police Files: "German researchers said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms."

"Some 16,250 sacks containing pieces of 45 million shredded documents were found and confiscated after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Reconstruction work began 12 years ago but 24 people have been able to reassemble the contents of only 323 sacks."

"Using algorithms developed 15 years ago to help decipher barely legible lists of Nazi concentration camp victims, each individual strip of the shredded Stasi files will be scanned on both sides.

"The data then will be fed into the computer for interpretation using color recognition; texture analysis; shape and pattern recognition; machine and handwriting analysis and the recognition of forged official stamps..."

Vernor Vinge explored a similar idea in his novel Rainbow's End -- see excerpt at technovelgy.

New devices promise touchy-feely computing

New Scientist Tech New devices promise touchy-feely computing: "Is it possible to 'feel' an object while being in another location? This is a question addressed by several technologies on show at the SIGGRAPH 2007 computer conference in San Diego, California, US, earlier this month. Haptic technology, which exploits the sense of touch, could have a range of applications, researchers say, from telesurgery and robotic remote control to more immersive computer games."

Scientists Train Nano-'Building Blocks' to Self Assemble

Medgadget Scientists Train Nano-'Building Blocks' to Self Assemble: "Researchers from the University of Delaware and Washington University in St. Louis have figured out how to train synthetic polymer molecules to behave--to literally 'self-assemble' --and form into long, multicompartment cylinders 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, with potential uses in radiology, signal communication and the delivery of therapeutic drugs in the human body."