Innovation Toronto

The Cleanweb: Green Energy Meets Moore’s Law

innovation — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:33:12 +0000

Starting to attract the attention of investors and entrepreneurs By embracing new Web and mobile technologies, green energy companies are creating a new Cleanweb movement in which formerly expensive alternative energy sources – such as solar power – are suddenly accessible to the masses at a significantly lower price point. Think of the Cleanweb as what [...]

Dwarf plants could reduce demands for water, fertilizer, nutrients and pesticides

innovation — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:20:29 +0000

Could produce the same amount of grain using less water, fertilizer and nutrients Aside from arable land, most farm crops require significant amounts of water, fertilizer, nutrients and pesticides to grow. While specialized breeding is often used to help produce plants that require less of these inputs, Purdue University researcher Burkhard Schulz has found a way [...]

Come the Revolution

innovation — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:26:40 +0000

Last semester he taught 100,000 in an online course on machine learning Andrew Ng is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford, and he has a rather charming way of explaining how the new interactive online education company that he cofounded, Coursera, hopes to revolutionize higher education by allowing students from all over the world [...]

VIDEO TEDxLausanne – Jürgen Schmidhuber – When creative machines overtake man

innovation — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:50:21 +0000

Machine intelligence is improving rapidly, to the point that the scientist of the future may not even be human! In fact, in more and more fields, learning machines are already outperforming humans. Artificial intelligence expert Jürgen Schmidhuber isnt able to predict the future accurately, but he explains how machines are getting creative, why 40000 years of [...]

A Computer Interface that Takes a Load Off Your Mind

innovation — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:24:52 +0000

A wearable brain scanner could give computers insight into how hard you’re thinking. Conversations between people include a lot more than just words. All sorts of visual and aural cues indicate each party’s state of mind and make for a productive interaction. But a furrowed brow, a gesticulating hand, and a beaming smile are all lost on [...]

New Drug Trial Seeks to Stop Alzheimer’s Before It Starts

innovation — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:03:03 +0000

The drug, Crenezumab, attacks amyloid plaques in the brain. In a clinical trial that could lead to treatments that prevent Alzheimer’s, people who are genetically guaranteed to develop the disease — but who do not yet have any symptoms — will for the first time be given a drug intended to stop it, federal officials announced [...]

Portable diagnostics designed to be shaken, not stirred

innovation — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:14:39 +0000

“We envision a device that you plug into your phone” As medical researchers and engineers try to shrink diagnostics to fit in a person’s pocket, one question is how to easily move and mix small samples of liquid. University of Washington researchers have built and patented a surface that, when shaken, moves drops along certain paths to [...]

First Gene Therapy Successful Against Aging-Associated Decline

innovation — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:56:11 +0000

Mouse Lifespan Extended Up to 24% With a Single Treatment A new study consisting of inducing cells to express telomerase, the enzyme which — metaphorically — slows down the biological clock — was successful. The research provides a “proof-of-principle” that this “feasible and safe” approach can effectively “improve health span.” A number of studies have shown that [...]

Engineer Thinks We Could Build a Real Starship Enterprise in 20 Years

innovation — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:15:27 +0000

He proposes not just one Enterprise-class ship, but multiple ships In Star Trek lore, the first Starship Enterprise will be built by the year 2245. But today, an engineer has proposed — and outlined in meticulous detail – building a full-sized, ion-powered version of the Enterprise complete with 1G of gravity on board, and says it [...]

Insect-inspired smartphone projector focuses images onto uneven surfaces

innovation — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:34:04 +0000

It may be a few years before it makes its way into commercially-available phones If you were using a smartphone projector to shine an image onto an uneven surface, or onto a flat surface but at a diagonal angle, parts of the image would end up out of focus … unless, that is, your phone featured [...]