my name is abhinav kuksal

how is it possible !!! Meet Nadine, a robot much capable of human emotions

Watch: Meet Nadine, the 'emotionally intelligent' companion robot

She's here to look after you.

What will robots look like in the future? Will they retain obvious signs of their artificial nature, or will they seamlessly blend in with people to such an extent that we might have difficulty telling them apart from living, breathing humans?

If Nadine – a new social and 'emotionally intelligent' robot from scientists in Singapore – is a sign of things to come, realistic-looking humanoid machines might just have the edge over their obviously artificial counterparts. How come? Because the physical resemblance to ordinary people could help us interact with a machine in a more natural way, whether at home, at work, or even if it were to look after us when we get old.

"Over the past four years, our team at [Nanyang Technological University] have been fostering cross-disciplinary research in social robotics technologies," said Nadia Thalmann, "to transform a virtual human, from within a computer, into a physical being that is able to observe and interact with other humans."

By employing linguistics and psychology in addition to conventional robotics fields such as engineering and computer science, the researchers have sought to blur the distinction between human and machine. Nadine – which is designed to look like a physical doppelgänger of a younger Thalmann – isn't exactly meant to fool us into thinking it's a real woman, but it's supposed to help us relate to 'her' as if the robot were any other ordinary person.

"This is somewhat like a real companion that is always with you and conscious of what is happening," said Thalmann. "So in future, these socially intelligent robots could be like C–3PO… with knowledge of language and etiquette."

With soft skin and fairly convincing-looking hair, Nadine is a pretty eerie emulation of an actual person, especially when the face is moving, as you can see in the video above. Of course, those vacant eyes could use a little work, and the robot's static, empty look in between actions gives away that this isn't a real person.

Still, these are the kinds of things the researchers are working on, and if some of Nadine's obvious 'tells' can be eroded, it's possible that people interacting with the robot would be more at ease, rather than less. Especially when it's programmed with a sense of personality and 'emotions', and is designed to remember you and details of previous conversations.

Nadine currently acts in the role of a 'receptionist' at Nanyang Technological University – a calling we've seen other, somewhat more conspicuous robots fulfil. But according to the researchers, this kind of technology could make the most sense as domestic companions in the home, especially for those who need help in caring for themselves.

"As countries worldwide face challenges of an ageing population, social robots can be one solution to address the shrinking workforce, become personal companions for children and the elderly at home, and even serve as a platform for healthcare services in future," said Thalmann.

If you've seen the TV show Humans, you'll have an idea of what that kind of system could look like. It might be a little while before robots like Nadine are as convincing as Humans' 'synths', but that day definitely looks like it's getting closer.

Scientists grow a 'person on a chip' - living human tissues on a mini 3D structure

Scientists grow a 'person on a chip' - living human tissues on a mini 3D structure

This could be the future of drug testing.

Scientists in Canada have developed a new method of growing human tissue outside the body, creating a miniature lattice structure that's capable of providing an external matrix for living cells.

Called AngioChip, the researchers say their 'person on a chip' technology could be a new platform for testing the effects of drugs on human tissue, with the mini 3D scaffold constituting a more realistic environment for growing cells than the flat layout of a petri dish.

"It's a fully three-dimensional structure complete with internal blood vessels,"said chemical engineer Milica Radisic from the University of Toronto. "It behaves just like vasculature, and around it there is a lattice for other cells to attach and grow."

Built from a biodegradable and biocompatible polymer called POMaC, the miniature scaffold is constructed from a series of thin layers that resemble microchips, each indented with a pattern of tiny channels measuring between 50 to 100 micrometres wide (about the same diameter as a human hair).

Once stacked and bonded together via UV light, these layers become a 3D structure of synthetic blood vessels. The lattice network is then bathed in a liquid containing living cells. The cells attach to the structure, and begin growing inside and outside of the tiny channels stamped in the polymer.

"Previously, people could only do this using devices that squish the cells between sheets of silicone and glass," said Radisic. "You needed several pumps and vacuum lines to run just one chip. Our system runs in a normal cell culture dish, and there are no pumps; we use pressure heads to perfuse media through the vasculature. The wells are open, so you can easily access the tissue."

Tyler Irving / Boyang Zhang / Kevin Soobrian

The engineers have so far used AngioChip to build small-scale living models of heart and liver tissues that function just like real organs. "Our liver actually produced urea and metabolised drugs," said Radisic.

What's more, connecting the blood vessels of two different artificial organs on AngioChips lets the researchers study the interactions between them, providing a testbed at the organ level.

Such testing could more accurately detect dangerous side effects of potential or existing medications, or safely study related interactions between various human organ compartments.

"In the last few years, it has become possible to order cultures of human cells for testing, but they're grown on a plate, a two-dimensional environment," said Radisic. "They don't capture all the functional hallmarks of a real heart muscle, for example."

The researchers' technology is reported in Nature Materials. They are now seeking to commercialise the system, which could end up having applications even beyond drug testing. They say it's possible the artificial AngioChip organs could be grown into tissues for directly implanting into patients' bodies to repair damaged organs.

So far, the researchers have only tested this application in rats, but the advantage of the system is that the polymer scaffold is itself biodegradable, so after time it safely dissipates within the subject's body, leaving only the newly grown tissue.

It sounds like it'll be a while before we see this kind of technique used for human patients, but even so, we can't wait to see where this research might lead.

This new code makes websites load 34% faster in any browser

This new code makes websites load 34% faster in any browser

Just what we’ve always wanted.

If website loading times can’t keep up with your browsing speed like your typing can’t keep up with your thoughts, hope is on the horizon, thanks to a new code called Polaris that reportedly makes websites load 34 percent faster in any browser. 

How, I hear you ask? Developed by a team at MIT, the code has been programmed to gather up and evaluate all the background files of a particular website, including image files, HTML files, and Javascript source code, way more efficiently than current systems. 

"As pages increase in complexity, they often require multiple trips that create delays that really add up," says one of the team, Ravi Netravali. "Our approach minimises the number of round trips so that we can substantially speed up a page’s load-time."

You’re not the only one who gets frustrated by a site that doesn’t instantly load - pretty much everyone feels your pain, and are quite happy to drop a page like a sack of oranges if it’s going to keep them waiting. According to Amazon, every 100-millisecond delay in website loading time cuts their profits by 1 percent.

If you’re not familiar with the nuts and bolts of getting a website to display on a browser, it goes like this. To load a page, your browser has to connect to the network and fetch 'objects' such as HTML files, image files, and JavaScript source code. Each object has to be evaluated before it can be added to the display. 

The problem is that each of these objects is likely to be dependent on another object - called dependencies - so every time the browser wants to evaluate one object, it has to go and fetch its dependencies, which will also have their own dependencies, and so on. "As an example, a browser might have to execute a file’s JavaScript code in order to discover more images to fetch and render," the team explains.

That’s not so bad, but where things get slowed down is when browsers can’t actually see all the dependencies, so end up making multiple trips through the network to fetch and evaluate everything.

What the Polaris code does to address this problem is automatically track every single interaction between objects and their dependencies on a particular site, to creates a 'dependency graph' that allows the browser to make more efficient trips through the network. 

While this isn’t the first dependency-tracker to be developed, the team says this is the only one that’s able to capture the most subtle dependencies that exist on a page, which allows it to achieve such impressive speeds. Another benefit is that it can be written in JavaScript, which means it can work with any website.

The team hopes that the system will be integrated with browsers in the future, so every page you load on a particular browser will appear that much faster.

According to Jamie Condliffe at Gizmodo, Polaris has so far been tested on 200 different websites, including ESPN, Weather.com, and Wikipedia, and was able to load web pages 34 percent faster, on average. 

Their research has not yet been published or peer-reviewed, so keep that in mind, but the results of their work will be presented later this week at the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation in California, which means they’re ready for it to be scrutinised for publication.

"Tracking fine-grained dependencies has the potential to greatly reduce page-load times, especially for low-bandwidth or high-latency connections," Mark Marron, a senior research software development engineer at Microsoft, who was not involved in the research, told Gizmodo. 

"On top of that, the availability of detailed dependence information has a wide range of possible applications, such as tracking the source statement of an unexpected value that led to a crash at runtime."

We are so ready for this. And if they can figure out how to speed up gif loading times on mobile, our lives would be complete.

Here's why you should never throw out those annoying silica sachets again

Here's why you should never throw out those annoying silica sachets again

Whoa, we had no idea.

Anyone who's ever bought a new electronic device or pair of shoes will be all too familiar with those little "DO NOT EAT" sachets that come in the box. Most of us have a vague idea that they're somehow keeping our products fresh, but toss them as soon as the box is open without a second thought.

But it turns out that just might be one of the worst ideas ever because, as Eames Yates reports for Business Insider, these free sachets can be used for a whole range of life hacks that can save you time, energy, and money. And we're never throwing one out again.

As the video below explains, the sachets are called silica gel bags, and they're filled with little balls of silicon dioxide, which will quickly dry out anything around them.

Despite the warnings on the packet, they're actually not toxic or poisonous, and are only really dangerous because they pose a choking hazard (so, yep, keep them away from kids).

But they're actually also incredibly useful, not only when it comes to keeping your new purchases dry and fresh in the box, but also for soaking up moisture in other unexpected ways. Here are some of their life-changing uses:

1. Save your wet phone

Dropped your iPhone in the toilet again? Forget rice, according to Business Insider, these sachets are far more efficient at sucking up moisture. Just leave your phone switched off in a jar full of them overnight, and they should dry the device out thoroughly.

2. Defog your windshield

Never wait for your windshield to clear up in the mornings again - instead, simply place a few of these bags under your windshield on the inside and they'll keep it dry and clear regardless of the weather.

3. Extend the life of your razor blades

Any shaving aficionado will know that moisture is your razor's worst enemy, with damp blunting your blades before their time. Business Insider recommendskeeping your razor in a tupperware container with a few of these silica gel bags to keep them sharp for longer.

4. Keep your gym bag fresh

You can avoid mould and bacteria colonising your sweaty gym gear by adding a couple of these sachets to your gym bag. They should also help with the odour.

5. Protect your old photos

Many of us store our old photos in attics, cellars, or other equally damp places, which can lead to the pictures sticking together and deteriorating over time. Keep them in a box with a few silica sachets and it should keep them dry and in tact for longer.

Seriously, we had no idea, and we'll never take these free goldmines for granted again. Check out the Business Insider video below to find out more. The regret is real.