Aaron Steinfeld, Jeff Bigham and John Zimmerman received a 5-year renewal of their RERC on Accessible Public Transportation. Alex Hauptmann received funding from the CMU Disruptive Health Technology Institute for a computerized coach for proper inhaler use. Fernando De La Torre received funding from the CMU Disruptive Health Technology Institute to develop techniques for detecting symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. Jim Osborn received funding for a "Successful Aging" project from CMU's Metro21 initiative. Jason Hong's team has been selected to be part of the DARPA Brandeis project to advance the state of the art for privacy Jennifer Mankoff and Scott Hudson have teamed up with E-nable in a new initiative for DIY maker-based assistive technologies.

The great bulk of the economic commentary you read in the papers is focused on the short run: the effects of the "fiscal cliff" on U.S. recovery, the stresses on the euro, Japan's latest attempt to break out of deflation. This focus is understandable, since one global depression can ruin your whole day. But our current travails will eventually end. What do we know about the prospects for long-run prosperity? The long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office, generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades.

Dr. Brad Duchaine, Associate Professor Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth, says facial recognition is a sophisticated, yet universal skill humans have. "It's really a complicated system and it involves a number of different grey areas (but) visual recognition is something everybody is really good at," Duchaine said. "It comes built-in with the brain. We're capable of doing face processing just minutes after being born." Balas, who has done research on how social interactions can influence face perception and memory, said it's amazing the type of information humans can draw from a quick glance of someone's face.

Artificial intelligence promises to fundamentally change the way humans live. By replicating intelligence on any level, we can begin to automate all kinds of jobs and otherwise human tasks, shifting the economy and potentially eliminating the need for a flesh-and-blood workforce. Turns out that idea perks up some ears at the White House. The National Science and Technology Council subcommittee on machine learning and artificial intelligence will start to meet next week, for the purpose of "monitor state-of-the-art advances and technology milestones in artificial intelligence and machine learning within the Federal Government, in the private sector, and internationally; and help coordinate Federal activity in this space." Additionally the White House will be holding four events in Summer 2016, to create more dialogue on how A.I. could change the United States.

A partial digital reconstruction of the brain previously made by Harvard. We've talked a lot about making a computer that works like the mammalian brain. The U.S. government is now betting $28 million dollars that all these projects are wrong. A series of three grants snagged by Harvard University from Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) last week has funded a "moonshot" project to throw out all of the previous attempts at understanding the brain and start fresh. But while DARPA focuses on military projects, IARPA focuses on intelligence agency research.)

In 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration will admit military, private, and commercial drones into U.S. airspace. The move could dramatically increase the number of unmanned aircraft shooting through the skies, and with it, the value of the domestic drone economy. The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimates that the new regulations will result in "100,000 jobs created and economic impact of $82 billion" by 2025. For several cities and states across the country, that means one thing: ka-ching. Take North Dakota, where law enforcement, local government, federal agencies, and universities have already laid the groundwork for the coming drone-volution.

Senators, law enforcement officials, and assorted experts attended a judiciary hearing yesterday to discuss the implications of drones in U.S. airspace. Right now drones aren't a part of everyday life for most Americans, but that's changing with 81 organizations--including government agencies, police departments, and universities-- cleared to fly robots in the U.S. and more expected down the line. In 2015, the Federal Aviation Authority plans to allow the first commercial use of drones in the United States. That might sound scary to people worried about a drone flying overhead and--legally--snapping pictures of them in their backyard sunning in their birthday suit. Thing is, that future has already arrived.

When the Navy's X-47B drone screamed skyward off the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in May, those of us standing on the flight deck knew we were witnessing history: a robot flying itself--no pilot in the cockpit or on the ground, guiding the aircraft with a joystick. It was the first time an autonomous war plane had completed a catapult launch from a carrier deck. And it was just the latest milestone for the X-47B. Here are some of the others: It's the first tailless, "batwing"-style airframe (it's technically known as a "cranked kite" design) to takeoff and land on a carrier. It's the first jet-powered drone to operate from a carrier as well as the first unmanned combat fighter jet analog to come this far in its development.

DARPA's vision for scavenging and salvaging dead satellites in orbit continues its trudge toward technologic feasibility. DARPA launched its Phoenix initiative in summer of last year hoping to cobble together a robot capable of intercepting, dismantling, and rebuilding defunct satellites even as they whip through space some 22,000 miles above the Earth. It's a tall order, requiring all kinds of capabilities that are less-than-fully mature, things like robotic autonomy/artificial intelligence, machine vision, and on-orbit satellite refueling. But if a new video released by DARPA is any indication, work on the Phoenix satellite scavenger is progressing. That's not to say a vehicle launch is in the immediate offing, but the video above--illustrated by an animation of how each technology piece would work within the larger concept--shows piece by piece how the project is moving forward.

We've long been fans of the self-sustaining, wave-powered Waveglider, a maritime robot that can harvest propulsion energy from the rolling motion of ocean waves to operate far from shores indefinitely--or at least until something breaks down. Durability, then, is key to Waveglider's seafaring success, and this this year it proved its hardiness several times over. First, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began custom-fitting the Waveglider to be a long-endurance weather monitoring platform capable of staying at sea for many months at a time to intercept hurricanes and other storms gathering far from shore--a major vote of confidence for the technology. Then we learned in early November that one of NOAA's Wavegliders had deployed (and survived) off the coast of New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy, withstanding the full brunt of her destructive power as she came ashore (while beaming reams of valuable data to meteorologist back onshore). And finally, we learned that the first of four Wavegliders that set off from San Francisco last year on a trans-Pacific crossing had reached Australia, proving these robots are ready for long-duration science missions at sea with virtually no human help or interference.