Top 10 predictions In the 21st century, I bet the following 10 things happening: 1) Man/Women walking on Mars. As is currently happening in India and southeast Asia and with the advent of cheap labor and nearly free energy (Africa's desert is a prime location for solar power). It will surely attract hefty amounts of foreign investment 4) Genetic and Stem Cell research collide and make discovery's that lead to cures for almost all genetic disorders. It'll be like INTERPOL on steriods and very little red tape. Their capabilities powers will broaden with every terrorist attack.

It can get lonely in space, even for a robot. Kirobo, the Japanese humanoid robot who is modeled after Astro Boy, was developed to entertain astronauts in space. But now that the robot's trip home has been delayed, it seems Kirobo is finding his stay at the International Space Station rather desolate. Created by robot designer Tomotaka Takahashi, the Kirobo robot has a special mission "to help solve the problems brought about by a society that has become more individualized and less communicative," according to the Kibo Robot Project website. "Nowadays, more and more people are living alone. With a new style of robot-human interface, perhaps a way to solve this problem could be found. This is the goal we have in mind for this project."

To mark the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, AT&T teamed up with New York University's Ability Lab to challenge app developers to use their network and technology to make life easier for people with disabilities. Together they launched the Connect Ability Challenge, designed to spur innovation for people with physical, social, emotional and cognitive disabilities. Winners of the contest, which saw a total of 63 submissions, were announced Monday. In total, AT&T awarded $100,000 in cash. That included a $25,000 grand prize for Kinesic Mouse, software that uses Intel's Real Sense Web camera to detect facial expressions and head rotations, enabling people to operate their personal computers hands-free.

As mentioned already on The Conversation and other websites, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed British mathematician Alan Turing. According to some, computer intelligence is on course to match human intelligence by 2045. The outline of his remarkable life and sad ending has by now become fairly well known. Turing laid numerous foundation stones of modern computing, ranging from the deepest mathematical nature of computing (using what are now called Turing machines, he provided the modern approach to incompleteness (PDF) and undecidability) to specific issues of practical design; he also contributed to mathematical biology (morphology) and much else. At the same time, he played a key role in the British government's breaking of the German Enigma code at the now-fabled, but then ultra-secret, Bletchley Park, thus arguably accelerating the end of the second world war.

Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits slammed the Bush administration for failing to "connect the dots" foreshadowing the attack. For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively--to connect the dots--as an assault on "privacy." Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction. "No one in the research and development community is putting together tools to make us safer," says Lee Zeichner of Zeichner Risk Analytics, a risk consultancy firm, "because they're afraid" of getting caught up in a privacy scandal. The chilling effect has been even stronger in government. "Many perfectly legal things that could be done ...

As the truck growled up another rise and started back down again, Zych reached up and flicked a wiper switch to brush away the slurry, then put his hands back in his lap. "We haven't automated those yet," he explained, referring to the windshield wipers, as the robotic truck reached the bottom of the hill and executed a perfect hairpin turn. Ten years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have put a spotlight on the growing use of unmanned systems in the skies over the battlefield, from the high-flying Global Hawk to the lethal Predator aircraft and the hand-launched Raven. But on the ground, thousands of small, remotely operated robots also have proven their value in dealing with roadside bombs, a lethal threat to U.S. troops in both wars. Of more than 6,000 robots deployed, about 750 have been destroyed in action, saving at least that many human lives, the Pentagon's Robotics Systems Joint Program Office estimates.

Welcome to the website of the Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR). A wide variety of documents are encountered by each of us everyday. They cover all spheres of our lives including commerce, education, law, health, religion, music and entertainment. Some of these documents have a simple and predictable structure such as a page in a printed book. Others have much more complex structure such as those involving figures, tables, logos, signatures, handwriting, etc. Discovering methods and algorithms for analyzing the structure and content of complex documents, and their generalization to related domains, is the focus of research at CEDAR.

The CCC-sponsored initiative in robotics, led by Henrik Christensen, has made great progress and provided a model example of a CCC initiative. Having finished their series of workshops and developed a roadmap, they are now bringing targeted portions of that roadmap to NSF, NIST, DARPA, NIH and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. They are also organizing a U.S. Congressional caucus on robotics to take place in March. Additionally several companies have expressed an interest in engaging in a broader effort on robotics across United States. Back in early 2008, they began organizing four workshops, one each in four topical areas of robotics: manufacturing and logistics, healthcare and medical robotics, service robotics and emerging technologies.

Evidence of humans fearing technology dates back to the Industrial Revolution, when what came to be known as "technophobia" was first observed. Eighteenth-century factory workers worried that the development of new machines would take away their livelihoods and ability to survive. As it turns out, some of those fears were justified. Violent man-versus-machine conflicts saw members of the British working class destroying the devices that had replaced their jobs well into the 1800s, setting the stage for centuries of anti-robot rhetoric played out in books, movies and ideological movements. Today, serious fears of a "robot revolution" are only just starting to crystallize for the average person – but it's happening quickly, and spreading far beyond the confines of science fiction.

Four sister robots built by NASA could be pioneers in the colonization of Mars, part of an advance construction team that sets up a habitat for more fragile human explorers. But first they're finding new homes on Earth and engineers to hone their skills. The space agency has kept one Valkyrie robot at its birthplace, the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It has loaned three others to universities in Massachusetts and Scotland so professors and students can tinker with the 1.8-metre tall, 125-kilogram humanoids and make them more autonomous. One of the robots, nicknamed Val, still hasn't quite harmonized its 28 torque-controlled joints and nearly 200 sensors after arriving at a robotics centre at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Northeastern University Ph.D. student Murphy Wonsick adjusts the leg of a six-foot-tall, 125 kg Valkyrie robot at University of Massachusetts-Lowell's robotics centre in Lowell, Mass.