For an aging population, companion or “social” robots have a lot of promise; they could assist with everyday tasks, help keep in touch with family and friends, and even combat loneliness. But it’s worth wondering whether we should worry about becoming too emotionally attached to a machine.
ElliQ is the latest sidekick to join this new brave new set of companion bots. Made by Intuition Robotics in Israel, ElliQ is described as a “social entity” that helps older adults stay independent, active, and engaged.
Its makers understand the bond formed with a companion machine is very different than one formed with a human, but striking the right balance between usefulness and personality in a companion robot is tricky, especially when it comes to a vulnerable population like the elderly. Where does the line between meaningful friendship and artificial tool lie?
In Japan, the secret to living a longer, happier and more fulfilled life can be summed up in one word: Ikigai.
In Japanese, iki means “to live” and gai means “reason” — in other words, your reason to live. This ideology dates to the Heian period (A.D. 794 to 1185), but only in the past decade has it gained attention from millions around the world.
The ikigai way of life is especially prominent Okinawa, in a group of islands south of mainland Japan. (It has also been nicknamed the “Land of Immortals” because it has among the longest lifespans and highest rates of centenarians in the world.)
If you were a wrestling fan on May 23rd, 1999, you were probably doing one of three things.One of those was watching WWE’s latest pay-per-view event, Over the Edge. Another was using “scramblevision” to listen to that event by tuning a TV or VCR without a cable box to the pay-per-view channel. Some fans were probably also watching The Jesse Ventura Story on NBC, which they doubtless regretted instantly. The low-budget Ventura biopic, made with cooperation for WWE’s rival promotion WCW, was an absolute catastrophe of a film and a rushed, obvious cash-in on Ventura’s upset win in the Minnesota gubernatorial election six months earlier. While bad and stupid in every possible way, the movie’s most enduring artistic legacy is the absurd amount of “creative license” it took, most famously through making Ventura a central figure of a scenario that was clearly based on Bret Hart’s last night in WWE.
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Owen Hart with his beloved Slammy Award statue in a 1996 WWE promotional image.
What would be the point of holding a soccer world championship if we couldn’t distinguish the ball from its background?Simply unthinkable! But then again, wouldn’t it be fantastic if your favourite team’s striker could see the movements of the ball in slow motion! Unfortunately, this advantage only belongs to flies. The minute brains of these aeronautic acrobats process visual movements in only fractions of a second. Just how the brain of the fly manages to perceive motion with such speed and precision is predicted quite accurately by a mathematical model. However, even after 50 years of research, it remains a mystery as to how nerve cells are actually interconnected in the brain of the fly. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology are now the first to successfully establish the necessary technical conditions for decoding the underlying mechanisms of motion vision. The first analyses have already shown that a great deal more remains to be discovered.
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Seeing into a fly’s brain: Neurobiologists use state-of-the-art methods to observe the activity of nerve cells
Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world.Angel Falls is also called Kerepakupai meru which means “waterfall of the deepest place.” Angel Falls is found in Venezuela in the Canaima National Park. It is the highest waterfall in the world at 3,212 feet (979 m).
If you’re a consumer, the 5G horizon seems to be getting closer by the day as vendors begin shipping 5G-capable handsets and telecom operators refine their buildout plans.
But as the pace gradually quickens, one thing is clear: The transition to 5G won’t look anything like 3G and 4G migrations. To a certain extent, 5G will expand the speed-and-performance curve just as 3G and 4G did. And sure, we’ll have fancy new 5G phones in a couple of years, but we’re not where the real action is going to be. Because this isn’t going to be a consumer revolution at all. Rather, it’ll be an enterprise one.
How much more?
For now, radically new 5G use-cases for consumers are relatively hard to find. Today’s 4G devices and networks already deliver rich, immersive experiences, so most consumers are not compelled to pay more for 5G when they’re still focused on getting more gigabytes for their hard-earned subscription dollar.
Sleep scientist Matthew Walker has observed that “human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent gain.” We stay up late to watch our favorite TV shows. We wake up early to get to work or school on time. And twice a year we change our clocks, to the bewilderment of our circadian rhythms.
We also set up conflicts between our natural and social clocks in other, less obvious ways, a fact underscored in research published this month in the Journal of Health Economics. It turns out, the study found, that living on the wrong side of a time zone’s boundary can have negative consequences on a person’s health and wallet.
The culprit? More natural light in the evening hours.
A few years ago, I read reports of an indigenous tribe living deep in the Amazon rainforest whose members had hardly any evidence of heart disease. In fact, the researchers concluded after a year-long study that the Tsimane, as they are called, had the healthiest hearts in the world, a title previously held by Japanese women.
Preventing heart disease is a topic I think about all the time, given my own significant family history of heart disease. Like many people, I worried that it was inevitable for me. So last summer, I decided to travel to Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in South America, to learn what they could teach me and the rest of the world about preventing heart disease.
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Getting to the Tsimane wasn’t easy. After flying into La Paz, the highest capital city in the world at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, we took a small prop plane to Rurrenabaque, a small town in the lowlands of northern Bolivia, along the Beni River and at the edge of the Amazon rainforest. We drove 4×4 trucks as far as we could into the forest and then jumped into dug-out canoes and made our way down the rivers and streams of the Amazon.
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Sanjay Gupta discovers the surprising secret to this tribe’s health
A Chicago bank chairman has been indicted in Manhattan on a charge that he issued millions of dollars in high-risk loans to President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in an effort to obtain a senior position in the administration, federal authorities said on Thursday.
Prosecutors said the chairman, Stephen M. Calk of Federal Savings Bank, pushed the bank to give Mr. Manafort $16 million in loans in 2016 in exchange for help in procuring an appointment for Mr. Calk.
Just after the election, Mr. Calk, 54, sent Mr. Manafort a list of 10 positions ranked in order of preference, including Treasury secretary, commerce secretary and defense secretary, according to the indictment unsealed in Federal District Court.
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Stephen M. Calk leaving Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday. Mr. Calk sent Paul Manafort a list of 10 positions he wanted in the administration, according to an indictment.CreditCreditJefferson Siegel for The New York Times
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Robot companions
Smiling Japanese elder
An image of Angel Falls
The key to 5G success
The wrong side of a time zone
