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Amazon's Alexa Fellowship expands to 14 more universities
Amazon is eager to get more bright minds working on voice technology, so it's expanding the Alexa Fellowship program to 14 more universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Texas A&M and Cambridge. The fellowships are financed through Amazon's $200 million Alexa Fund.
Hydrogel injections could increase wounded soldier survival rates
If a team of researchers from MIT and Texas A&M University have their way, wounded soldiers will have soon have a better chance of survival. The project is a biodegradable gelatin that once injected, helps with blood coagulation, cutting down on blood loss internally. In some trials, the hydrogel decreased the time it took for the blood to clot by 77 percent after it maneuvered into position. The medical solution is still in the testing phase, but once its perfected, researchers hope to see soldiers add preloaded syringes packed with the material to their gear arsenals. [Image credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images]
Robots perform in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' said to outdo the cast of New Moon
Shakespeare's plays have a long, long history of being modded to fit the times. We've seen Macbeths do the running man, and Cordelias dressed like Susie Sioux -- and we've also seen Forbidden Planet, so we know that Robby was just a tinned up Ariel. So robots in Shakespeare? Sure, we've seen that before, but what haven't we seen intertwined into bad theatre? Well, Texas A&M's just staged A Midsummer Night's Dream to include robotic cast members. Working with Professor Robin Murphy, who heads up the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, director Amy Hopper hacked the script a bit to include an air robot -- which is about the size of a pizza, and has been used in military operations -- playing a fairy, and six small radio controlled helicopters. The robotics team used the opportunity to observe how cast and audience members reacted to the robots, and we're pretty sure the audience warmed to them far more quickly than they would to Christian Bale or Sean Penn.
