These tiny bacteria can turn waste into electricity ⚡
Hidden in mud, soil, and oxygen-poor environments, some bacteria have a remarkable ability: they can generate electrical current by transferring electrons outside their cells as they break down organic matter.
Species like Geobacter and Shewanella do this through specialized proteins and conductive structures. Scientists are exploring how to harness this natural process using microbial fuel cells.
The goal is to turn organic waste and wastewater into electricity while helping reduce pollution. In the future, these systems could potentially power small sensors and devices in places where conventional energy sources are impractical.
The biggest challenge is efficiency. Generating enough electricity reliably for widespread use remains difficult.
Still, the idea is incredible: microscopic organisms could help turn waste into a source of clean energy.
@futurism🧬
Hidden in mud, soil, and oxygen-poor environments, some bacteria have a remarkable ability: they can generate electrical current by transferring electrons outside their cells as they break down organic matter.
Species like Geobacter and Shewanella do this through specialized proteins and conductive structures. Scientists are exploring how to harness this natural process using microbial fuel cells.
The goal is to turn organic waste and wastewater into electricity while helping reduce pollution. In the future, these systems could potentially power small sensors and devices in places where conventional energy sources are impractical.
The biggest challenge is efficiency. Generating enough electricity reliably for widespread use remains difficult.
Still, the idea is incredible: microscopic organisms could help turn waste into a source of clean energy.
@futurism
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This video of robot crabs dancing on the streets is going VIRAL.
The robot, called Jumper, has 22 moving joints and can walk, wave and dance. Its code and hardware guide are open-source, so anyone can build their own.
@futurism🧬
The robot, called Jumper, has 22 moving joints and can walk, wave and dance. Its code and hardware guide are open-source, so anyone can build their own.
@futurism
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Russian scientists unveil prototype of plasma engine, potentially cutting the trip to Mars from nine months to just 30 days.
@futurism🧬
@futurism
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A Y Combinator-backed startup wants AI agents watching every customer 👀
What if every company assigned an AI agent to monitor everything about you, from your work activity and sales calls to your LinkedIn posts?
That’s the vision behind Outlit, a startup backed by Y Combinator. Its AI agents collect information from internal company records, social media and websites, building continuously updated profiles of business customers.
The goal is to help companies predict when clients might leave, identify sales opportunities and tell employees exactly when and how to reach out.
Outlit’s co-founder acknowledged that the system could theoretically pick up sensitive personal information shared publicly online, including details about relationships, illness or family tragedies. The company does not currently offer monitored individuals an opt-out, according to Futurism.
The founder believes this kind of continuous monitoring is inevitable, arguing that AI agents could eventually manage business relationships better than humans.
@futurism🧬
What if every company assigned an AI agent to monitor everything about you, from your work activity and sales calls to your LinkedIn posts?
That’s the vision behind Outlit, a startup backed by Y Combinator. Its AI agents collect information from internal company records, social media and websites, building continuously updated profiles of business customers.
The goal is to help companies predict when clients might leave, identify sales opportunities and tell employees exactly when and how to reach out.
Outlit’s co-founder acknowledged that the system could theoretically pick up sensitive personal information shared publicly online, including details about relationships, illness or family tragedies. The company does not currently offer monitored individuals an opt-out, according to Futurism.
The founder believes this kind of continuous monitoring is inevitable, arguing that AI agents could eventually manage business relationships better than humans.
@futurism
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Beijing-based NeodraDynamics Robotics has unveiled Neo1, a towering 13-foot (4-metre), 1.2-ton machine that looks like it belongs in a sci-fi movie.
The company says the giant robot uses a hybrid hydraulic-electric drive and has 41 active degrees of freedom, with arms capable of carrying more than 1,100 pounds (around 500 kg).
Its proposed applications include mining, demolition, aerial inspections and underwater engineering potentially allowing it to tackle dangerous jobs in environments too difficult for humans.
Despite the impressive specifications, Neo1 has yet to be publicly demonstrated in action. Its real-world capabilities remain unverified, so it’s too early to know whether this is a genuine industrial breakthrough or an ambitious concept.
@futurism
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Leave the high work to giant humanoid
Railway crews still lose people and time to falls, shocks, and the need to climb before they can even judge the job. JR West is putting two machines into service this fall to cut crew size on those tasks by about 30%.
A single-arm unit rides the aerial platform and handles lifts up to 120 kg for wire fittings. The humanoid upper body sits on a 15 m boom, roughly 300 kg, 1.5 m wide, operator stays in the truck cab on camera feeds.
The dual arms take swappable tools, chainsaw for tree cutting, paint tool for coating structures, and a gripper so the same machine covers different jobs by changing the end effector. First unit ran in 2024; this is the lighter production version.
It takes the person off the pole and drops tree-clearing teams from four to three. Still pure teleoperation, still limited by which tools are ready and how long swaps take.
@futurism🧬
Railway crews still lose people and time to falls, shocks, and the need to climb before they can even judge the job. JR West is putting two machines into service this fall to cut crew size on those tasks by about 30%.
A single-arm unit rides the aerial platform and handles lifts up to 120 kg for wire fittings. The humanoid upper body sits on a 15 m boom, roughly 300 kg, 1.5 m wide, operator stays in the truck cab on camera feeds.
The dual arms take swappable tools, chainsaw for tree cutting, paint tool for coating structures, and a gripper so the same machine covers different jobs by changing the end effector. First unit ran in 2024; this is the lighter production version.
It takes the person off the pole and drops tree-clearing teams from four to three. Still pure teleoperation, still limited by which tools are ready and how long swaps take.
@futurism
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EPFL researchers developed GOAT, a shape-shifting robot that adapts to different terrains.
It can transform into a rover or sphere to drive, roll downhill, and swim. Its versatile design helps it navigate challenging environments while conserving energy.
@futurism🧬
It can transform into a rover or sphere to drive, roll downhill, and swim. Its versatile design helps it navigate challenging environments while conserving energy.
@futurism
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AI is giving scientific fraudsters a powerful new tool: the ability to manufacture convincing medical studies at scale.
Researchers are warning that paper mills are using generative AI to produce fabricated patient data, misleading statistical analyses and fake references. What once required weeks of work can now be generated in minutes, making fraudulent research harder for journals to identify.
The danger goes beyond academic dishonesty. If fabricated studies enter medical databases, they could influence systematic reviews, distort clinical guidelines and ultimately affect decisions about patient treatment. AI-generated citations add another layer of confusion, making it harder to distinguish reliable evidence from scientific fiction.
The problem is that peer review was never designed to handle an industrial-scale flood of synthetic research. Experts are calling for stronger editorial checks, automated fraud detection and better verification of underlying data.
AI could accelerate medical breakthroughs, but it could also pollute the scientific evidence doctors depend on. The challenge is no longer just producing reliable research, it’s making sure the research being published is real.
@futurism
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AI is learning to build molecular machines that perform precise chemical reactions, including cutting proteins linked to disease.
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design developed two types of AI-designed enzymes capable of cutting specific molecular targets. In initial tests, 36% of 135 designs successfully cut their targets, while 19% of another 69 designs worked through a different cutting mechanism.
The speed gains were even more striking. The best initial design accelerated a chemical reaction by more than 100 million times. After further optimization, one enzyme achieved an acceleration of over 10 billion times.
The team is exploring targets associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s and ALS, where selectively breaking down harmful proteins could eventually open new therapeutic possibilities.
The technology could also find applications in drug development, biotechnology and environmental cleanup.
These molecular scissors are not approved treatments, and their potential against human diseases still needs to be demonstrated. But the results show how AI-designed enzymes could expand our ability to build biological tools for reactions that nature may not perform efficiently on its own.
@futurism
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Could electrical stimulation help people with spinal cord injuries regain the ability to walk? Researchers in Australia are investigating whether it can improve the results of rehabilitation.
In the eWALK clinical trial, 50 people with long-term spinal cord injuries completed 12 weeks of walking rehabilitation. Some also received electrical stimulation through electrodes placed on the skin over the spinal cord.
The results were intriguing, but not quite what researchers hoped for: both groups improved their walking ability, yet electrical stimulation did not significantly outperform rehabilitation alone.
Meanwhile, scientists are developing ultra-thin carbon-fiber electrodes that could interact more precisely with nerve cells, potentially opening new possibilities for spinal cord therapies.
Despite the excitement surrounding these technologies, claims that electrode tattoos have restored walking in people paralyzed for years remain unverified. The science is promising, but major challenges remain.
The ultimate goal is to find ways to restore communication between the nervous system and the muscles. Whether electrical stimulation can meaningfully advance that goal is still being investigated.
@futurism
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Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected a mysterious infrared signal coming from a region of space with no identifiable object to explain it.
The team, led by University of Minnesota astrophysicist Mason Huberty, spotted the unusual emission line twice, in August and November 2023. Despite examining the region from different angles, researchers couldn’t link the signal to any known galaxy or clearly identify its source. Previous observations had also failed to reveal it.
So what could be producing the signal? Scientists have several theories, including a distant galaxy from the early universe, a supernova, or a black hole tearing apart a nearby star.
The problem is that the signal appeared without the additional spectral lines astronomers would normally expect, making it difficult to determine its origin or distance.
@futurism
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🤖 Stanford showed a child-sized robot built to keep people company
At a Stanford tech conference, a small company called Mind Children put a prototype humanoid on display. Cody is shorter than a typical factory bot, with a realistic face, and it is meant for conversation, not warehouse work.
ABC7 reporter Dustin Dorsey met both the robot and CEO Chris Kudla. On camera, Cody introduced itself to viewers. Kudla said the team spent about three years making humanoids feel approachable. Labor machines do physical jobs; this one is built to talk, help people learn, and form a relationship. Recent software lets it play hide-and-seek and Pictionary.
The intended settings are schools, hospitals, senior care, and people living alone or aging at home. Cody is still one of a kind. The company hopes to get the technology into healthcare soon. It is a prototype, not a proven treatment for isolation.
@futurism🧬
At a Stanford tech conference, a small company called Mind Children put a prototype humanoid on display. Cody is shorter than a typical factory bot, with a realistic face, and it is meant for conversation, not warehouse work.
ABC7 reporter Dustin Dorsey met both the robot and CEO Chris Kudla. On camera, Cody introduced itself to viewers. Kudla said the team spent about three years making humanoids feel approachable. Labor machines do physical jobs; this one is built to talk, help people learn, and form a relationship. Recent software lets it play hide-and-seek and Pictionary.
The intended settings are schools, hospitals, senior care, and people living alone or aging at home. Cody is still one of a kind. The company hopes to get the technology into healthcare soon. It is a prototype, not a proven treatment for isolation.
@futurism
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These goggles could help surgeons see cancer glow during surgery 🔬
Nigerian-born scientist Dr. Samuel Achilefu and his research team developed special medical goggles that use fluorescence to help surgeons identify tumors during operations.
Here’s how it works: a fluorescent dye is introduced into the body before surgery. When exposed to specific light, the dye makes targeted tissue glow, while the goggles detect the signal and help surgeons see highlighted areas in real time.
This could make a major difference in cancer surgery, where removing the entire tumor while preserving healthy tissue is a delicate balancing act. By making tumor boundaries easier to identify, the technology could help surgeons remove cancer more precisely and reduce the risk of leaving cancerous tissue behind.
The goggles are not a perfect cancer detector, and their effectiveness depends on the cancer type and clinical application. But the underlying idea is powerful: help surgeons see what the naked eye might miss.
@futurism🧬
Nigerian-born scientist Dr. Samuel Achilefu and his research team developed special medical goggles that use fluorescence to help surgeons identify tumors during operations.
Here’s how it works: a fluorescent dye is introduced into the body before surgery. When exposed to specific light, the dye makes targeted tissue glow, while the goggles detect the signal and help surgeons see highlighted areas in real time.
This could make a major difference in cancer surgery, where removing the entire tumor while preserving healthy tissue is a delicate balancing act. By making tumor boundaries easier to identify, the technology could help surgeons remove cancer more precisely and reduce the risk of leaving cancerous tissue behind.
The goggles are not a perfect cancer detector, and their effectiveness depends on the cancer type and clinical application. But the underlying idea is powerful: help surgeons see what the naked eye might miss.
@futurism
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When humanoid robot police appear on the streets…
This is Fuxi, an anti-riot humanoid robot developed by China’s NORINCO (伏羲-- named after a figure from ancient Chinese mythology, the first of the "Three Sovereigns").
Equipped with a shield in its left hand and a baton in its right, it is designed to suppress violence and maintain public order. Special operations, patrols, security…all through human-robot collaboration.
@futurism🧬
This is Fuxi, an anti-riot humanoid robot developed by China’s NORINCO (伏羲-- named after a figure from ancient Chinese mythology, the first of the "Three Sovereigns").
Equipped with a shield in its left hand and a baton in its right, it is designed to suppress violence and maintain public order. Special operations, patrols, security…all through human-robot collaboration.
@futurism
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Anthropic researchers are warning that AI-powered malware capable of autonomously spreading between everyday devices could be only months away.
Unlike traditional malware, AI worms could use compact AI models to assess unfamiliar hardware, identify vulnerabilities and adapt their behavior as they move between connected devices, from security cameras and televisions to smart appliances.
The concern is that models with fewer than 30 billion parameters may already be capable of performing many of the individual steps needed for autonomous replication.
If these capabilities are combined into a working system, compromised devices could potentially form decentralized networks that are much harder to contain than conventional attacks.
However, the ability to perform individual steps does not mean a fully autonomous, self-replicating AI worm already exists. The timeline remains uncertain.
@futurism
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