CSA Ray Hammond’s Blog

Glimpses of the Future – April 2016

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Blood Pressure Readings From Wrist Prove Difficult

We’ve been waiting for two years for a “watch” from Apple or Samsung that can provide accurate blood pressure readings. Samsung even demonstrated its prototype Simband mid-2014 displaying a BP measurement.

The future of digital health depends on this vital measurement.

But now it emerges that it is proving almost impossible to get accurate and consistent measurements of BP from a wrist device. Read More

Glimpses of the Future – March 2016

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IBM’S Adoption Of Blockchain Secures Its Future

International Business Machines Inc. is becoming the biggest backer of the Blockchain technology that underpins the bitcoin digital currency.

In the coming year, IBM will begin testing its own variation on the transactional software known as Blockchain, aiming to simplify life for customers who lease IBM’s computer hardware, the company said.

IBM, in a bid to establish a new standard for Blockchain software expects to contribute computer code it developed to a free, open-source project called Hyperledger. Read More

Glimpses of the Future – February 2016

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Ford Believes Wearables Will Be Part Of In-Car Technology

Ford has announced the opening of a wearables research laboratory because it considers a relationship between wearables and driving have some kind of potential.

Following the mantra that “the connection between what you wear and what you drive is getting stronger”, Ford’s new Automotive Wearables Experience laboratory brings together a bunch of scientists and engineers to integrate wearable devices and vehicles. Read More

Glimpses of the Future – January 2016

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Tech Leaders Move To Keep AI Safe For Humanity

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley heavyweights are set to pour $1bn into a new attempt to protect humanity from artificial intelligence, underscoring the unease with which many leading technologists view recent developments in AI.

The new company, OpenAI, will be a non-profit that conducts research, with the aim that “AI should be an extension of individual human wills”.

Concerns about the future powers of computers have been increasing, particularly as recent breakthroughs in “deep learning” have enabled computers better to recognise patterns and understand speech. Read More

Glimpses of the Future – December 2015

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Battery Breakthrough We’ve All Been Waiting For

A breakthrough in electro-chemistry at Cambridge university could lead the way to rechargeable super-batteries that pack five times more energy into a given space than today’s best batteries, greatly extending the range of electric vehicles (500 miles on a single charge) and potentially transforming the economics of electricity storage. Read More

Digital Driving: The Future of Road Transport

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DIGITAL DRIVING

Motor vehicles provide us with one of the great personal freedoms of the industrial age and they are a central driver of our modern economies. But motoring is also the most dangerous activity humans undertake regularly. Over 1.25 million people are killed globally on the roads each year, the equivalent of 300 jet planes crashing. Millions more suffer injuries so severe their lives are devastated. Read More