Scientists are developing a robotic sleeve that can encase a flabby diseased heart and gently squeeze to keep it pumping. So far it’s been tested only in animals, improving blood flow in pigs. But this “soft robotic” device mimics the natural movements of a beating heart, a strategy for next-generation treatments of deadly heart failure. The key: A team from Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital wound artificial muscles into the thin silicone sleeve, so that it alternately compresses, twists and relaxes in synchrony with the heart tissue underneath. It’s an approach dramatically different from today’s therapies and, if it is proven in people, it might offer an alternative to heart transplants or maybe even aid in recovery.

When he was 14 years old, Lawrence Birnbaum taught himself how to program, but he had trouble even finding a computer to work on. Still, he knew computers were going to be the future. That was in the late 1960s. When Birnbaum — today a computer science professor at Northwestern — was in college, there were relatively few computer science majors, and his professors had graduated from schools of math or electrical engineering. The field was still new. Fast forward to now. New computer science graduates often have their pick of opportunities as recruiters struggle to fill positions in the industry. The big question is: Why? Are too few students majoring in fields with the best employment and growth potential? First of all, it’s clear that computer science is a good career bet.

One percent of the world’s population, approximately 70 million people, are blind. That is not a huge number when you think of it in terms of a potential use base for a consumer product, but it is massive when you consider that there are currently few assistive technologies available as an aid to make easier the lives of the visually impaired. A new startup that spun out of Oxford last year, OxSight, is looking to change that. The company built and is testing augmented reality glasses to help the visually impaired recognize and navigate objects in their environment. Think of it as a hearing aid for the blind. OxSight is a potential replacement for canes and seeing-eye dogs.

For all the good that machine learning can accomplish in cybersecurity, it's important to remember that the technology is also accessible to bad actors. While writers and futurists dream up nightmarish scenarios of artificial intelligence turning on its creators and exterminating mankind like Terminators and Cylons – heck, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have warned AI is dangerous – the more pressing concern today is that machines can be intentionally programmed to abet cybercriminal operations. Could we one day see the benevolent AIs of the world matching wits with malicious machines, with the fate of our IT systems at stake? Here's what experts had to say…

Veronica Rivera signed up for the introduction to computer science class at Harvey Mudd College mostly because she had no choice: It was mandatory. Programming was intimidating and not for her, she thought. She expected the class to be full of guys who loved video games and grew up obsessing over how they were made. There were plenty of those guys but, to her surprise, she found the class fascinating.

I was introduced to higher level Computer Science concepts in high school. I think I took at least one computer-related class each year, sometimes more. We were taught in a pretty straightforward, logical way, from simple concepts up toward more complicated ones. But these days, Computer Science concepts are often taught from such an early age that they aren’t taught sequentially, or even in order of complexity. There are books, toys, kits, apps, and games that all introduce kids to programming and Computer Science. This seems to be the new way of things.

It's a fact of nature that a single conversation can be interpreted in very different ways. For people with anxiety or conditions such as Asperger's, this can make social situations extremely stressful. But what if there was a more objective way to measure and understand our interactions? Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science say that they've gotten closer to a potential solution: an artificially intelligent, wearable system that can predict if a conversation is happy, sad, or neutral based on a person's speech patterns and vitals.

Bats have long captured the imaginations of scientists and engineers with their unrivaled agility and maneuvering characteristics, achieved by functionally versatile dynamic wing conformations as well as more than forty active and passive joints on the wings. However, their wing flexibility and complex wing kinematics pose significant technological challenges for robot modelling, design, and control. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Caltech have developed a self-contained robotic bat—dubbed Bat Bot—with soft, articulated wings that can mimic the key flight mechanisms of biological bats.

It felt like a check-up from the future. Instead of a receptionist, the foyer at Forward's San Francisco doctor's office features a glass case full of Fitbits and connected blood pressure cuffs, iPads, and an inconspicuous body sensor. Sensors and technology are baked into care, and Forward, which opens Tuesday, has doctors and nurses who are on call 24/7. Founded by former Googler and AI pioneer Adrian Aoun, Forward is designed to be a primary care facility, including services for women's health. It has four doctors in-house and will refer patients who need further care to an outside network.

Physicists have sketched a blueprint for building a quantum computer using existing technology that would be powerful enough to crack important and currently unsolvable problems, such as factoring enormous numbers. Such a machine would need to be larger than a football pitch and would cost at least £100 million (US$126 million) to make, its designers say. “Yes it will be big, yes it will be expensive — but it absolutely can be built right now,” says quantum physicist Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex, UK, who leads the team that published the blueprint in a paper in Science Advances.

Engineers at MIT have fabricated transparent, gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them. The bots can perform a number of fast, forceful tasks, including kicking a ball underwater, and grabbing and releasing a live fish. The robots are made entirely of hydrogel -- a tough, rubbery, nearly transparent material that's composed mostly of water.

The robots of the future will be coming soon, rolling along at a lumbering pace with those goods you just ordered. The six-wheeled, knee-high robots from startup Starship Technologies are part of a new wave of automated systems taking aim at the "last mile" delivery of goods to consumers. Starship is launching a pilot project of robotic deliveries of parcels, groceries and prepared foods in early February in the US capital Washington, with a similar test taking place in Redwood City, California. The startup, created by two of the founders of Skype, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, has already begun testing in several European cities as part of an effort to bring new efficiencies to local delivery.

Hidden Figures, the just-released movie, highlights the roles of three black female mathematicians (human computers) working at NASA who helped win the Space Race. At one time, computer science was originally a female-dominated area, and computing was considered “women’s work.” Fast forward to 2017 and women in computer science aren’t common. The number of women receiving degrees in this now male-dominated area has declined. Granted, women total 48.5% of Carnegie Mellon’s computer science class, but this accomplishment is an exception to the rule.

The latest robot from Google can twirl with the grace of a figure skater and jump over tall obstacles. The company's Boston Dynamics unit recently showed off a new robot called Handle. Resembling a human with a torso, two arms and legs, Handle's feet have been replaced by wheels. At a recent event, Boston Dynamics teased the robot, which will be able to carry objects and perform other tasks.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is launching operations this month of one of the world’s most powerful and energy-efficient supercomputers, providing the nation with a major new tool to advance understanding of the atmospheric and related Earth system sciences. Named “Cheyenne,” the 5.34-petaflop system is capable of more than triple the amount of scientific computing performed by the previous NCAR supercomputer, Yellowstone. It also is three times more energy efficient.

A computer interface that can decipher the thoughts of people who are unable to communicate could revolutionize the lives of those living with completely locked-in syndrome, according to a new paper publishing in PLOS Biology. Counter to expectations, the participants in the study reported being "happy," despite their extreme condition. The research was conducted by a multinational team, led by Professor Niels Birbaumer, at the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, Switzerland.

The heart is a wonder of design – a pump that can function for 80 years, and billions of heartbeats, without breaking down. But when it does malfunction, the results can be dire. In research reported in the International Journal of Cardiology, scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Ohio State University presented a new method for predicting those most at risk for thrombus, or blood clots, in the heart. The critical factor, the researchers found, is the degree to which the mitral jet penetrates into the left ventricle of the heart. If the jet doesn't travel deep enough into the ventricle, it can prevent the heart from properly flushing blood from the chamber, potentially leading to clots, strokes and other dangerous consequences.

The new supercomputer "Minerva" has been put into operation at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI). With 9,504 compute cores, 38 TeraByte memory and a peak performance of 302.4 TeraFlop/s it is more than six times as powerful as its predecessor. The scientists of the department "Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity" can now compute significantly more gravitational waveforms and also carry out more complex simulations.

A team of researchers led by biophysicists at the University of Washington have come one step closer to designing tailor-made drug molecules that are more precise and carry fewer side effects than most existing therapeutic compounds. With the help of the Mira supercomputer, located at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, the scientists have successfully designed and verified stable versions of synthetic peptides, components that join together to form proteins. They published their work in a recent issue of Nature.

In the Silicon Valley, they call it the “3 percent problem.” African-Americans and Latino/Hispanics make up a tiny fraction of the overwhelmingly white, male-dominated workforce of major technology companies. No leader of the top 10 U.S.-based technology companies is African-American or Latino/Hispanic, and only one is a woman—Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM.

China plans to develop a prototype exascale computer by the end of the year, state media said Tuesday, as it seeks to win a global race to be the first to build a machine capable of a billion, billion calculations per second. If successful, the achievement would cement its place as a leading power in the world of supercomputing. The Asian giant built the world's fastest supercomputer, the Sunway TaihuLight machine, in June last year, which was twice as fast as the previous number one. It used only locally made microchips, making it the first time a country has taken the top spot without using US technology. Exascale computers are even more powerful, and can execute at least one quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second.

AS FRIDAY NIGHT became Saturday morning, Dong Kim sounded defeated. Kim is a high-stakes poker player who specializes in no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em. The 28-year-old Korean-American typically matches wits with other top players on high-stakes internet sites or at the big Las Vegas casinos. But this month, he’s in Pittsburgh, playing poker against an artificially intelligent machine designed by two computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon.

Academia has always been a leader in pushing the boundaries of science and technology, with some of the most brilliant minds in the world focused on how they can improve the tools at their disposal to solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges. That’s why, as the Leader of the OpenPOWER Academic Discussion Group, I believe working with academics in university and research centers to develop and adopt OpenPOWER technology is key to growing the ecosystem. The Academia Group is enabling several academicians to do research and development activities using Power CPUs and systems and this creates very strong ecosystem growth for OpenPOWER-based systems.

The introduction of multicore and manycore processors capable of handling highly parallel workflows is changing the face of high performance computing (HPC). Many supercomputer users, like the big DOE labs, are implementing these next generation systems. They are now engaged in significant code modernization efforts to adapt their key present and future applications to the new processing paradigm, and to bring their internal and external users up to speed. For some in the HPC community, this creates unanticipated challenges along with great opportunities.

A new proof-of-concept study by researchers from the University of California San Diego has succeeded in training computers to “learn” what a healthy versus an unhealthy gut microbiome looks like based on its genetic makeup. Since this can be done by genetically sequencing fecal samples, the research suggests there is great promise for new diagnostic tools that are, unlike blood draws, non-invasive.