Ohio's Abortion Wrestle; Mission Tennesse: Divide, Conqueror, Abort!; Pokemon Go Politician; Watching from Above; Obama's Illegal War Legacy; Singapore Taxi Bot; Pizza in the Sky With Dialings; Wearables for Wheelchairs; Unborn 3D; Squishy Bot; and Stretchy Sensor

Society

Attorney General Mike DeWine appeals ruling supporting Cleveland abortion clinic's fight cleveland

DeWine this week asked the Ohio Supreme Court to review a decision from a Cuyahoga County appeals court cuyahogacounty.us that allowed the case to proceed. In a 2-1 decision, the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals ruled that Preterm-Cleveland had standing to sue the state.

Also see Ohio AG Mike DeWine Files Appeal to Protect Pro-life Laws nationalrighttolifenews.org

A pro-abortion-rights group is gearing up for battle in the most unlikely of trenches businessinsider

This month, NARAL, one of the country's most prominent reproductive-rights groups, launched Tennessee Total Access, the first of a potential series of programs aimed at organizing pockets of pro-choice support in deeply conservative states.

Norwegian politician rebuked for playing Pokemon Go during defence hearing in.reuters

Liberal Party leader Trine Skei Grande was caught on camera during a foreign affairs and defence committee hearing catching a Pokemon - it was not immediately clear which one - after asking a question to a group of military experts.

Big Brother

Amazon and the CIA Want to Teach AI to Watch from Space technologyreview

In a joint project, DigitalGlobe digitalglobe today released satellite imagery depicting the whole of Rio de Janeiro to a resolution of 50 centimeters. The outlines of 200,000 buildings inside the city's roughly 1,900 square kilometers have been manually marked on the photos. The SpaceNet data set, as it is called, is intended to spark efforts to train machine-learning algorithms to interpret high-resolution satellite photos by themselves.

Military

Is Obama Enabling the Next President to Launch Illegal Wars? theatlantic

President Obama has been emphatically warning Americans about the dangers of a Trump presidency. But these warnings divert attention from a much darker reality. His Justice Department is in fact pushing the law in a direction that will enable the next president to declare war against any “terrorist” group or nation without the consent of Congress.

Automation

World's first self-driving taxi trial begins in Singapore theverge

The first ever self-driving taxis available to the public have started picking up passengers in Singapore. The pilot scheme is a milestone in the development of self-driving cars, but relatively limited in scope. Only six autonomous vehicles — Renault Zoes and Mitsubishi i-MiEVs modified by MIT-spinoff NuTonomy nutonomy — will be offering rides, and only then from predetermined pick-up and drop-off points within a 2.5-square-mile radius.

Domino's planning drone pizza delivery service in New Zealand theguardian

The pizzamaker carried out a demonstration delivery by drone in Auckland on Thursday, and afterwards said it aimed to launch a regular service in late 2016.

Also see Domino's using drones to deliver pizza to New Zealand homes stuff.co.nz v

Tech

Researchers license technology to prevent injury in wheelchair users phys.org

The technology, called Redliner, takes concepts used in wearable technologies and applies them to wheelchair users: a wheelchair "wears" the device to monitor a user's propulsion parameters, with the goal of preventing overexertion that can lead to shoulder injuries. Dr. Martin Ferguson-Pell, one of the Redliner inventors and a Professor in the University of Alberta Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, found in a UK study that 66 per cent of wheelchair users with a spinal cord injury experience shoulder pain and injury caused by wear and tear during wheelchair use.

3D Printing

IN UTERO 3D is 3D printing fetuses so blind moms can feel their unborn babies 3ders.org

For every expecting parent, there is nothing quite as exciting and even as life-changing as seeing your future baby growing inside the mother’s womb for the first time through ultrasound imaging. Seeing the first fragments of your child’s head, feet, body, and arms truly puts the miracle of life into a whole new perspective. But what if you can’t see? How impactful is the ultrasound imaging then? Fortunately, a startup from Szczecin, Poland has dedicated itself to this question and is offering a service which 3D prints bas-reliefs of ultrasound images for blind expecting parents so that they can see their unborn baby in an entirely tactile way.

Research

Squishy 'Octobot' Moves Autonomously npr.org v

The squishy eight-legged robot described in the journal Nature is made entirely out of soft, flexible materials, runs on hydrogen peroxide, and looks like a 2-centimeter-tall baby octopus.

Stretchy graphene sensor feels the strain cen.acs.org

The device is sensitive enough to measure a pulse from a person’s wrist, allowing it to be used as an inexpensive pulse monitor outside of a hospital setting, Shi says. The team also placed the device on a person’s throat and was able to detect different signals when the person spoke different words. Such a device might be used to retrain someone having trouble speaking, or provide a new means of controlling a computer, Shi suggests.