Lifeboat Foundation

Merry Christmas, my friends. wink

A massive asteroid flying by Earth on 2015 Christmas Eve has scientists on edge. While NASA is downplaying the threat to human life and property, conspiracy theorists and several experts say space rock 2003 SD220 is larger than believed and has the potential to cause deadly earthquakes and eruptions from dormant volcanoes.

According to a Sun report, the Christmas Eve asteroid is one of at least 10 rocky bodies in space that are considered “potentially hazardous” to Earth. According to an internal report, NASA officials say it measures about 1.5 miles wide and is moving at 5 miles per second.

Continue reading “Enormous Christmas Eve Asteroid Sparks Fears: ‘Potentially Hazardous’ Space Rock Could Cause Earthquakes, Wake Dormant Volcanoes” »

A model of one form of double-stranded DNA attached to two electrodes (credit: UC Davis)

What do you call a DNA molecule that changes between high and low electrical conductance (amount of current flow)?

Answer: a molecular switch (transistor) for nanoscale computing. That’s what a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis and the University of Washington have documented in a paper published in Nature Communications Dec. 9.

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Google is reportedly planning to spin off its self-driving car division and offer autonomous taxi rides.

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Facebook announced that its latest artificial intelligence (AI) server designs will be made open source, continuing on the company’s course of letting others share new hardware designs, which it began back in 2011. Codenamed Big Sur, the server is designed to train the newest class of deep learning AI that mimic the human brain’s neural pathways.

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VisionTek’s new USB 3.0 Pocket SSD slips into your pocket, but it’s faster than the hard drive in your PC—and just as spacious.

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3D MicroPrint is a new micro laser sintering technology for small, precise metal parts: ideal for automotive, medical and jewelery applications.

A new company dubbed 3D MicroPrint has unveiled a new micro laser sintering technology (MLS) for 3D printing tiny metal components for potential applications in industries like watchmaking, cars, and medicine.

The enterprise is a collaboration between two companies based in Germany: 3D-Micromac AG, a provider of laser micromachining systems, and EOS GmbH, an e-Manufacturing group.

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A video done with some humor–part of the Immortality Bus tour:

IBTimes UK captures the moment presidential candidates John McAfee and Zoltan Istvan met for the first time.

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“When will I have a robot that can do my laundry?”

This is the number one question I get from friends and family members, whose expectations are unconstrained by the software and hardware technical realities that make robots tick (washing dishes is a close second by the way).

Since most have been waiting a lifetime for this transformational milestone, I have been promising lately, with muted bravado, that it won’t be too long now.

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By 2034 the annual cost of diabetes in the US will be comparable to the market capitalization of Google.

Diabetes comes in two main forms, type 1 and type 2. Type 1 diabetes is caused by a failure of the body to produce the hormone insulin that helps sugar molecules to be absorbed by your cells. This type of diabetes is commonly caused by an autoimmune reaction in which the body attacks the pancreas, the gland that produces insulin, and normally occurs during childhood. The second form is when the body becomes insensitive to insulin; the hormone is still there but the cells no longer respond to it. In the Dutch language this form used to be called ‘ouderdomsdiabetes’ meaning ‘diabetes of old age’. This description is no longer accurate as even teenagers have now been diagnosed with it.

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