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While there are many potential uses for soft-bodied robots, the things are still typically only built in small experimental batches. Scottish scientists are out to change that, with a mass-production-capable soft bot that is 3D-printed in a single piece which then walks off of the print bed.

Before we go any further, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a soft robot that was printed in one piece.

It was just this March that we told you about a hexapod bot created at UC San Diego, which was 3D-printed in one continuous 58-hour step. That robot was powered not by a motor but by compressed air, which sequentially moves its legs forward.

American scientists plan to implement a project to test quantum communication in free space. Using lasers, they want to launch qubits over the Long Island Sound.

It is noted, that three laser beams from the telescope on top of the Kline Tower on the Yale University campus will be directed across the Long Island Sound at a distance of nearly 43.5 km and captured on the opposite side by a similar telescope on the roof of the University Hospital Stony Brook.

The goal of the Quantum Laser Across the Sound project is to expand the ability to send and receive quantum information and demonstrating the potential for possible future quantum computing infrastructures. The telescope on top of the Kline Tower will send entangled photons 43.4 km across the Long Island Sound.

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Why is there something rather than nothing? Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator of Closer To Truth, joins John Michael Godier to explore one of the most profound questions in science and philosophy. The discussion moves through materialism, idealism, panpsychism, and quantum perspectives, asking whether consciousness is merely a byproduct of evolution or a fundamental aspect of reality, and what that could mean for the universe, artificial intelligence, and the nature of mind. Kuhn discusses his recent paper, A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications, which maps the full range of consciousness theories and explores their broader significance.

Links:
Closer to Truth.
https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV

Homepage

A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications by Robert Lawrence Kuhn https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610723001128?via%3Dihub.

Seeing the consciousness forest for the trees by Àlex Gómez-Marín.
https://iai.tv/articles/seeing-the-consciousness-forest-for-the-trees-auid-2901

00:00:00 Introduction to Robert Lawrence Kuhn and consciousness.

Strontium titanate was once used as a diamond substitute in jewelry before less fragile alternatives emerged in the 1970s. Now, researchers have explored some of its more unusual properties, which might someday be useful in quantum materials and microelectronics applications.

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the team explains how they built an extremely thin, flexible strontium titanate membrane and stretched it, in the process turning on what’s known as a ferroelectric state. In that state, the material generates its own , somewhat similar to how a generates its own magnetic field.

“We applied strain to tune the membrane to a ferroelectric or non-ferroelectric state reversibly and repeatedly,” said Wei-Sheng Lee, a lead scientist at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and a principal investigator at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES), a joint SLAC-Stanford institute. “This allowed quantitative characterizations of this transition in strontium titanate with unprecedented details.”

With global population growth accelerating urban expansion, construction activity has reached unprecedented levels—placing immense pressure on both natural resources as well as the environment. A cornerstone of modern-day infrastructure, Ordinary Portland Cement remains the most effective and commonly used soil solidifier despite contributing substantially to global carbon emissions.

At the same time, continues to accumulate in landfills. Addressing both the environmental burden of cement use and the inefficiencies of industrial waste disposal has become an urgent priority.

To tackle these interconnected challenges, scientists from Japan, led by Professor Shinya Inazumi, from the College of Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT), Japan, present a sustainable alternative: a high-performance geopolymer-based soil solidifier developed from Siding Cut Powder (SCP), a construction waste byproduct, and earth silica (ES), sourced from recycled glass.