Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biological – Page 204

Elon Musk: Humanity Is a Kind of ‘Biological Boot Loader’ for AI

On Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma took the stage at the World AI Conference in Shanghai to debate artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity. As expected, Ma took a far more optimistic stance than Musk. Ma encouraged people to have faith in humanity, our creativity, and the future. “I don’t think artificial intelligence is a threat,” he said, to which Musk replied, “I don’t know, man, that’s like, famous last words.” An edited transcript of the discussion follows.

Elon Musk: What are we supposed to say? Just things about AI perhaps? Yeah. Okay. Let’s see.

Jack Ma: The AI, right? Okay, great.

A New Database for Genes Linked to Cellular Senescence

Researchers have launched a new database dedicated to mapping and understanding the complexity of cellular senescence in a bid to help us fully understand this age-related phenomenon.

Introducing the CellAge database

The Human Ageing Genomic Resources ( HAGR ) is a series of databases and tools that have been developed to aid researchers on aging and help them study the genetic elements of human aging. The databases utilize modern techniques, such as functional genomics, network analyses, systems biology, and evolutionary analyses, to build what is one of the most valuable resources available today.

Giving Mars a Magnetosphere

Any future colonization efforts directed at the Mars all share one problem in common; their reliance on a non-existent magnetic field. Mars’ magnetosphere went dark about 4 billion years ago when it’s core solidified due to its inability to retain heat because of its small mass. We now know that Mars was quite Earth-like in its history. Deep oceans once filled the now arid Martian valleys and a thick atmosphere once retained gasses which may have allowed for the development of simple life. This was all shielded by Mars’ prehistoric magnetic field.

When Mars’ magnetic line of defense fell, much of its atmosphere was ripped away into space, its oceans froze deep into the red regolith, and any chance for life to thrive there was suffocated. The reduction of greenhouse gasses caused Mars’ temperature to plummet, freezing any remaining atmosphere to the poles. Today, Mars is all but dead. Without a magnetic field, a lethal array of charged particles from the Sun bombards Mars’ surface every day threatening the potential of hosting electronic systems as well as biological life. The lack of a magnetic field also makes it impossible for Mars to retain an atmosphere or an ozone layer, which are detrimental in filtering out UV and high energy light. This would seem to make the basic principles behind terraforming the planet completely obsolete.

I’ve read a lot of articles about the potential of supplying Mars with an artificial magnetic field. By placing a satellite equipped with technology to produce a powerful magnetic field at Mars L1 (a far orbit around Mars where gravity from the Sun balances gravity from Mars, so that the satellite always remains between Mars and the Sun), we could encompass Mars in the resulting magnetic sheath. However, even though the idea is well understood and written about, I couldn’t find a solid mathematical proof of the concept to study for actual feasibility. So I made one!

Mathematical framework turns any sheet of material into any shape using kirigami cuts

This could lead to self-healing cars.

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a mathematical framework that can turn any sheet of material into any prescribed shape, inspired by the paper craft termed kirigami (from the Japanese, kiri, meaning to cut and kami, meaning paper).

Unlike its better-known cousin origami, which uses folds to shape , kirigami relies on a pattern of cuts in a flat paper sheet to change its flexibility and allow it to morph into 3D shapes. Artists have long used this artform to create everything from pop-up cards to castles and dragons.

“We asked if it is possible to uncover the basic mathematical principles underlying kirigami and use them to create algorithms that would allow us to design the number, size and orientation of the cuts in a flat sheet so that it can morph into any given shape,” said L. Mahadevan, de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, the senior author on the paper.

Team develops robust molecular propeller for unidirectional rotations

A team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, Universitié de Toulouse in France and Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan led by Ohio Professor of Physics Saw-Wai Hla and Prof. Gwenael Rapenne from Toulouse developed a molecular propeller that enables unidirectional rotations on a material surface when energized.

In nature, molecule propellers are vital in many biological applications ranging from the swimming bacteria to intracellular transport, but synthetic molecular propellers, like what has been developed, are able to operate in harsher environments and under a precise control. This new development is a multiple component molecular specially designed to operate on solid surfaces. This tiny propeller is composed of three components; a ratchet shape molecular gear as a base, a tri-blade propeller, and a ruthenium atom acting as an atomic ball bearing that connects the two. The size of the propeller is only about 2 nanometers (nm) wide and 1 nm tall.

“What is special about our propeller is its multi-component design that becomes chiral on the gold crystal surface, i.e. it forms right- or left-tilted gears,” said Hla. “This chirality dictates the rotational direction when energized.”

/* */