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Purdue University will support public and private research partnerships at the nation’s first digitally operated nuclear reactor, the school said in a Tuesday press release. Scientists and engineers will look to answer the question of how reliable and resilient an all-digital nuclear reactor, named Purdue University Reactor Number One (PUR-1), can be.

“As the United States and the world continue to implement digital technology, that introduces both strengths and vulnerabilities that need to be explored and understood because our economy relies on the resiliency of these systems,” Clive Townsend, supervisor for the reactor, said in a statement.

Before PUR-1 was converted to digital technology, all US reactors worked using analog technology like vacuum tubes and hand-soldered wires, Townsend said in the release. Purdue’s facility will be the US’ first cyber-nuclear testbed for researchers and corporate partners. It’s licensed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which ensures safe use of radioactive materials.

Should citizenship be restricted to humans?

Scene taken from the film Short Circuit 2 (1988).

FAIR USE NOTICE:

Continue reading “Johnny 5 — The First Robotic US Citizen” »

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A team of Australian researchers has designed a reliable strategy for testing physical abilities of humanoid robots—robots that resemble the human body shape in their build and design. Using a blend of machine learning methods and algorithms, the research team succeeded in enabling test robots to effectively react to unknown changes in the simulated environment, improving their odds of functioning in the real world.

The findings, which were published in a joint publication of the IEEE and the Chinese Association of Automation Journal of Automatica Sinica in July, have promising implications in the broad use of humanoid robots in fields such as healthcare, education, disaster response and entertainment.

“Humanoid robots have the ability to move around in many ways and thereby imitate human motions to complete complex tasks. In order to be able to do that, their stability is essential, especially under dynamic and unpredictable conditions,” said corresponding author Dacheng Tao, Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow in the School of Computer Science and the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney.

Exceptional longevity: the hunt for associated factors has concentrated on #genomics and biomarkers. What has been missed? Optimism. And it’s dose-dependent.

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare System and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, have found that individuals with greater optimism are more likely to live longer and to achieve “exceptional longevity,” that is, living to age 85 or older.

Optimism refers to a general expectation that good things will happen, or believing that the future will be favorable because we can control important outcomes. Whereas research has identified many risk factors that increase the likelihood of diseases and premature death, much less is known about positive psychosocial factors that can promote healthy aging.

Continue reading “New evidence that optimists live longer” »

Dateline: Listen to this audio documentary on the Educate podcast. Subscribe now.

Molly Woodworth was a kid who seemed to do well at everything: good grades, in the gifted and talented program. But she couldn’t read very well.

Continue reading “How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers” »

We turn our attention to the three-part “big reveal” of Satoshi Nakamoto and his 980,000 Bitcoin holding which is turning out to be nothing but a CIA Ponzi scheme. Listen to Betsy and Thomas explain why all of this is a hoax and read the” Satoshi Dossier” yourself. https://patriots4truth.org/2019/08/19/satoshi-nakamoto-dossi…zi-scheme/

If you currently own cryptos, this is an audio that we highly recommend.

Continue reading “Satoshi Nakamoto Dossier Reveals CIA Ponzi Scheme” »

Some call it “strong” AI, others “real” AI, “true” AI or artificial “general” intelligence (AGI)… whatever the term (and important nuances), there are few questions of greater importance than whether we are collectively in the process of developing generalized AI that can truly think like a human — possibly even at a superhuman intelligence level, with unpredictable, uncontrollable consequences.

This has been a recurring theme of science fiction for many decades, but given the dramatic progress of AI over the last few years, the debate has been flaring anew with particular intensity, with an increasingly vocal stream of media and conversations warning us that AGI (of the nefarious kind) is coming, and much sooner than we’d think. Latest example: the new documentary Do you trust this computer?, which streamed last weekend for free courtesy of Elon Musk, and features a number of respected AI experts from both academia and industry. The documentary paints an alarming picture of artificial intelligence, a “new life form” on planet earth that is about to “wrap its tentacles” around us.

Supplementing psychotherapy with small doses of MDMA could be an effective strategy to prevent relapses of alcohol addiction in patients, an ongoing small clinical trial suggests. The research is yet another example of how scientists and doctors are finding or rediscovering therapeutic uses for recreational and illicit drugs.

MDMA-assisted therapy is actually an old idea, which enjoyed some popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. Though the exact mechanisms are unclear, the synthetic drug’s euphoric effects are thought to amplify the positive patterns of thinking taught by therapy, as well as make people feel less anxious during sessions. Of course, these same mood-boosting attributes made MDMA a popular recreational drug. This popularity led the U.S. government to ban MDMA in 1985, by classifying it as a Schedule 1 drug with no accepted medical use.