Lifeboat Foundation

When water vapour spontaneously condenses inside capillaries just 1 nm thick, it behaves according to the 150-year-old Kelvin equation – defying predictions that the theory breaks down at the atomic scale. Indeed, researchers at the University of Manchester have showed that the equation is valid even for capillaries that accommodate only a single layer of water molecules (Nature 588 250).

Condensation inside capillaries is ubiquitous and many physical processes – including friction, stiction, lubrication and corrosion – are affected by it. The Kelvin equation relates the surface tension of water to its temperature and the diameter of its meniscus. It predicts that if the ambient humidity is between 30–50%, then flat capillaries less than 1.5 nm thick will spontaneously fill with water that condenses from the air.

Real world capillaries can be even smaller, but for them it is impossible to define the curvature of a liquid’s meniscus so the Kelvin equation should no longer hold. However, because such tight confinement is difficult to achieve in the laboratory, this had yet to be tested.

A futuristic new solar-powered vehicle is now road-legal, with first delivery expected as early as November and will give drivers the freedom to exceed 1,000 km of range between charges.

University of ChicagoFounded in 1,890, the University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Located on a 217-acre campus in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, near Lake Michigan, the school holds top-ten positions in various national and international rankings. UChicago is also well known for its professional schools: Pritzker School of Medicine, Booth School of Business, Law School, School of Social Service Administration, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Divinity School and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

The world’s most-cited researcher in visual question-answering, Anton van den Hengel, is also Amazon’s director of applied science. Learn how his journey to computer vision started with law—and how his work is supporting Amazon’s business through the development and application of state-of-the-art computer vision and scalable machine learning.

#ComputerVision #CVPR2022

Continue reading “Anton van den Hengel’s journey from intellectual property law to computer vision pioneer” »

We’re live now, on Space Renaissance YouTube channel, with Wes Faires, giving a lecture on space law:

The Working Group on Space Resources under the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS), presents an opportunity for a legally binding instrument to develop under the auspices of the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNOOSA), and do so in a manner favorable to space resource utilization for the private sector. The intended result of the Working Group, as stated its 5 years workplan, is to conclude discussions on the development of space resources followed with possible adoption by the United Nations General Assembly as a dedicated resolution or other action. This presentation draws a parallel to a similar scenario with regard to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), where a working group on Deep Sea-Bed resources, executed via specific legal channels within the United Nations, led to a legally binding instrument: The 1994 Agreement on Implementation, resulting in a modification of the international framework governing ocean floor minerals.
The avenue utilized for the execution of the 1994 Agreement on Implementation for UNCLOS provides a course for legally binding instrument to develop via the Working Group on Space Resources. Such an instrument could serve to interpret and elaborate on ambiguities within the Outer Space Treaty framework, while avoiding any parallels to the commercially harmful aspects of the top-down governance structure embedded within the International Seabed Authority.

Continue reading “Toward an Acceptable Framework for Off-Planet Resource Utilization, with Wes Faires” »

GPT-3 is a neural network machine learning model trained using internet data to generate any type of text. Developed by OpenAI, it applies machine learning to generate various types of content, including stories, code, legal documents, and even translations based on just a few input words. GPT-3 has been getting a lot of attention for the seemingly unlimited range of possibilities it offers. GPT-3 is also being used for automated conversational tasks, responding to any text. So here mentioned the 10 experiments with GPT-3.

Interviewing AI: Using the Chat preset within GPT-3 Playground you can ask the current entity about its personality. And while of your dialog, the GPT-3’s personality emerges. Note that after 2048 tokens there’s a hard cut, and you never will encounter the same personality setting again. It imitates a human person worrying about data privacy.

Doctor’s Assistant: The AI has been fed with patient files, describing their profile and symptoms in a few lines. The AI spontaneously makes suggestions of what the disease could be. GPT-3 got away with an impressive 8 out of 10 correct guesses. This could become amazing support to doctors, and a great tool to investigate.

Elon Musk is finally revealing some specifics of his Twitter content moderation policy. Assuming he completes the buyout he initiated at $44 billion in April, it seems the tech billionaire and Tesla CEO is open to a “hands-on” approach — something many didn’t expect, according to an initial report from The Verge.

This came in reply to an employee-submitted question regarding Musk’s intentions for content moderation, where Musk said he thinks users should be allowed to “say pretty outrageous things within the law”, during an all-hands meeting he had with Twitter’s staff on Thursday.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Twitter content policy will make raising a ‘troll army’ more expensive” »

In January, a law came into effect in South Korea called the Serious Disasters Punishment Act. The new regulation states that if workers die or sustain serious injuries during work, courts could fine the CEO or high-ranking managers of the firms or even send them to jail.

An increase in robot investments

This event has spurred an increase in investment in robots in the nation, according to a report by Rest of the World published on June 6.

According to multiple news reports, Twitter plans to give Elon Musk access to its “firehose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets in an effort to speed up the Tesla billionaire’s $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform. The data-sharing agreement was not confirmed by the lawyers involved in the deal. Musk was silent on Twitter, despite having previously expressed his displeasure with various aspects of the deal.

Twitter declined to comment on the reports, pointing to a statement released on Monday in which the company stated that it is continuing to “cooperate” and share information with Musk, who in April entered into a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter, claims that the transaction cannot go forward until the firm discloses more information on the frequency of bogus accounts on its network. He claims, without providing evidence, that Twitter has grossly underestimated the number of “spam bots” on its platform, which are automated accounts that typically promote scams and misinformation.

On Monday, the Attorney General of the State of Texas, Ken Paxton, said that his office will be investigating “possible false reporting” of bot activity on Twitter as part of an inquiry against Twitter for allegedly failing to disclose the scale of its spam bot and fake account activity. According to a source familiar with the situation, Twitter’s plan to give Musk full access to the firehose was first reported by the Washington Post. According to other reports, the billionaire may only have limited access.