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Thoughts on the Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing held by Heales in Brussels.

When I first learned about the possibility of achieving human rejuvenation through biotechnological means, little did I know that this would lead me to meet many of the central figures in the field during a conference some seven years later—let alone that I would be speaking at the very same event. Yet, I’ve had the privilege to attend the Fourth Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) held in Brussels on November 8–10, an experience that gave me a feel of just how real the prospect of human rejuvenation is.

A friendly, welcoming environment

As EHA was the first conference I’ve ever attended, I didn’t quite know what to expect; given that researchers, activists, and investors from all around the world were invited, I had imagined it would probably be a posh, formal event with violins playing on the background and people in suits and formal dresses discussing topics beyond my comprehension while enjoying champagne. Thankfully, the atmosphere was much more relaxed and informal, elegant but not intimidating, which favored the interaction among participants regardless of their backgrounds—though, alas, the topics discussed were indeed mostly beyond my comprehension, as they involved high-level biochemistry with which I’m nowhere near sufficiently familiar (yet).

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Researchers at the Research Center for IT Innovation of Academia Sinica, in Taiwan, have recently developed a novel generative adversarial network (GAN) that has binary neurons at the output layer of the generator. This model, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, can directly generate binary-valued predictions at test time.

So far, GAN approaches have achieved remarkable results in modeling continuous distributions. Nonetheless, applying GANs to discrete data has been somewhat challenging so far, particularly due to difficulties in optimizing the distribution toward the target data distribution in a high-dimensional discrete space.

Hao-Wen Dong, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore, “I am currently working on music generation in the Music and AI Lab at Academia Sinica. In my opinion, composing can be interpreted as a series of decisions—for instance, regarding the instrumentation, chords and even the exact notes to use. To move toward achieving the grand vision of a solid AI composer, I am particularly interested in whether deep generative models such as GANs are able to make decisions. Therefore, this work examined whether we can train a GAN that uses binary neurons to make binary decisions using backpropagation, the standard training algorithm.”

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The Commute tab for Maps first popped up in a limited rollout in early September, but starting today it’s rolling out to users on Android and iOS. Google says that this new feature is designed to help you “take control over your commute.” It built the feature with the fact that, in many cities across North America, rush hour traffic can result in a commute that takes up to 60% longer than expected.

With the new Commute tab, Google Maps can provide live data on traffic to help you best manage your daily trip to work. It automatically accounts for accidents or heavy traffic and can help you better budget your time to account for that or provide alternate routes. Android users will have notifications on these updates sent to their device before getting caught in the delay.

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The Imagine Science Films Festival is happening on October 12-19th, 2018 in New York, at a variety of venues, and this year, it is featuring a theme close to home: survival.

Crisis. Entropy. Extinction. This year we look at the high stakes for all life on Earth and beyond. Between nuclear proliferation, species loss and dwindling resources, existence itself is not assured. But for every dystopia, a corresponding utopia may be within reach. It may be a struggle, but the record of all life is that of an eon-spanning fight to stay alive. We’ll feature tumultuous natural history and startling feats of adaptation. Apoptosis versus immortal cell lines. Half-lives and radical life extension. The deaths of stars and extraordinary paths to SURVIVAL.

With this year’s theme including life extension, we may well see some interesting and thought-provoking films on the topic. Lifespan.io is also an official event sponsor for the festival, as we strongly feel that the worlds of filmmaking and science can be a perfect match in helping to encourage a wider dialogue about aging and doing something about it.

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This topic touches a lot of nerves, so I ask for logic to rule above all else please.

All of us have seen a world map at some point in our lives before, but it is very difficult to imagine how certain countries and parts of the world compare to each other in size that are far apart. In this video, I explore why the world looks very different than how it is portrayed in the Mercator Projection map. I then go on to explore how certain countries are unexpectedly larger or smaller than what they appear to be, and how some places looks wildly different than our perceptions.

PS; Don’t totally hate on the Mercator Projection, it’s actually a really useful map for navigation and on keeping the correct shape of countries while sacrificing the size that we can all laugh about!

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Streaming music doesn’t have to mean compromised sound. These hi-fi amps can help you find cloud-connected aural ecstasy.

1. Naim Audio Uniti Star

Best for: Streamcurious audiophiles.

With a built-in CD player that rips tracks to a local drive, the Uniti Star eases the pain of parting with your CDs. Naim’s app summons your newly captured tunes and streams hi-res songs from cloud services. The hardware is pricey, but you get premium guts like a 70-watt-per-channel amp and a huge, velvet-smooth volume knob.

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Film has always had a special place in my heart. It’s helped me through so many stages in my life.

I’ve felt so unmotivated these past few years and decided to work on something that would inspire me.

So, if you feel unmotivated right now or just seem like you’re stuck, I hope this video helps you in some way.

Thanks for watching!

Music: https://audiojungle.net/item/to-the-stars/22166613?s_rank=36

For business inquiries: [email protected]

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https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Ph.D. is a German metahumanist philosopher, Nietzsche scholar, philosopher of music, and an authority in the field of ethics of emerging technologies.

Stefan teaches philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome and is director and cofounder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, where he was also Visiting Professor during the Summer of 2016. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Posthuman Studies.

In recent years, he taught at the Universities of Jena (Germany), Erfurt (Germany), Klagenfurt (Austria), Ewha Womans University in Seoul (South Korea), and Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). His main fields of research are Nietzsche, the philosophy of music, bioethics and metahumanism, posthumanism, and transhumanism.

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