Lifeboat Foundation

University of Houston researchers are reporting a breakthrough in the field of materials science and engineering with the development of an electrochemical actuator that uses specialized organic semiconductor nanotubes (OSNTs).

Currently in the early stages of development, the actuator will become a key part of research contributing to the future of robotic, bioelectronic and biomedical science.

“Electrochemical devices that transform electrical energy to mechanical energy have potential use in numerous applications, ranging from soft robotics and micropumps to autofocus microlenses and bioelectronics,” said Mohammad Reza Abidian, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the UH Cullen College of Engineering. He’s the corresponding author of the article “Organic Semiconductor Nanotubes for Electrochemical Devices,” published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, which details the discovery.

Because now more than ever we need to know the weather.

NASA is working on a new machine learning software that could revolutionize our understanding of weather patterns.

Continue reading “NASA Is Designing a Swarm of ‘Hive Mind’ Weather Satellites” »

Finding people buried under debris is an extremely dangerous job for first responders. Researchers are building autonomous drones that could help.

The cashierless technology shift continues apace with today’s news that Zippin has raised $30 million in a series B round of funding. The San Francisco-based company is one of several players in the space to gain traction for a technology that seeks to not only make supermarket queues obsolete, but also generate big data insights for retailers.

Founded in 2,018 Zippin leverages AI, cameras, and smart shelf sensors to enable shoppers to place items in their cart and walk out without waiting. The company opened its first checkout-free store in San Francisco back in 2018, and it has since entered into partnerships with the likes of Aramark, Sberbank, and the Sacramento Kings’ Golden 1 Center to power cashierless stores globally.

Zippin had previously raised around $15 million, and with another $30 million from SAP, Maven Ventures, Evolv Ventures, and OurCrowd, the company is well-financed to capitalize on the retail industry’s continued push toward automation-powered efficiency. The company said its ultimate goal is to retrofit stores with the required technology inside a day, with minimal downtime for retailers.

On AImikan’s channel 0 the YouTuber explains the goal is challenging whether it’s possible to recreate manga anime characters with machine learning.

“Since it will be reproduced by machine learning, there will be ‘characters that are not quite similar,’” wrote On AImikan, asking viewers to be forgiving about certain aspects.

Computational neuroscientists taught an artificial neural network to imitate a biological neuron. The result offers a new way to think about the complexity of single brain cells.

Some of the results are impressive! Others are not.

The US Navy’s (USN’s) new autonomous technologies strategy seeks to accelerate development and deployment of intelligent platforms, linked through a highly distributed command-and-control (C2) architecture, to provide the necessary combat hardware to enable the sea service’s Project Overmatch requirements.

The Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS) strategy, as per senior service leaders, will be a “confluence of autonomy with unmanned systems and artificial intelligence (AI)” – from technology development and acquisition management to system maturation and infrastructure support across the enterprise, according to the strategy.

“IAS has the potential to provide high-impact, transformative operational and administrative capabilities in peacetime and wartime. These strategic goals cultivate a continuous development and operationalisation process for evolutionary and disruptive IAS technologies and concepts,” the strategy stated. “They also drive the adoption of operational IAS-based capabilities to provide continuous, effective, and efficient support … across all phases of force development and force application,” it added.

Life is an integrated flow of quantum computational processes giving rise to our conscious experience. Based on the ontological model, the Cybernetic Theory of Mind by evolutionary cyberneticist Alex Vikoulov that he expands on in his magnum opus The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution, comes a new documentary ― Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind.

This film, hosted by the author of the book from which the narrative is derived, is now available for viewing on demand on Vimeo, Plex, Tubi, Social Club TV and other global networks with its worldwide premiere aired on June 8 2021. This is a futurist’s take on the nature of consciousness and reverse engineering of our thinking in order to implement it in cybernetics and AI systems.

Continue reading “What is Consciousness? A New Documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind, Part I” »