This cool new tech will help you blow off your parents like never before!
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Carbon kinetic weapons
Posted in drones, robotics/AI, space
Future wars could be much more fierce with weapons even more powerful than nukes:
The world is progressing in many ways, but tribalism isn’t going away, so new arms races in AI, drones, bio-weapons and space weapons are already under way. Forewarned is forearmed. What sort of weaponry should we expect? I’ve discussed AI and bio approaches before on other blogs, so this one looks just at kinetic weaponry using advanced materials, coupled to EM acceleration systems.
https://carbondevices.com/2017/08/31/using-inverse-rail-guns…ce-launch/ shows a crude illustration of my invention, the inverse rail gun, which inverts the idea of using a slug on a short rail gun and uses the short rail gun to accelerate a long tape instead.
Taking the road less traveled is extremely difficult for self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles rely on highly visible lane markings, as well as detailed 3D maps in order to navigate their environment safely. Which is why most of the major companies have eschewed testing on unmapped rural roads in favor of suburbs and cities.
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new system that allows self-driving cars to drive on roads they’ve never been on before without 3D maps. Called MapLite, the system combines simple GPS data that you’d find on Google Maps with a series of sensors that observe the road conditions.
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The researchers found that when taking the supplement, dilation of subjects’ arteries improved by 42 percent, making their blood vessels, at least by that measure, look like those of someone 15 to 20 years younger.
Excess reactive oxygen species production by mitochondria is a key mechanism of age-related vascular dysfunction. Our laboratory has shown that supplementation with the mitochondrial-targeted antioxidant MitoQ improves vascular endothelial function by reducing mitochondrial reactive oxygen species and ameliorates arterial stiffening in old mice, but the effects in humans are unknown. Here, we sought to translate our preclinical findings to humans and determine the safety and efficacy of MitoQ. Twenty healthy older adults (60–79 years) with impaired endothelial function (brachial artery flow–mediated dilation 6%) underwent 6 weeks of oral supplementation with MitoQ (20 mg/d) or placebo in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover design study.
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You and AI
Posted in robotics/AI
Demis Hassabis, world-renowned British neuroscientist, artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, explores the groundbreaking research driving the application of AI to scientific discovery.
The talk launches the Royal Society’s 2018 series: You and AI, a collaborative effort to help people understand what machine learning and AI are, how these technologies work and the ways they may affect our lives.
For more information on the event series: http://ow.ly/PKug30jWEYV
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As humans, we are defined by, among other things, our desire to transcend our humanity. Mythology, religion, fiction and science offer different versions of this dream. Transhumanism – a social movement predicated on the belief that we can and should leave behind our biological condition by merging with technology – is a kind of feverish amalgamation of all four. Though it’s oriented toward the future, and is fuelled by excitable speculation about the implications of the latest science and technology, its roots can be glimpsed in ancient stories like that of the Sumerian king Gilgamesh and his quest for immortality.
Will humans ever conquer mortality by merging with technology? The 2018 Wellcome prize winner shares his favourite books on transhumanism, from a cyborg manifesto to a Don DeLillo novel.
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