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Researchers announced yesterday that they discovered a #genetic #brain #aging #clock that controls how our brains age. The clock controls brain aging according to a precise timetable. This discovery holds promise that scientists can prevent brain aging by stopping the clock.

Summary: Researchers announced yesterday that they discovered a genetic brain aging clock that controls how our brains age. The clock controls aging in our brains according to a precise timetable. This discovery holds promise that scientists can prevent brain aging by stopping the clock.

Imagine keeping your mind sharp as a teenager’s while you grow older, even into your twilight years.

Yesterday’s announcement brings us one step closer to realizing that dream, as researchers have discovered a genetic clock that ages our brains due to a predetermined timetable.

Continue reading “Researchers Discover Key to Brain Aging” | >

Humanity has been attempting to measure and assess beauty long before anyone even knew about computers and algorithms. Surprisingly, a new technology may help to solve the ancient question that mankind has struggled to answer: what is universal beauty? And perhaps even more intriguingly, it might help us in aging research.

Leonardo da Vinci attempted to capture the essence of beauty in his famous drawing, Vitruvian Man, through the use of geometrically equal proportions. This drawing was based on the writing of Roman architect Vitruvius in his treatise De Architectura.

According to Plato, beauty was an idea or form of which beautiful things were a consequence. He suggested that beauty was found when the sum of parts became a harmonious whole.

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My new policy article for the HuffPost on why more than ever we need to avoid war and armed conflict:

Some of the early years of my adult life were in conflict zones as a journalist—which included covering the Pakistan/Indian Kashmir conflict for the National Geographic Channel and The New York Times Syndicate. War zones are terrifying. One always is worried about bullying soldiers, speeding armed military vehicles, stray bullets, and whether there’s a roadside bomb on your path. Anyone that approaches you is suspect and could be carrying ready-to-detonate explosives.

One thing conflict zones teach you is that freedom is precious. The nearly 70-year Kashmir conflict has approximately a half million soldiers involved, so even if they’re supposedly on your side (depending on what country you’re in), you still feel under siege. My time in certain parts of Sudan, Israel, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Mali, and Yemen left me with the same feeling.

We face an unusual time with President Trump, whose bold behavior could prove dangerous to stable foreign policy. This situation has now become even more worrisome this month when Russia’s Vladimir Putin, according to RT, said publicly that whoever “leads in artificial intelligence will rule the world.” Some experts believe we will have an AI equivalent to human intelligence in less than 10 years time—which means in 15–20 years time, AI will far outdo human thinking and could be in control of all nuclear weaponry on the planet.

Continue reading “The Libertarian Futurist’s Case for Avoiding War and Military Entanglements” | >

In addition to Deloitte, the other remaining big-four accounting firms – including EY, KPMG and PwC – have introduced the technology-driven services in China to businesses ranging from banking, technology, and consumer services.

Mainland based accountants are embracing automation to lower office administration costs and enhance efficiency, moves which are opening the door to a wider embrace of artificial intelligence (AI).

Delixi Electric, a manufacturer of low-voltage electrical products, is banking on robotics to trim time needed for tax invoice issuance by 75 per cent. The Zhejiang province-based company needs to issue more than 5,000 value-added-tax invoices to more than 600 clients nationwide monthly.

A human needs 20 minutes to issue each invoice, which entails information collection, verification and recording. However, the same work can be done in five minutes by a robot, according to Deloitte, the robot supplier.

Continue reading “Robots finds a welcome reception among China’s finance and tax services” | >

Today, U.S. Depart of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao released the DoT and National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration’s new guidelines for automated driving systems. This is version 2.0 of a federal policy on self-driving cars, and Chao said it’s a “living document,” with plans already for version 3.0 to arrive in 2018.

These guidelines are called “A Vision for Safety 2.0,” which Chao says reflects their importance in terms of addressing the rising rate of traffic deaths in the U.S. Chao cited the most recent stats, which include the stat that 94 percent of serious motor vehicle accidents in the U.S. are due to human error, in presenting the new guidelines at an event today.

The new guidelines are designed to unify development of automation features, including full autonomy and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and to help unify industry, local, state and federal government efforts to that end. It’s voluntary guidance, but it focuses on SAE Levels 3 through 5 automation, and it clarifies that companies don’t need to wait to begin testing and deploying their automated driving systems, and streamlines the self-assessment process for companies and organizations.

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Go is an ancient, aristocratic Chinese board game that’s reputed to have as many possible moves as there are atoms in the universe. And Google recently trained an artificial intelligence computer to play against one of the best human players in the world. The computer won.

At Google’s Future of Go Summit, 19-year-old Chinese Go prodigy Ke Jie was defeated by the AI AlphaGo in a three-match series.

AI evangelists are happy with the win, but AI doomsayers are worried it’s coming for our jobs next. And China is just mad that an American company beat the world at a Chinese game.

VICE News reports on what the competition really means for AI development.

Check out VICE News for more: http://vicenews.com

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The sun fired off yet another powerful solar flare yesterday (Sept. 10), its seventh in seven days.

The flare, which peaked at 12:06 EDT (1606 GMT), covered North and South America in high-energy light. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) released a statement that warned of strong, high-frequency radio blackouts and navigation-system disruption, potentially lasting up to an hour.

Like the six other flares observed since Sept. 4, this one came from a sunspot known as Active Region (AR) 2673, which is currently turning away from Earth and will soon be out of sight.

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