Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 10677

A recent research discussion paper “The Andromeda Study: A Femto-Spacecraft Mission to Alpha Centauri” discusses options for a 50 year (at 0.1c) one-way, fly-by, exploration trip to our nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Centauri. In the paper the authors (Andreas M. Hein, Kelvin F. Long, Dan Fries, Nikolaos Perakis, Angelo Genovese, Stefan Zeidler, Martin Langer, Richard Osborne, Rob Swinney, John Davies, Bill Cress, Marc Casson, Adrian Mann, Rachel Armstrong) discuss the challenges and present possible solutions using current science and technology.

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I was thinking about this the other day. How far off is using CRISPR for cosmetic changes? permanently changing of eye color, hair color, skin (although that one is gonna be a lightning rod), etc…

In a world-first, Japanese scientists have used the revolutionary CRISPR, or CRISPR/Cas9, genome- editing tool to change flower colour in an ornamental plant. Researchers from the University of Tsukuba, the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) and Yokohama City University, Japan, altered the flower colour of the traditional Japanese garden plant, Japanese morning glory (Ipomoea nil or Pharbitis nil), from violet to white, by disrupting a single gene. This research highlights the huge potential of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to the study and manipulation of genes in horticultural plants.

Japanese morning glory, or Asagao, was chosen for this study as it is one of two traditional horticultural model plants in the National BioResource Project in Japan (NBRP). Extensive genetic studies of this plant have already been performed, its genome sequenced and DNA transfer methods established. In addition, as public concern with genetic technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 is currently a social issue in Japan, studies using this popular and widely-grown plant may help to educate the public on this topic.

The research team targeted a single gene, dihydroflavonol-4-reductase-B (DFR-B), encoding an anthocyanin biosynthesis enzyme, that is responsible for the colour of the plant’s stems, leaves and flowers. Two other, very closely related (DFR-A and DRF-C) sit side-by-side, next to DFR-B. Therefore, the challenge was to specifically and accurately target the DFR-B gene without altering the other genes. The CRISPR/Cas9 system was used as it is currently the most precise method of gene editing.

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At the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre on Wednesday (Sept. 6), 16 partners gathered to launch the EuroEXA project, which invests €20 million over three-and-a-half years into exascale-focused research and development.

Led by the Horizon 2020 program, EuroEXA picks up the banner of a triad of partner projects — ExaNeSt, EcoScale and ExaNoDe — building on their work to develop a complete HPC system based on ARM Cortex processors and Xilinx Ultrascale FPGAs. The goal is to deploy an energy-efficient petaflops system by 2020 and lay a path to achieve exascale capability in the 2022–23 timeframe.

All told, the European Commission is planning a €50 million investment for the EuroEXA group of projects, spanning “research, innovation and action across applications, system software, hardware, networking, storage, liquid cooling and data centre technologies.”

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The ultimate survival guide from the world’s leading survival expert…

Nobody knows survival like Bear Grylls. There is a barely a terrain he hasn’t conquered or an extreme environment he hasn’t experienced. Over the years — from his time in 21 SAS, through to his extraordinary expeditions climbing (and paragliding over) Everest, travelling through the Arctic’s treacherous Northwest Passage, crossing the world’s oceans and taking part in adventures to the toughest corners of each of the seven continents — Bear has accumulated an astonishing wealth of survival knowledge.

Now, for the first time, he is putting all his expertise into one book. How To Stay Alive will teach you:

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While physicists have managed to wrap their minds around chaos theory in the macroscopic world, chaos also has its way at the quantum scale. And in many ways quantum chaos is even more perplexing than its large-scale counterpart.

Which is why it’s such a big deal that researchers have now presented a single equation that can predict how quantum chaos behaves.

This equation effectively explains the patterns within quantum chaos at the atomic level, and it could contribute to our understanding of everything from brain surgery to string theory.

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Quantum physics throws all the rules of classical physics out the window. In the quantum world, particles can pass through solid walls, be in two places at once, and communicate over an infinite distance. And, if a handful of physicists are right, they can affect the past just as easily as they affect the future. That’s a theory known as quantum retrocausality, and researchers have good reasons to believe it’s true.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a science and a set of computational technologies that are inspired by—but typically operate quite differently from—the ways people use their nervous systems and bodies to sense, learn, reason, and take action. While the rate of progress in AI has been patchy and unpredictable, there have been significant advances since the field’s inception sixty years ago…

Toby Walsh, Professor Artificial Intelligence, University of NSW Sydney “There’s lots of AI already in our lives. You can already see it on your smartphone every time you use Siri, every time you ask a lexer a question, every time you actually use your satellite navigation. You are using one of these algorithms. You are using some AI that’s recognizing your speech, answering questions, giving you search results recommending books for you to buy on Amazon. They’re the beginnings of AI everywhere in our lives.”

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