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Dec 21, 2015

Gravity’s rainbow | The Economist

Posted by in categories: gravity, physics, space

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LISA Pathfinder (the acronym stands for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) is intended to demonstrate the technology needed to detect waves of gravity, rather than light, X-rays or gamma rays.”

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Dec 21, 2015

Not Just A Pretty Face: Popular Skincare Ingredient May Boost Longevity

Posted by in categories: food, life extension

Isolated from the Comfrey plant, Allantoin is a popular ingredient in many skincare regimens. According to new research it may increase longevity by mimicking the benefits of calorie restriction.

Calorie restriction is a subject of debate within the longevity community, and on animal models success is variable. However, it remains one of the most proven ways of extending lifespan in many species, and molecules that mimic the effect at the molecular level have also been associated with protective effects — up-regulating repair and stress response mechanisms. One such molecule is resveratrol, which is responsible for the relatively recent red wine hype.

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Dec 21, 2015

Inside OpenAI: Will Transparency Protect Us From Artificial Intelligence Run Amok?

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, ethics, finance, robotics/AI

Last Friday at the Neural Information and Processing Systems conference in Montreal, Canada, a team of artificial intelligence luminaries announced OpenAI, a non-profit company set to change the world of machine learning.

Backed by Tesla and Space X’s Elon Musk and Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, OpenAI has a hefty budget and even heftier goals. With a billion dollars in initial funding, OpenAI eschews the need for financial gains, allowing it to place itself on sky-high moral grounds.

artificial-general-intelligenceBy not having to answer to industry or academia, OpenAI hopes to focus not just on developing digital intelligence, but also guide research along an ethical route that, according to their inaugural blog post, “benefits humanity as a whole.”

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Dec 20, 2015

Super-Earth In Outer Solar System Is Incredibly Unlikely

Posted by in category: space

How an innocent plea for collegial comments turned into a global news flap about a possible Super-Earth on our solar system’s outer fringes.


The odds that our solar system harbors a super-Earth on its outer fringes are longer than the chances of winning a state lottery (or at least 200 million to one), says a University of Hawaii planetary scientist. In fact, the recent news flap over the potential detection of a rocky planet in a very long solar orbit was greatly exaggerated, the lead author of the scientific paper which resulted in the controversy now says.

“We never claim a super-Earth; we state it can’t necessarily be ruled out on the basis of our data alone, but the much more likely explanation is a much more nearby icy-body,” Wouter Vlemmings, a radio and submillimeter astronomer at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, told me.

Continue reading “Super-Earth In Outer Solar System Is Incredibly Unlikely” »

Dec 20, 2015

The 16 most bizarre vehicles we’ve seen this year

Posted by in category: transportation

Reinventing the wheel.

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Dec 20, 2015

‘Wireless power’ is about to make charging cables obsolete

Posted by in category: energy

Companies are working on sending electricity through the air, says Jurica Dujmović.

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Dec 20, 2015

Virtual Reality Tech Lets You ‘Teleport’ Back in Time

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, virtual reality

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FLzdsp2FHoo

The feeling you got when you first saw your newborn’s face. That glorious moment when the entire family was laughing over dinner. The epiphany you had when you reached the peak of your favorite mountain. If only you could travel back and experience those instances again.

A group of engineers is hoping to do just that with a virtual reality (VR) system that lets you take 3D videos with your phone and an accompanying virtual reality headset that lets you experience those memories again, whenever you want.

Continue reading “Virtual Reality Tech Lets You ‘Teleport’ Back in Time” »

Dec 20, 2015

5 Awesome Inventions That Came out of MIT This Year

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

We’re coming down the homestretch for 2015, and now is the time when most folks like to reflect on all of the things they’re thankful for. In the campus innovation space, that basically means MIT. Being one of the most technologically progressive universities in the world, MIT has the longstanding reputation of churning out life-changing innovations as if it were a cake walk.

This past year has been no different. Here are our picks of 5 inventions coming out of MIT that are sure to impact the world, making us very thankful to have the Cambridge-based university in our corner.

If everyone’s bodies were true to textbook anatomy, doctors’ jobs would be a breeze. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. So all patients going in for heart surgery will have slightly different nuances to their cardiac makeup. As you can imagine, these procedures present some high stakes, so it’s not great for surgeons to be surprised in the OR.

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Dec 20, 2015

Researchers may have discovered fountain of youth

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Researchers in Japan have found that human aging may be able to be delayed or even reversed, at least at the most basic level of human cell lines. In the process, the scientists from the University of Tsukuba also found that regulation of two genes is related to how we age.

The new findings challenge one of the current popular theories of aging, that lays the blame for humans’ inevitable downhill slide with mutations that accumulate in our mitochondrial DNA over time. Mitochondrion are sometimes likened to a cellular “furnace” that produces energy through cellular respiration. Damage to the mitochondrial DNA results in changes or mutations in the DNA sequence that build up and are associated with familiar signs of aging like hair loss, osteoporosis and, of course, reduced lifespan.

So goes the theory, at least. But the Tsukuba researchers suggest that something else may be going on within our cells. Their research indicates that the issue may not be that mitochondrial DNA become damaged, but rather that genes get turned “off” or “on” over time. Most intriguing, the team led by Professor Jun-Ichi Hayashi was able to flip the switches on a few genes back to their youthful position, effectively reversing the aging process.

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Dec 20, 2015

Luna Is The World’s Most Compact Consumer VR Camera

Posted by in categories: electronics, virtual reality

Consumer-level VR cameras are steadily on the rise, due to the growth of VR experiences and the wide array of things that virtual reality has to offer. To read more…

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