Lifeboat Foundation

Not sure if Bill has bothered to visit there in quite a while; however, I do wonder about the MSFT folks in Russia.

City hall switching to local software installed by Rostelecom.

Robotic Custom Guards — could this be the answer to all countries problems for border security and police as part of fairness?

NK Technology, Beijing, Oct 2 : Ten robots have started working as customs officers at three ports in China’s Guangdong province, authorities said on Sunday.

They were the first batch of intelligent robots, to be used by Chinese customs at the ports of Gongbei, Hengqin and Zhongshan, Xinhua news agency reported.

The robots, named Xiao Hai, have state-of-the-art perception technology and are able to listen, speak, learn, see and walk.

Summary: Ventral CA1 neurons in the hippocampus store memories of acquaintances, a new study reports.

Source: MIT.

Cells in the hippocampus store memories of acquaintances, a new study reports.

Continue reading “Researchers Identify Neurons Devoted to Social Memory” »

Winfried Hensinger is the director of the Sussex Centre for Quantum Technologies in England, and he has spent a lifetime devoted to studying the ins and outs of quantum mechanics and just what it can do for us. When Hensinger first started in the field, quantum computing was still very much a theory, but now it is all around us, and various projects are within reach of creating a universal quantum computer. So, now that scientists are taking quantum computing more seriously it won’t be long before the field begins to explode and applications that we never even imagined possible will become available to use.

Finally, they may have a chance as we have seen the prediction of the phasing out of smartphones by 2021. Although not all will be phased out by then; the continue struggle of companies trying to play catch up with smartphones is not an ideal route to take anymore especially with technologies such as the AR Contacts with Bluetooth headsets, other things such as BMI technology, etc. it is smart to focus in the next 3 to 5 years on these technologies instead of playing catch up with Apple.

He says the company’s “pivot to software is taking hold”, pointing to the recent launch of BlackBerry Radar, an asset tracking system, and BlackBerry Hub+ for Android, a set of productivity apps.

BlackBerry may not be designing its own smartphones anymore, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see new devices sporting the BlackBerry logo. The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners.

Continue reading “BlackBerry to quit making smartphones” »

A group of Polish cave divers have stumbled upon what would be the world’s deepest underwater cave. The cave is called Hranicka Propast, and it was recently examined with an underwater robot in the Czech Republic.

While scientists have always known this mysterious cave to be deep, it was until a team of spelunkers took a closer look that they realized just how astonishingly deep it was. They have measured it at 1,325 feet deep, which would make it the deepest cave yet discovered on Earth. The previous record holder is Pozzo del Merro, a cave in Italy that is 1,286 feet deep.

This isn’t your typical diving scenario, so the team needed a remote operative vehicle to access this cave. Still, scientists have dived their before — many times over the years, in fact. It has often been explored because it was formed from hot mineral water bubbling from the bottom, and not from rain coming down as is the case in most caves. It’s a very unusual geological feature.

Continue reading “Scientists astonished to discover mysterious, extremely deep underwater cave” »

If the 1967 film “The Graduate” were remade today, Mr. McGuire’s famous advice to young Benjamin Braddock would probably be updated to “Plastics … with nanoparticles.” These days, the mechanical, electrical and durability properties of polymers—the class of materials that includes plastics—are often enhanced by adding miniature particles (smaller than 100 nanometers or billionths of a meter) made of elements such as silicon or silver. But could those nanoparticles be released into the environment after the polymers are exposed to years of sun and water—and if so, what might be the health and ecological consequences?

In a recently published paper, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) describe how they subjected a commercial nanoparticle-infused coating to NIST-developed methods for accelerating the effects of weathering from ultraviolet (UV) radiation and simulated washings of rainwater. Their results indicate that humidity and exposure time are contributing factors for nanoparticle release, findings that may be useful in designing future studies to determine potential impacts.

In their recent experiment, the researchers exposed multiple samples of a commercially available polyurethane coating containing silicon dioxide nanoparticles to intense UV radiation for 100 days inside the NIST SPHERE (Simulated Photodegradation via High-Energy Radiant Exposure), a hollow, 2-meter (7-foot) diameter black aluminum chamber lined with highly UV reflective material that bears a casual resemblance to the Death Star in the film “Star Wars.” For this study, one day in the SPHERE was equivalent to 10 to 15 days outdoors. All samples were weathered at a constant temperature of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) with one group done in extremely dry conditions (approximately 0 percent humidity) and the other in humid conditions (75 percent humidity).

Continue reading “‘Sun and rain’ detail how nanoparticles can escape from plastic coatings into the environment” »

‘Westworld’ review HBO remake of Michael Crichton movie stars Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris.

“The donation is part of an ambitious plan to preserve Argentina’s northeastern Iberá wetlands and restore populations of six species of wildlife, including jaguars, that had gone extinct in the region. Tompkins plans to donate about 341,350 acres, a spokeswoman from her nonprofit Tompkins Foundation told The Huffington Post.”

Read more