Lifeboat Foundation

For most people, icy conditions mean a slippery pavement or trying to chip the car out of a freezing glaze, but icing can also bring down aircraft, snap power lines, and cause a surprising amount of structural damage. Now scientists at the University of Houston (UH) have come up with a surprising solution – and it involves magnets.

The problem with icing is that when droplets of freezing or supercooled water strike a surface, they wet or adhere to it, so more and more droplets can join the party. To de-ice a surface, you need to either melt the ice, break it off, dissolve it, or alter the surface so the ice can’t stick to it in the first place.

According to Hadi Ghasemi from the UH Department of Mechanical Engineering, “icephobic” surfaces that are non-wetting or liquid infused have shown promise in the past, but suffer from high freezing temperatures, high ice adhesion strength, and high cost.

More reasons for supporting scientific research and how your money fuels real and tangible progress.

Become a SENS patron, and we’ll match a year of your donations

The 2016 year end SENS rejuvenation research fundraiser started on November 1st. This year we’re trying something a little different, with a longer term view. This is the time for it! Newly formed companies are now working on the first SENS therapies, and longer-term non-profit research projects are also underway. These initiatives will come to fruition some years from now: the SENS Research Foundation recently launched Project|21 with a five year timeline, for example. So this year we’re looking for more members of our community to become SENS Patrons for the long term, by signing up for a recurring monthly donation to the SENS Research Foundation, and then keeping that going until the job is done and the first rejuvenation therapies are deployed. As an encouragement, we will match the next year of donations for anyone who signs up before the end of 2016, from a fund of $24,000 provided by Josh Triplett and Fight Aging!

In Brief:

• Using a system of electrodes, transmitters, receivers, scientists were able to restore leg function in a primate, completely bypassing damaged nerves.
• While this remarkable feat may be decades away from human use, it is a promising development for the hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. with spinal cord injuries

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In Brief:

• The AI, called MogIA, based its analysis on 20 million data points from platforms such as Google, Twitter, and YouTube.
• The AI aims at learning from the environment, developing its own rules at the policy layer, and developing expert systems without discarding any data.

MogIA, an artificial intelligence (AI) system developed by an Indian start-up, correctly predicted the outcome of this year’s elections. It based its analysis on 20 million data points from platforms such as Google, Twitter, and YouTube, reviewing public engagement across various posts in relation to individual candidates.

Google has built machine learning systems that can create their own cryptographic algorithms — the latest success for AI’s use in cybersecurity. But what are the implications of our digital security increasingly being handed over to intelligent machines?

Google Brain, the company’s California-based AI unit, managed the recent feat by pitting neural networks against each other. Two systems, called Bob and Alice, were tasked with keeping their messages secret from a third, called Eve. None were told how to encrypt messages, but Bob and Alice were given a shared security key that Eve didn’t have access too.

Continue reading “Battle of the Bots: How AI Is Taking Over the World of Cybersecurity” »

A vast majority of global investors believe AI and robots will destroy huge numbers of existing jobs.

Party for Science with Steve Aoki and help raise awareness and funds for the SENS Research Foundation.

Hang with DJ Steve Aoki at a nightclub and you can expect an earful of his electronic bangers and confetti in your hair. Cozy up to Steve Aoki at Brooklyn Bowl on November 15 and you’ll get to hit pins alongside neuroscientists, bid on one-of-a-kind experiences in live and silent auctions (think jumping into the foam pit at Aoki’s Las Vegas “playhouse”) and catch him outside the booth as he hosts the Aoki Foundation’s Bowling for Brains fundraiser. The inaugural event supports the Buck Institute on Aging, SENS Research Foundation and Las Vegas’ own Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, continuing the foundation’s ongoing support of regenerative science.

In Brief:

• New quantum computer has double the processing power of D-Wave’s current version.
• With speeds up to 1,000 times faster than what’s currently available, it could revolutionize fields like engineering, software validation, and machine learning.

Everyone from astronomers to tech companies wants to know what it would be like to live on Mars.

From growing vegetables in Martian soil, to claims that leaving Earth could save the human species, scientists are constantly making advances in this field.

Now, astronomers from the Royal Observatory in London and Stephen Petranek — author of “How We’ll Live on Mars” — have designed a Martian Show Home to demonstrate what life could be like on the Red Planet.

Continue reading “Astronomers have designed a house for Mars — take a look inside” »