Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Duke University chemists have found that silver nanowire films like these conduct electricity well enough to form functioning circuits without applying high temperatures, enabling printable electronics on materials like paper or plastic. (credit: Ian Stewart and Benjamin Wiley)

By suspending tiny metal nanoparticles in liquids, Duke University scientists can use conductive ink-jet-printed conductive “inks” to print inexpensive, customizable RFID and other electronic circuit patterns on just about any surface — even on paper and plastics.

Printed electronics, which are already being used widely in devices such as the anti-theft radio frequency identification (RFID) tags you might find on the back of new DVDs, currently have one major drawback: for the circuits to work, they first have to be heated to 200° C (392°F) to melt all the nanoparticles together into a single conductive wire.

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It’s well known that the innermost part of Earth is made mostly of iron (about 85 percent). Nickel accounts for about 10 percent. That last 5 percent however, has remained a bit of a mystery.

A Japanese research team has been searching for that missing element for decades, and now believes that the final 5 percent is most likely made from silicon, reports the BBC.

They presented their results at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

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This is one of those situations that I often get conflicted over. Yes, it’s good to keep people safe; however, at what cost is too much? As, one person’s interpretation of a bad web site is not the same for others. Such as when Nelson Mandela led the whole anti-apartheid movement he was considered then a terrorist. And, the 1960s when Dr. King fought for real equal rights for all people; he was deemed by US government a terrorist. And, neither one of these situations where anything like ISIS today. So, it is a very tricky situation; and hope the courts can help us ensure things are legally done the right way.

DARPA is soliciting software that distinguishes between anti-American slogans and true intent to kill on a global scale.

MILITARY

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I can honestly state there is already one that folks are using; I would suggest DARPA should assess it and maybe acquire it. As it would give them a jump start and they can enhance it for their own needs.

In today’s data-rich world, companies, governments and individuals want to analyze anything and everything they can get their hands on – and the World Wide Web has loads of information. At present, the most easily indexed material from the web is text. But as much as 89 to 96 percent of the content on the internet is actually something else – images, video, audio, in all thousands of different kinds of nontextual data types.

Further, the vast majority of online content isn’t available in a form that’s easily indexed by electronic archiving systems like Google’s. Rather, it requires a user to log in, or it is provided dynamically by a program running when a user visits the page. If we’re going to catalog online human knowledge, we need to be sure we can get to and recognize all of it, and that we can do so automatically.

How can we teach computers to recognize, index and search all the different types of material that’s available online? Thanks to federal efforts in the global fight against and weapons dealing, my research forms the basis for a new tool that can help with this effort.

Continue reading “Building a Google for the dark web” | >

Abstract: We examine the possibility that Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) originate from the activity of extragalactic civilizations. Our analysis shows that beams used for powering large light sails could yield parameters that are consistent with FRBs. The characteristic diameter of the beam emitter is estimated through a combination of energetic and engineering constraints, and both approaches intriguingly yield a similar result which is on the scale of a large rocky planet. Moreover, the optimal frequency for powering the light sail is shown to be similar to the detected FRB frequencies. These ‘coincidences’ lend some credence to the possibility that FRBs might be artificial in origin. Other relevant quantities, such as the typical mass of the light sail, and the angular velocity of the beam, are also derived. By using the FRB occurrence rate, we infer upper bounds on the rate of FRBs from extragalactic civilizations in a typical galaxy. The possibility of detecting fainter signals is briefly discussed, and the wait time for an exceptionally bright FRB event in the Milky Way is estimated.

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The search for aliens has become a grassroots movement for billionaires.

The last few years demonstrate that extraterrestrial research has finally moved into the mainstream — and money is pouring in fast.

Aside from a strange blip in the 1950s and early 1960s, the search for extraterrestrial life has primarily taken place at society’s fringes. Public figures have not historically risked their reputations advocating the search for alien life. And within the scientific community, the subject was largely (and understandably) sidelined until recent years, when telescopes that could detect new planets and instruments that found the ingredients for life on other worlds allowed serious-minded researchers to pass the laugh test.

As a result, the last decade has seen a surge of interest in extraterrestrial research within the scientific community that has seized the public imagination. For example, the recent discovery of water on Mars immediately raised serious hopes from serious people we might find Martians. Every announcement that scientists have found another potentially habitable exoplanet (which includes the nearest exoplanet to Earth) causes days of clamor on the internet.

Continue reading “The Hunt For Aliens is a Grassroots Movement Funded by Billionaires” | >