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Jul 27, 2015

Super-elastic conducting fibers for artificial muscles, sensors, capacitors

Posted by in categories: electronics, nanotechnology

UT Dallas scientists have constructed novel fibers by wrapping sheets of tiny carbon nanotubes to form a sheath around a long rubber core. This illustration shows complex two-dimensional buckling, shown in yellow, of the carbon nanotube sheath/rubber-core fiber. The buckling results in a conductive fiber with super elasticity and novel electronic properties. (credit: UT Dallas Alan G. MacDiarmid Nanotech Institute)

An international research team based at The University of Texas at Dallas has made electrically conducting fibers that can be reversibly stretched to more than 14 times their initial length and whose electrical conductivity increases 200-fold when stretched.

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Jul 27, 2015

How to save the planet: environmental conflicts in a new light — By Justin Farrell | Financial Times

Posted by in categories: environmental, science

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One of the most symbolic and substantively important examples of environmental conflict is over Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is the first national park in the world, and perhaps the most important natural treasure in the US. More recently it has become a site for bitter and long-lasting environmental conflict. And it has made me wonder how the scientific arguments around the issues sit with the emotional reactions inspired by the landscape and history.

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Jul 27, 2015

Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking Join Call for Ban on Artificially Intelligent Weapons

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, robotics/AI

Trying to kill the robotics/AI industry.


“It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists”

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Jul 27, 2015

Strange Bright Spots on Ceres Create Mini-Atmosphere on Dwarf Planet

Posted by in category: space

The investigation into the dwarf planet Ceres‘ mysterious bright spots has taken an intriguing new twist. The famous bright spots at the bottom of Ceres’ Occator crater appear to be sublimating material into space, creating a localized atmosphere within the walls of the 57-mile-wide (92 kilometers) hole in the ground, new observations by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft suggest.

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Jul 27, 2015

Here’s the only way to destroy a black hole

Posted by in category: cosmology

You can’t defy the laws of physics.

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Jul 27, 2015

Watch The First Soviet Science Fiction Film, Aelita: Queen Of Mars

Posted by in category: space

Here’s something cool to watch: the first ever Soviet science fiction movie, Aelita: Queen of Mars, directed by Yakov Protozoan from 1924.

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Jul 27, 2015

Musk, Hawking, Wozniak call for ban on autonomous weapons and military AI

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Dozens of researchers and tech experts want to prevent a “military AI arms race.”

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Jul 27, 2015

Telepathy technology is coming – are you scared? — Rhodri Marsden, The Guardian

Posted by in categories: Mark Zuckerberg, neuroscience, telepathy

Mark Zuckerberg

Advances in the field of artificial intelligence are invariably greeted with concern about an imminent robot uprising. Similarly, when we hear about developments in the field of brain-to-brain communication, we imagine any number of outlandish scenarios: perhaps a government marching us unquestioningly into battle via a process of insidious mind control, or an erotic thought we had about a work colleague being unwittingly transmitted to our partner.

When Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced this week during one of his regular Q&A sessions that Facebook is working in the field of thought transmission, we found ourselves momentarily transported to a horrific telepathic future. “You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too,” he said, as people thought to themselves “under no circumstances do I want anyone to know the dark, unsettling images that flash through my mind on an hourly basis”. We are troubled by that vision. But it’s only a vision. Read more

Jul 27, 2015

Google’s Artificial Intelligence Speaks, and She’s a Woman

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Stephen Hawking would say the development of artificial intelligence (AI) will end humanity, but there are those who would disagree — Google is one of them.

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Jul 27, 2015

Why Generation Z will definitely embrace Bitcoin

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, education, innovation

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Can you picture a world without physical money? A world where we don’t have to carry bills and coins in our pockets and wallets? Generation Z can.
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