Google and others think software that learns to learn could take over some work done by AI experts.
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The future of nuclear power might look very different than we thought, with a US-based company presenting plans for miniature, modular nuclear power plants that are so small, they can fit on the back of a truck.
NuScale Power, the company behind the power plants, says each modular device is completely self-contained, and capable of producing 50-megawatts of electricity — enough to power thousands of homes.
The power plants stand 29.7 metres tall, so aren’t really that ‘miniature’, except relative to an acutal nuclear power plant. They also haven’t been tested as yet, so we need to reserve our excitment for when we can actually see these things in action.
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Should We Cure Aging?
Posted in biotech/medical, life extension
Aging fosters sickness and disability, increases human suffering, and makes us more likely to die. Previously, I argued that curing aging must be a top priority for society, yet there are also a number of possible objections to this endeavor. Most of these are unfounded myths that can be disproved while others raise relevant social, philosophical and ethical issues. This essay draws on my own lectures, and publications (Sethe and de Magalhaes, 2013), on this subject and attempts to answer the most commonly raised questions and concerns about the work of gerontologists and a possible cure for aging.
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There 7.68 billion acres of arable land. if everyone did this and lived one one tenth of an acre then that’s room for 76 billion people just on the arable land where there is actually 36 billion acres of land on the planet.
If farming were turned into vertical farming building with ten floors a piece at 1/10th and acre per level that’s 760 billion. At 100 floors that’d be 7.6 trillion. I would need to review an Isaac Arthur video about the maximum occupancy of the planet, there may be heat problems with trillions of people on the planet.
A tenth of an acre would be a square around 65 × 65 feet, or so.
What Is A Biosimilar Drug?
Posted in biotech/medical, futurism
Already renowned for its potential to revolutionize everything from light bulbs and dental fillings through to semiconductors and motorcycle helmets, graphene can now add innate superconductivity to its repertoire. Scientists at the University of Cambridge claim to have discovered a method to trigger the superconducting properties of graphene without actually altering its chemical structure.
Light, flexible, and super-strong, the single layer of carbon atoms that makes up graphene has only been rendered superconductive previously by doping it with impurities, or by affixing it to other superconducting materials, both of which may undermine some of its other unique properties.
However, in the latest research conducted at the University of Cambridge, scientists claim to have found a way to activate superconduction in graphene by coupling it with a material known as praseodymium cerium copper oxide (Pr2− xCe xCuO4) or PCCO. PCCO is from a wider class of superconducting materials known as cuprates (derived from the Latin word for copper), known for their use in high-temperature superconductivity.
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If you’ve never heard of an exascale computer before — known unofficially as a super-supercomputer — don’t worry, it doesn’t even exist yet.
But 2017 could be the year that all changes, because China just announced that its world-first exascale supercomputer prototype is due for completion in the coming months. If this thing works as it should, it will be the fastest computer in the world, capable of performing 1 quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second.
The country’s National Supercomputer Centre announced this week that completion of their prototype is way ahead of schedule, and is expected to be completed in 2017, rather than 2018, as originally predicted.
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It’s one of those philosophical questions we occasionally ponder: What is nothing? Can nothing be something? If not, then how can something come from nothing?
If there’s one scientific field on the forefront of such conceptual paradoxes, it’s quantum theory. And in quantum theory, nothing actually is something … sort of.
See, according to quantum mechanics, even an empty vacuum is not really empty. It’s filled with strange virtual particles that blink in and out of existence in timespans too short to observe. Nothingness, on the quantum level, exists on a level of intuitive absurdity; a kind of existence that is paradoxical but, in some conceptual sense, necessary.
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