Lifeboat Foundation

The “Fermi Paradox” and “The Great Filter.”

Our universe is huge and some parts are very old and if we somehow happen to live on a planet that’s fairly young, aliens must also exist somewhere. But where the hell are they? Kurz Gesagt tries to find an answer in this beautiful animation explainer that traces on The Fermi Paradox and different kinds of potential civilizations.

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How does water on the surface of this bizarre material control UV light emission and also its conductivity? (credit: Mohammad A. Islam et al./Nano Letters)

In a remarkable chance landmark discovery, a team of researchers at four universities has discovered a mysterious material that emits ultraviolet light and has insulating, electrical conducting, semiconducting, superconducting, and ferromagnetic properties — all controlled by surface water.

It happened while the researchers were studying a sample of lanthanum aluminate film on a strontinum titanate crystal. The sample mysteriously began to glow, emitting intense levels of ultraviolet light from its interior. After carefully reproducing the experimental conditions, they tracked down the unlikely switch that turns UV light on or off: surface water moisture.

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This week, Google released a research paper chronicling one of its latest forays into artificial intelligence.

Researchers at the company programmed an advanced type of “chatbot” that learns how to respond in conversations based on examples from a training set of dialogue.

And the bot doesn’t just answer by spitting out canned answers in response to certain words; it can form new answers from new questions.

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Basic Income (10 Reasons)
https://goo.gl/PJ7bbh

Lies You’ve Been Told about Work.
https://goo.gl/3u7Vld

Continue reading “Why Basic Income?” »

This Audi Parks Itself, and Comes When You Call!

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Due for release in June 2016, No Man’s Sky will allow you to visit and explore a virtual universe of trillions of planets, each one a unique world.

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Healthy living isn’t meaningless, but while all of us can make positive lifestyle modifications, genes play a massive role in longevity — or there would be no species variation. We’re still discovering exactly which genes provide a longevity boost and what they do, but we now know 7 variants could help give you an advantage.

The search for a longevity gene

Previous efforts to search out a ‘longevity gene’ have been largely unsuccessful, so researchers led by Stuart Kim at Stanford decided to focus on ‘bad’ gene variants this time — or more crucially a lack of them. They analysed 800 people over 100 and 5000 people over 90 and found that while many variants are common in the average person, possession of fewer ‘bad’ versions of 5 crucial genes was indeed associated with longevity. Many long-lived individuals are able to avoid chronic disease despite harmful lifestyle choices like smoking, and this could be one of the explanations. These confirmed 5 add to 2 already associated with longer lifespans.

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German quantum gravity expert Sabine Hossenfelder is fighting in the battle over theoretical physics, a clash between those looking for evidence and those looking to move forward faster.

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