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Jun 15, 2016

How iPS cells changed the world

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Excellent article on iPS. Imagine many of us in our lives have designed or researched and develop new technologies or solutions to solve a specific set of problems or to address a specific set of opportunities; and ended up to our surprise to take in a different direction. This is one of those stories.


Induced pluripotent stem cells were supposed to herald a medical revolution. But ten years after their discovery, they are transforming biological research instead.

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Jun 15, 2016

Neurons that interpret vision can swap eyes, switch back

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Interesting.


Individual cells can repeatedly re-activate unused connections.

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Jun 15, 2016

How Artificial Superintelligence Will Give Birth To Itself

Posted by in categories: biological, robotics/AI

There’s a saying among futurists that a human-equivalent artificial intelligence will be our last invention. After that, AIs will be capable of designing virtually anything on their own — including themselves. Here’s how a recursively self-improving AI could transform itself into a superintelligent machine.

When it comes to understanding the potential for artificial intelligence, it’s critical to understand that an AI might eventually be able to modify itself, and that these modifications could allow it to increase its intelligence extremely fast.

Once sophisticated enough, an AI will be able to engage in what’s called “recursive self-improvement.” As an AI becomes smarter and more capable, it will subsequently become better at the task of developing its internal cognitive functions. In turn, these modifications will kickstart a cascading series of improvements, each one making the AI smarter at the task of improving itself. It’s an advantage that we biological humans simply don’t have.

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Jun 15, 2016

SynBio Advances on Multiple Fronts

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, life extension

List of the who’s who are leading some of key bio programs around nextgen bio/ living cell technologies.


According to GEN’s experts, synthetic biology isn’t yet plug-and-play, but cellular processes are being engineered into biosensing systems as well as biologics production. Soon, for tasks from theranostics to regenerative medicine, “there will be a synbio app for that.”

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Jun 15, 2016

Intelligence Agency Wants to Keep ‘Novel Organisms’ From Threatening Humans

Posted by in categories: biological, business

IARPA is hosting a Proposers’ Day for businesses in a couple weeks.

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Jun 15, 2016

Researchers discover new way to turn electricity into light, using graphene

Posted by in category: materials

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found a new way of generating light and other electromagnetic radiation, using a sheet of graphene, a pure two-dimensional form of carbon.

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Jun 15, 2016

Focus: LIGO Bags Another Black Hole Merger

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

LIGO detects gravitational waves for the second time, from another pair of merging black holes. This time they were smaller and provided a longer-duration signal of their final moments. Two events within four months suggests that such detections will soon be giving astronomers a wealth of new information about previously invisible events in the Universe.

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Jun 15, 2016

Android Creator Andy Rubin Bets Big On Quantum Computing And Smartphone AI

Posted by in categories: computing, engineering, mobile phones, neuroscience, quantum physics, robotics/AI

Smart man.


Android creator Andy Rubin has several tricks up his sleeve. Rubin’s company Playground is currently tinkering with quantum computing and smartphone AI, and he believes that this combination could create a conscious intelligence that would underpin all of technology.

andy rubin

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Jun 15, 2016

CWRU physicists deploy magnetic vortex to control electron spin

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, supercomputing

More news on the using the magnetic vortex method to control electron spin.


Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a way to swiftly and precisely control electron spins at room temperature.

The technology, described in Nature Communications, offers a possible alternative strategy for building quantum computers that are far faster and more powerful than today’s supercomputers.

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Jun 15, 2016

Zoltan Istvan 2016: Let’s make Americans immortal

Posted by in categories: education, geopolitics, life extension, mobile phones, space, transhumanism

USA Today story:


As co-writer for USA TODAY’S “For the Record,” I’ve been writing about the campaigns of Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green presidential candidates since the newsletter’s launch last summer. But the first presidential candidate to reach out to me was Zoltan Istvan, the Mill Valley, California-based Transhumanist Party candidate who foresees the merger of humans and technology in the very near future. I spoke by phone with Istvan last week.

Big promises are the hallmark of presidential campaigns.

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