Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 11329

A Primer for Deterministic Thermodynamics and Cryodynamics

Dedicated to the Founder of Synergetics, Hermann Haken

Otto E. Rossler, Frank Kuske, Dieter Fröhlich, Hans H. Diebner, Thimo Bo¨ hl, Demetris T. Christopoulos, Christophe Letellier

Abstract The basic laws of deterministic many-body systems are summarized in the footsteps of the deterministic approach pioneered by Yakov Sinai. Two fundamental cases, repulsive and attractive, are distinguished. To facilitate comparison, long-range potentials are assumed both in the repulsive case and in the new attractive case. In Part I, thermodynamics – including the thermodynamics of irreversible processes along with chemical and biological evolution – is presented without paying special attention to the ad hoc constraint of long-range repulsion.Otto E. Rossler In Part II, the recently established new fundamental discipline of cryodynamics, based on long-range attraction, is described in a parallel format. In Part III finally, the combination (“dilute hot-plasma dynamics”) is described as a composite third sister discipline with its still largely unknown properties. The latter include the prediction of a paradoxical “double-temperature equilibrium” or at least quasi-equilibrium existing which has a promising technological application in the proposed interactive local control of hot-plasma fusion reactors. The discussion section puts everything into a larger perspective which even touches on cosmology.
Keywords: Sinai gas, chaos theory, heat death, dissipative structures, second arrow, Point Omega, Super Life, paradoxical cooling, antifriction, paradoxical acceleration, Sonnleitner numerical instability, dilute-plasma paradigm, two-temperature equilibrium, ITER, MHD, interactive plasma cooling, McGuire reactor, Hubble law, Zwicky rehabilitated, Perlmutter-Schmidt-Riess wiggle, mean cosmic temperature, van Helmont, Lavoisier, Kant, Poincaré, double-faced Sonnleitner map. (August 26, 2016)

Otto E. Rossler, Frank Kuske, Dieter Fro¨ hlich, Thimo Bo¨ hl
Division of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 18, 72076 Tu¨ bingen, Germany

Hans H. Diebner
Department of Medical Informatics, Technical University Dresden, Blasewitzerstr. 86,
01307 Dresden, Germany

Demetris T. Christopoulos
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Economics, Sofokleous 1 str.,
10509 Athens, Greece

Christophe Letellier
Physics Department, University of Rouen CORIA, Avenue de l’Université, 76801 Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, France

Full paper: http://environmental-safety.webs.com/Deterministic_Thermo_Cryo.pdf

This video realized by the AI Lab of SoftBank Robotics shows how Pepper robot learns to play the ball-in-a-cup game (“bilboquet” in French). The movement is first demonstrated to the robot by guiding its arm.

From there, Pepper has to improve its performance through trial-and-error learning. Even though the initial demonstration does not land the ball in the cup, Pepper can still learn to play the game successfully.

The movement is represented as a so-called dynamic movement primitive and optimized using an evolutionary algorithm. Our implementation uses the freely available software library dmpbbo: https://github.com/stulp/dmpbbo.

After 100 trials, Pepper has successfully optimized its behavior and is able to repeatedly land the ball in the cup.

Continue reading “[AI Lab] Pepper robot learning “ball in a cup”” | >

Osteoarthritis is a debilitating condition that affects at least 27 million people in the United States, and at least 12 percent of osteoarthritis cases stem from earlier injuries. Over-the-counter painkillers, such as anti-inflammatory drugs, help reduce pain but do not stop unrelenting cartilage destruction. Consequently, pain related to the condition only gets worse.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that they can inject into injured joints in mice and suppress inflammation immediately following an injury, reducing the destruction of cartilage.

The findings are reported online Sept. 26 in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more

These days there are a quite a few high-tech ways to keep our oral hygiene in check, from toothbrushes that track your technique to smart floss dispensers that encourage healthy habits. Mint is the latest connected solution to hit bathrooms and beyond, and is said to detect signs of gum disease and poor oral hygiene on your breath in the space of a few seconds.

Developed by Breathometer, the same company behind the smartphone-based breathalyzer we covered back in 2013, Mint is small handheld device that hooks up with iOS and Android smartphones to check in on the state of affairs inside your mouth. After a successful Indiegogo campaign in March 2015 and some good attention at the CES conference that same year, the device has finally started shipping today.

A sensor array inside the device measures the volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) in your breath. Studies have shown these to be key culprits behind bad breath, but their presence might do more than send your significant other running in the other direction. They can also be indicative of gum disease and poor oral health.

Read more

When a malignant tumor invades the body, immune cells rush to the site to begin to fight it. When that same tumor spreads throughout the body, however, the cancer cells become invisible to our immune systems and can metastasize unencumbered by our natural defenses. Researchers out of the University of British Columbia (UBC) are on to cancer’s tricky cloaking mechanism though, and their discovery could lead to new approaches to attacking the disease.

“We discovered a new mechanism that explains how metastatic tumours can outsmart the immune system and we have begun to reverse this process so tumours are revealed to the immune system once again,” said Wilfred Jefferies, senior author of a new study in Scientific Reports and a professor of medical genetics and microbiology and immunology at UBC.

The discovery hinges on a protein called interleukein-33, or IL-33 that’s present in primary tumors. When the tumors emit this protein, it causes another protein complex known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) to activate, which tags the cancer cells as a bad presence in the body and guides the immune system to get to work destroying them.

Read more

Komatsu’s latest autonomous truck fully embraces the notion of unmanned operation by ditching the cabin and adopting a design that optimizes load distribution and doesn’t distinguish between forwards and backwards.

Komatsu began trials of its Autonomous Haulage Systems (AHS) in a partnership with mining company Rio Tinto in 2008, and since then the technology has hauled hundreds of millions of tonnes of material in Chile and Australia’s Pilbara region.

The autonomous haul trucks like the 930E model used by Rio Tinto incorporate controls, wireless networking and obstacle detection to enable unmanned operation, but they still look like conventional mining trucks complete with driver cabins.

Read more

Now, intriguing calculations from a research team at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IAP RAS), and reported this week in Physics of Plasmas, from AIP Publishing, explain the production and dynamics of electrons and positrons from ultrahigh-intensity laser-matter interactions. In other words: They’ve calculated how to create matter and antimatter via lasers.

Strong electric fields cause electrons to undergo huge radiation losses because a significant amount of their energy is converted into gamma rays — high-energy photons, which are the particles that make up light. The high-energy photons produced by this process interact with the strong laser field and create electron-positron pairs. As a result, a new state of matter emerges: strongly interacting particles, optical fields, and gamma radiation, whose dynamics are governed by the interplay between classical physics phenomena and quantum processes.

A key concept behind the team’s work is based on the quantum electrodynamics (QED) prediction that “a strong electric field can, generally speaking, ‘boil the vacuum,’ which is full of ‘virtual particles,’ such as electron-positron pairs,” explained Igor Kostyukov of IAP RAS. “The field can convert these types of particles from a virtual state, in which the particles aren’t directly observable, to a real one.”

Read more

In a perspective article published Sept. 26 online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists at UT Dallas’ Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute describes the path to developing a new class of artificial muscles made from highly twisted fibers of various materials, ranging from exotic carbon nanotubes to ordinary nylon thread and polymer fishing line.

Because the artificial muscles can be made in different sizes and configurations, potential applications range from robotics and prosthetics to consumer products such as smart textiles that change porosity and shape in response to temperature.

“We call these actuating fibers ‘artificial muscles’ because they mimic the fiber-like form-factor of natural muscles,” said Dr. Carter Haines, associate research professor in the NanoTech Institute and co-lead author of the PNAS article, with research associate Dr. Na Li. “While the name evokes the idea of humanoid robots, we are very excited about their potential use for other practical applications, such as in next-generation intelligent textiles.” Science Based on Ancient Art.

Read more