Lifeboat Foundation

Hmmm, no thanks.

The glue would be covered by an outer layer that peels away during an accident.

There should be worlds out there so balmy they make Earth look stale, and there are signs of one just four light years away. That’s close enough to visit…

Watch the video NASA’s Mars rover has measured something in the air that scientists can’t explain on Yahoo Finance. VIDEO: NASA just uncovered another clue.

The most fundamental limitations of modern physics might not be so limiting after all.

Biologists have identified the one gene that caused the evolution of single-celled organisms into multicellularity, debunking previous theories that several genes were at play. The gene retinoblastoma is also the same gene that is found to be defective in cancer patients, and suppresses tumors.

This machine will save lives by transforming unhealthy lungs into healthy ones.

This box lets lungs live outside the body so they can be used for transplants.

By reinventing the neural network, the company hopes to help computers make the leap from processing words and symbols to comprehending the real world.

In a blog post today, Uber showed off the self-driving car that’s been stealthily cruising around Pittsburgh. The car is a hybrid Ford Fusion and is currently in early stages of safety testing. This particular Uber test vehicle was first spotted almost a year ago by local Pittsburgh media, but this is Uber’s first acknowledgement of such tests.

Uber and Google (among others) have been racing to be the first to develop self-driving taxis for over a year now. Uber “cleaned out” Carnegie Mellon and the National Robotics Engineering Center to be part of its Advanced Technology Center in Pittsburgh, the research arm responsible for developing this “look ma, no hands” technology. This heavy hiring out of Carnegie Mellon could give Uber a big boost. The Pittsburgh-based university considers itself the birthplace of self-driving cars, and it probably is. CMU researchers were testing autonomous vehicles before Google even existed.

In March, Uber also joined a coalition, this time in partnership with Google, to advocate for self-driving adoption.

Continue reading “This Is Our First Good Look at Uber’s Self-Driving Car” »

Princeton’s answer to Quantum friction.

Abstract: Theoretical chemists at Princeton University have pioneered a strategy for modeling quantum friction, or how a particle’s environment drags on it, a vexing problem in quantum mechanics since the birth of the field. The study was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

“It was truly a most challenging research project in terms of technical details and the need to draw upon new ideas,” said Denys Bondar, a research scholar in the Rabitz lab and corresponding author on the work.

Quantum friction may operate at the smallest scale, but its consequences can be observed in everyday life. For example, when fluorescent molecules are excited by light, it’s because of quantum friction that the atoms are returned to rest, releasing photons that we see as fluorescence. Realistically modeling this phenomenon has stumped scientists for almost a century and recently has gained even more attention due to its relevance to quantum computing.