“Startups are making realistic lab-grown foods, but government food regulators aren’t sure how to police them.”
Asteroid Redirect
Posted in space
Creepy Humanoid Robot
Posted in robotics/AI
From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It’s usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published August 2, 2015. We hope you enjoy it!
Think your deliberate, guiding, conscious thoughts are in charge of your actions?
Think again.
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A new planet that bears striking similarities to our own planet prompts remarkable inroad into the study of space. This also brings a new area to search for the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
Back in 2013, the first signs of a planet over four light-years from our solar system were spotted. Since then, the scientific community has been working to gather more information via further observations, primarily with the help of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
To study and observe the red dwarf star, which was named Proxima Centauri, the Pale Red Dot campaign was started. Scientists used the HARPS spectograph on the ESO’s 3.6 meter telescope at La Silla in Chile. Combined with data gathered from other telescopes around the world, astronomers, led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, observed a wobbling star that was apparently caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.
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SINGAPORE (AP) — The world’s first self-driving taxis will be picking up passengers in Singapore starting Thursday.
Select members of the public will be able to hail a free ride through their smartphones in taxis operated by nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. While multiple companies, including Google and Volvo, have been testing self-driving cars on public roads for several years, nuTonomy says it will be the first to offer rides to the public. It will beat ride-hailing service Uber, which plans to offer rides in autonomous cars in Pittsburgh, by a few weeks.
The service will start small — six cars now, growing to a dozen by the end of the year. The ultimate goal, say nuTonomy officials, is to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018, which will help sharply cut the number of cars on Singapore’s congested roads. Eventually, the model could be adopted in cities around the world, nuTonomy says.
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http://democracynow.org — A new article in the medical journal The Lancet has concluded much of the Northern Hemisphere will be too hot by 2085 to host the Summer Olympics. Researchers are projecting only eight cities in the hemisphere outside of Western Europe would be cool enough to host the Games. This includes just three cities in North America: Calgary, Vancouver and San Francisco. The list of cities where it could be too hot is staggering: Istanbul, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Budapest, Tokyo, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles—and the list goes on. Extreme high temperatures have already impacted the athletic world. In 2007, high heat forced the cancellation of the Chicago Marathon. At this year’s U.S. Olympic marathon trials in Los Angeles, 30 percent of the runners dropped out of the race due to the heat. For more, we speak with Kirk Smith, lead author of the article and professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley.
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