Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 11451

Johns Hopkins University researchers are the first to glimpse the human brain making a purely voluntary decision to act.

Unlike most studies where scientists watch as people respond to cues or commands, Johns Hopkins researchers found a way to observe people’s as they made choices entirely on their own. The findings, which pinpoint the parts of the brain involved in and action, are now online, and due to appear in a special October issue of the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

“How do we peek into people’s brains and find out how we make choices entirely on our own?” asked Susan Courtney, a professor of psychological and brain sciences. “What parts of the brain are involved in free choice?”

Read more

Cloud syncing and sharing software company Dropbox today announced that it has released an image compression algorithm called Lepton under an Apache open source license on GitHub.

Lepton can both compress and decompress files, and for the latter, it can work while streaming — that is, files can be expanded back into full size as they are being sent over the network. So Lepton is important for user experience, given how it can more quickly transfer data and show content. But at the same time, it has an impact on the data center infrastructure where files often end up.

“We have used Lepton to encode 16 billion images saved to Dropbox, and are rapidly recoding our older images. Lepton has already saved Dropbox multiple petabytes of space,” Dropbox software systems architect Daniel Reiter Horn wrote in a blog post.

Read more

The role of technology within our personal and professional lives continues evolving at an exceptionally fast pace. From utility-based mobile apps and wearable devices, to the emergence of augmented and virtual reality, the digital revolution is expanding to cover every aspect of the human experience.

In an era of entrepreneurship, founders rely heavily on advancements in technology to develop cutting edge products, platforms and experiences that meet the growing demands of a global consumer base. As content remains essential to building a brand or launching a business, it’s also critical that companies have the capability to swiftly adapt in changing markets. Being able to successfully scale a business, amidst the inevitable pivots and unexpected turns, requires having access to the tools and solution-based software needed to create, modify and fix things on-demand.

For companies dependent on manpower to manage these responsibilities, efficiency becomes contingent upon talent and training, guided by sharp instincts and relentlessly working around the clock to assure tasks are not only completed effectively, but to further offset the likelihood of human error. For software developers, who have an extremely detailed and meticulous role, being such an invaluable piece to the puzzle can prove to be very risky, time-consuming and equally as expensive; especially as testing, predicting and automating becomes increasingly paramount. As companies aim to cut costs without sacrificing quality, while understanding the core function of technology is to provide streamline solutions to complex problems, what arises is the notorious battle of man versus machine, and also where a company like Dev9 steps in.

Read more

Announcing the discovery of over 100 new exoplanets identified by the Kepler space telescope, NASA has highlighted four planets, potentially rocky bodies, two of which may be capable of supporting life, orbiting a distant star.

Located 181 light years from Earth, in the Aquarius constellation, K2-72 is a red dwarf. NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler satellite has found four bodies orbiting the distant star which, given their size, are likely rocky bodies similar to our own planet.

At left, in optical light, UGC 1382 appears to be a simple elliptical galaxy. But spiral arms emerged when astronomers incorporated ultraviolet and deep optical data (middle). Combining that with a view of low-density hydrogen gas (shown in green at right), scientists discovered that UGC 1382 is gigantic.

Read more

China and Russia are discussing joint cooperation in outer-space exploration, including missions to the Moon and even Mars, according to a statement by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on Wednesday.

“Yesterday, we (Rogozin and Vice-Premier of China’s State Council Wang Yang) worked for three and a half hours, discussing cooperation in the nuclear sphere and cooperation in the issues of interaction between our space agencies where there are such large projects as the deliveries of rocket engines, and cooperation in navigation systems,” the Russian vice-premier said.

He made his remarks during a talk with the heads of Russian regions and Chinese provinces and the managers of companies from both countries. The expo is an annual industrial exhibition held since 2014 within the framework of the Harbin Trade Fair.

Read more