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Nov 2, 2015

Mauna a Wakea: Hawai’i’s sacred mountain and the contentious Thirty Meter Telescope | The Conversation

Posted by in categories: astronomy, science, space

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“Should astronomers be allowed to build the TMT on Mauna Kea? This question raises concerns that we, as practising astronomers, see as a reoccurring issue within the scientific community.”

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Nov 2, 2015

New Electronic Skin Can Sense Sound and Temperature

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, materials

South Korean scientists develop an electronic skin that uses a layer of graphene film to detect sound and temperature.

A team led by materials scientist at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea has developed rubbery plastic-and-graphene film that mimics the structure of human skin. The team claims that the film can accurately detect texture, temperature, pressure and sound. This marks the first time that an electronic skin has been able to demonstrate the ability to sense the entire spectrum of stimuli, and the team is hopeful that this technology can create practical artificial skin.

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Nov 2, 2015

These Are the Genes Linked to Aging

Posted by in category: life extension

I am in my mid 40’s. Hurry the fuck up.


In the most complete tally yet, scientists have identified nearly 1,500 genes that are connected to how we age.

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Nov 2, 2015

NASA Eagleworks has tested an upgraded Emdrive

Posted by in category: space travel

Paul March says Eagleworks has mitigated the issues raised by our Eaglework (EW)Lab’s Blue-Ribbon PhD panel and now Potomac-Neuron’s paper, on the possible Lorentz force interactions.

The issue was raised that there could be Lorentz Interactions with the dc currents on the EW torque pendulum (TP) with the stray magnetic fields from the torque pendulum’s first generation open-face magnetic damper and the Earth’s geomagnetic field.

EW built and installed a 2nd generation, closed face magnetic damper that reduced the stray magnetic fields in the vacuum chamber by at least an order of magnitude and any Lorentz force interactions it could produce.

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Nov 2, 2015

Cryonics Is No Fantasy, Should We Be Taking It Seriously?

Posted by in categories: cryonics, life extension, materials, neuroscience

Most science starts off at the fringe and slowly makes it way to the mainstream. Cryopreservation is commonly achieved in a laboratory setting, but for many years serious applications remained confined to science fiction. Is it time to change how we see cryonics?

The science of freezing things

Scientific research requires great storage, and huge amounts of material including cells are frozen every day to be used at the later date. If you follow the correct protocols, many forms of life can be re-awakened after their cryogenic sleep. DMSO, propylene glycol and glycerol help abolish problems like ice crystals which can rupture cells, and storage temperatures can drop to below −120 °C. At these levels biological reactions are essentially halted.

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Nov 2, 2015

Phenylpiracetam: The Effects, Usages and Dosages

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Phenylpiracetam, a water-soluble racetam, has neuro modulating and nootropic effects. Before any usage, it is beneficial to know the general dosages.

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Nov 2, 2015

New artificial skin can detect pressure and heat simultaneously

Posted by in categories: computing, cyborgs, materials, mobile phones, robotics/AI

A team of researchers with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology and Dong-A University, both in South Korea, has developed an artificial skin that can detect both pressure and heat with a high degree of sensitivity, at the same time. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the team describes how they created the skin, what they found in testing it and the other types of things it can sense.

Many scientists around the world are working to develop , both to benefit robots and human beings who have lost skin sensation or limbs. Such efforts have led to a wide variety of artificial skin types, but until now, none of them have been able to sense both pressure and heat to a high degree, at the same time.

The new artificial skin is a sandwich of materials; at the top there is a meant to mimic the human fingerprint (it can sense texture), beneath that sit sensors sandwiched between . The sensors are domed shaped and compress to different degrees when the skin is exposed to different amount of pressure. The compression also causes a small electrical charge to move through the skin, as does heat or sound, which is also transmitted to sensors—the more pressure, heat or sound exerted, the more charge there is—using a computer to measure the charge allows for measuring the degree of sensation “felt.” The ability to sense sound, the team notes, was a bit of a surprise—additional testing showed that the artificial skin was actually better at picking up sound than an iPhone microphone.

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Nov 2, 2015

The world just got closer to a ‘hypersonic space plane’ that will transform ‘the economics of space’

Posted by in categories: economics, space travel

BAE just bought 20% of Reaction Engines. That’s a good indication it’s gonna happen!


BAE Systems, one of the world’s biggest aeronautics and defence firms, just made a significant investment in Reaction Engines.

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Nov 2, 2015

Is The Alcubierre Warp Drive Possible? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel

Is mankind capable of achieving warp speed?

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Nov 2, 2015

Dumb Holes Leak

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics, quantum physics

In August I went to Stephen Hawking’s public lecture in the fully packed Stockholm Opera. Hawking was wheeled onto the stage, placed in the spotlight, and delivered an entertaining presentation about black holes. The silence of the audience was interrupted only by laughter to Hawking’s well-placed jokes. It was a flawless performance with standing ovations.

In his lecture, Hawking expressed hope that he will win the Nobelprize for the discovery that black holes emit radiation. Now called “Hawking radiation,” this effect should have been detected at the LHC had black holes been produced there. But time has come, I think, for Hawking to update his slides. The ship to the promised land of micro black holes has long left the harbor, and it sunk – the LHC hasn’t seen black holes, has not, in fact, seen anything besides the Higgs.

But you don’t need black holes to see Hawking radiation. The radiation is a consequence of applying quantum field theory in a space- and time-dependent background, and you can use some other background to see the same effect. This can be done, for example, by measuring the propagation of quantum excitations in Bose-Einstein condensates. These condensates are clouds of about a billion or so ultra-cold atoms that form a fluid with basically zero viscosity. It’s as clean a system as it gets to see this effect. Handling and measuring the condensate is a big experimental challenge, but what wouldn’t you do to create a black hole in the lab?

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