Lifeboat Foundation

Tyler Hayes | Fast Company

“The inherently robotic system begs to be humanized and explained. The first question Taylor had to ask himself was if what Tocchini was attempting was even possible. Could he translate design intention into an algorithm that was always producing new and relevant results—something that satisfied a broad range of needs and desires?” Read more

Steve Lohr | The New York Times

“Many data quants see marketing as a low-risk — and, yes, lucrative — petri dish in which to hone the tools of an emerging science. ‘What happens if my algorithm is wrong? Someone sees the wrong ad,’ said Claudia Perlich, a data scientist who works for an ad-targeting start-up. ‘What’s the harm? It’s not a false positive for breast cancer.’…These questions are spurring a branch of academic study known as algorithmic accountability.” Read more

Cyrus Mody | IEEE Spectrum

“Moore’s Law is more like a law passed by the U.S. Congress. By that he means, roughly, that the leading institutions of the semiconductor industry have agreed, or ‘legislated,’ to maintain Moore’s Law because it is a useful coordinating mechanism.” Read more

Kari Paul | Motherboard

”​When a human being is killed by an autonomous machine, who takes the blame? Human rights non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch says it is virtually impossible to tell, and that presents unprecedented danger in the future of warfare. The group released a report today showing how difficult it will be to hold commanders, operators, programmers or manufacturers legally responsible for crimes committed by autonomous machines under current legislature.” Read more

By Davide Sher — 3D Printing Industry
All of my relatives that work in the medical or scientific field are very quick to “crush” my arguments when I ask them about the possibility of 3D printing functional organs, saying that there is no way to replicate an organ’s complex, multicellular structure. I consider these relatives to be extremely knowledgeable and reliable, but they are mostly doctors and/or researchers who are not directly familiar with additive manufacturing technologies.

On the other hand, 3D Bioprinting Solution’s enthusiasm, as with any other 3D bioprinting venture, is contagious and I know from experience that, with 3D printing nothing is impossible, and nothing can be entirely discarded. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle: bioprinting complex organs is an extremely difficult feat to achieve, but, sooner or later, it will be done. And 3D Bioprinting Solutions may be the company to do it. Read more

By Richard Moss — GizmagScientists have been working since 2008 to develop technology based on memristors (short for memory resistors), which promise computers that need never boot up and function more akin to the human brain – like neurons, they can retain information and perform logic operations. Now scientists at Northwestern University have made a new breakthrough that may make possible brain-like computing capabilities.

Memristors are considered exciting for more than their potential to create brain-like computers. Unlike flash memory, they’re fast. Unlike random access memory (RAM), they remember their state – whatever information they held – when they lose power. They also require less energy to operate, rarely crash, and are immune to radiation. The trouble is that they are two-terminal electronic devices, which results in them being tunable only through changes in the voltage applied externally. Read more

By Caleb A. Scharf — Scientific American
Gravity, as the old joke goes, sucks.

It drags us down, pulls on our weary limbs, makes our feet tired, makes parts of us droop. But it’s also a critical factor for our long term well-being. Astronauts and cosmonauts circling the Earth over the past 60 years have discovered that zero-g, or microgravity, is really not very good for you. Read more

There are quite a few publications on cryodynamics in refereed journals since 2011. Cryodynamics is the sister discipline to thermodynamics and is crucial for the control of sustained hot fusion in Tokamak reactors. So it has become the basic science for an energy-thirsty planet. As a side effect, cryodynamics proved Zwicky’s “tired light” hypothesis correct. So there was no Big Bang.

CERN, however, tries to create the first Big Bang on earth. Why is no one asking it to first renew its by 7 years outdated “Safety Report”?

I append a link to the first paper on cryodynamics: http://www.complex-systems.com/pdf/20-2-3.pdf

by Emil Venere-Purdue — Futurity
Simulator sickness—which often induces vertigo and even nausea—often afflicts players of virtual reality games, but inserting a “virtual nose” into the picture may be a way to lessen the queasiness.

Various physiological systems govern the onset of simulator sickness: an overall sense of touch and position, or the somatosensory system; liquid-filled tubes in the ear called the vestibular system; and the oculumotor system, or muscles that control eye movements.

“Simulator sickness is very common,” says David Whittinghill, assistant professor in the computer graphics technology department at Purdue University. “The problem is your perceptual system does not like it when the motion of your body and your visual system are out of synch. Read more