Lifeboat Foundation

Laura Bliss — CityLab

Judging from some of Facebook’s most viral images in history—textbooks wrapped in paper bags, futuristic beach houses, Barack and Michelle mid-hug—it seems safe to say that, content-wise, a mix of nostalgia and aspiration makes ‘book users click, like, comment, and share. On Flickr, it’s cool nature shots. Instagram loves the Kardashians.

But favorite subjects come and go, while the viral cycle lives on. What if you could predict the kinds of photos most likely to strike a nerve? Given the incredible amount of data available on how online users engage with images, is there a way to measure the objective qualities of an image’s shareability?
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Helen Knight | MIT News correspondent

The sequencing of the human genome laid the foundation for the study of genetic variation and its links to a wide range of diseases. But the genome itself is only part of the story, as genes can be switched on and off by a range of chemical modifications, known as “epigenetic marks.”

Now, a decade after the human genome was sequenced, the National Institutes of Health’s Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium has created a similar map of the human epigenome.
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Lifeboat Foundation — Futurism Update — Feb/26/2015

POINT OF CONTACT:

https://www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini

https://AGO26.blogspot.com

Continue reading “Lifeboat Foundation — Futurism Update — Feb/26/2015” »

Adele Peters — Fast Company

In another Tokyo suburb, a cartoonesque robot named Pepper, the first robot designed to respond to human emotions, is joking with customers at a store selling mobile phones.

While Japan has been a robot-friendly place for a long time, the number of robots is now booming, even as its human population is not. In the next five years, the country hopes to build 20 times more of them. One industry leader suggests that the country should invest in 30 million robots—nearly the same population as greater Tokyo—as part of a plan to regain a spot as the world leader in manufacturing.

“What you’re seeing in Japan is a much more aggressive approach to purchasing robots,” says Mike Zinser, a partner at Boston Consulting Group, and co-author of a new study about how robotics will transform manufacturing. “They’ve got a real potential to see significant cost savings, and also an improvement in competitiveness relative to other countries over the next decade.“
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I have two examples to offer: c-global and cryodynamics.

c-global is based on overcoming an oversight Einstein had made in December of 1907. He assumed c to be reduced in proportion to his newly discovered gravitational redshift valid downstairs, while in reality an optically masked size increase occurs down there. The newly reconstituted c-global rules out cosmic expansion.

Cryodynamics is the new sister discipline to thermodynamics. It governs gases made up from mutually attractive particles. It explains the observed cosmological redshift without expansion.

Although both findings are in the literature for years, it is impossible to evoke any response. This despite the fact that cryodynamics promises limitless free energy. There is no support for its aficionados anywhere.

Continue reading “Why big Progress is virtually Thwarted” »

Margaret Boden — IA News

Most of us are fascinated by creativity. New ideas in science and art are often hugely exciting – and, paradoxically, sometimes seemingly “obvious” once they’ve arrived. But how can that be? Many people, perhaps most of us, think there’s no hope of an answer. Creativity is deeply mysterious, indeed almost magical. Any suggestion that there might be a scientific theory of creativity strikes such people as absurd. And as for computer models of creativity, those are felt to be utterly impossible.

But they aren’t. Scientific psychology has identified three different ways in which new, surprising, and valuable ideas – that is, creative ideas – can arise in people’s minds. These involve combinational, exploratory, and transformational creativity. The information processes involved can be understood in terms of concepts drawn from Artificial Intelligence (AI). They can even be modelled by computers using AI techniques.
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Lifeboat Foundation — Futurism Update — Feb/25/2015

Researched By Andres Agostini at https://www.AMAZON.com/author/agostini

Point of Contact: https://www.LINKEDIN.com/in/andresagostini

Continue reading “Lifeboat Foundation — Futurism Update — Feb/25/2015” »

By Joseph Flaherty — Wired

As portions of the US are battered by snowstorms and shrouded beneath gray skies, a European startup is developing a light fixture that mimics the sun.

Each CoeLux fixture models the sunlight of a specific locale, be it the cool color and strong shadows of equatorial countries, the even glow of Mediterranean sunlight, or the slightly dimmer and warmer, but more striking patterns found along the Arctic Circle.

CoeLux fixtures use traditional LEDs, calibrated to the same wavelengths as the sun. However, accurately recreating sunlight also requires mimicking subtle variations caused by the atmosphere, which varies in thickness and composition depending upon where you are on earth. CoeLux uses a milimeters-thick layer of plastic, peppered with nanoparticles, that does essentially the same thing in your living room. CoeLux’s inventor, Professor Paolo Di Trapani hasn’t made any disclosures about how the nanotechnology works in practice, but an impressive list of peer-reviewed publications, industry awards, and testimonials from customers provide comfort that these devices actually work as advertised.

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