Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Magine a future in which hyper-efficient solar panels provide renewable sources of energy, improved water filters quickly remove toxins from drinking water, and the air is scrubbed clean of pollution and greenhouse gases. That could become a reality with the right molecules and materials.

Scientists from Harvard and Google have taken a major step toward making the search for those molecules easier, demonstrating for the first time that a quantum computer could be used to model the electron interactions in a complex molecule. The work is described in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review X by Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and several co-authors.

“There are a number of applications that a quantum computer would be useful for: cryptography, machine learning, and certain number-theory problems,” Aspuru-Guzik said. “But one that has always been mentioned, even from the first conceptions of a quantum computer, was to use it to simulate matter. In this case, we use it to simulate chemistry.”

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A novel strategy is used to synthesize porous gold-silver alloy nanospheres encased in ultrathin silica shells that can act as highly sensitive single-particle probes.

Gold (Au) and silver (Ag) nanoparticles are typical plasmonic nanoparticles that exhibit an intense electromagnetic field in their proximity when they are irradiated by incident light. Within these fields—known as ‘hotspots’—the Raman scattering of molecules can be magnified by many orders of magnitude (depending on the intensity of the local electric field). In this so-called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) phenomenon,1 the Raman scattering signals contain information relating to the bond vibrations and thus provide ‘signatures’ of the molecules (which enables their spectroscopic detection). In the pursuit of high-sensitivity SERS analyses, it is therefore highly desirable to specifically construct hotspots.

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The newest Airbus and Boeing passenger jets flying today are made primarily from advanced composite materials such as carbon fiber reinforced plastic — extremely light, durable materials that reduce the overall weight of the plane by as much as 20 percent compared to aluminum-bodied planes. Such lightweight airframes translate directly to fuel savings, which is a major point in advanced composites’ favor.

But composite materials are also surprisingly vulnerable: While aluminum can withstand relatively large impacts before cracking, the many layers in composites can break apart due to relatively small impacts — a drawback that is considered the material’s Achilles’ heel.

Now MIT aerospace engineers have found a way to bond composite layers in such a way that the resulting material is substantially stronger and more resistant to damage than other advanced composites. Their results are published this week in the journal Composites Science and Technology.

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Imagine a future where there is no need to cut down a tree and and reshape that raw material into a chair or table. Instead, we could grow our furniture by custom-engineering moss or mushrooms. Perhaps glowing bacteria will light our cities, and we’ll be able to bring back extinct species, or wipe out Lyme disease—or maybe even terraform Mars. Synthetic biology could help us accomplish all that, and more.

That’s the message of the latest video in a new mini-documentary Web series called Explorations, focusing on potentially transformative areas of scientific research: genomics, artificial intelligence, neurobiology, transportation, space exploration, and synthetic biology. It’s a passion project of entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, founder of OS Fund and the payments processing company Braintree.

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We covered lots of topics:

Live conversation with Zoltan Istvan and John Horgan about transhumanism, AI in government and preparing for the robotic age. Post your questions in the comments below.

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This article is hilarious! If Google ever becomes obsolete it will do so because a new tech player with new technology took over. Too say the world will collapse or panic will happen is not reality. Anyone who remembers DEC/ Digital Corporation, WANG, etc. will tell you that a tech company often becomes obsolete when the masses / users drop the company’s tech for another competitor; and this process typically takes a few years of decline when it happens.

In this time of the internet when we have a vast amount of information available that we can easily Google to find out. This search engine has proven itself to be the most efficient tool for the entire humanity. But imagine what will happen if Google becomes obsolete or shuts down entirely at some point in the future.

Considering all the vast ranges of functionalities Google can perform, I believe the aftermath will be devastating. In fact, Google did shut down once, for a few minutes and the whole world turned upside-down.

No more searches on Google

For me, I literally google anything that I do not know, and I am sure there are plenty of users who do the same. Therefore, if Google becomes dysfunctional the whole world will turn into a supermassive blackhole (that’s right, it’s Muse).

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