Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Australian scientists created a computer simulation in which quantum particles can move back in time. This might confirm the possibility of time travel on a quantum level, suggested in 1991. At the same time, the study revealed a number of effects which are considered impossible according to the standard quantum mechanics.

Using photons, physicists from the University of Queensland in Australia simulated time-traveling quantum particles. In particular, they studied the behavior of a single photon traveling back in time through a wormhole in space-time and interacting with itself. This time-traveling loop is called a closed timelike curve, i.e. a path followed by a particle which returns to its initial space-time point.

The physicists studied two possible scenarios for a time-traveling photon. In the first, the particle passes through a wormhole, moving back in time, and interacts with its older self. In the second scenario, the photon passes through normal space-time and interacts with another photon which is stuck in a closed timelike curve.

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A representation of a stable sequential working memory; different information items or memory patterns are shown in different colors. (credit: Image adopted from Rabinovich, M.I. et al. (2014))

Try to remember a phone number. You’re now using “sequential memory,” in which your mind processes a sequence of numbers, events, or ideas. It underlies how people think, perceive, and interact as social beings. To understand how sequential memory works, researchers have built mathematical models that mimic this process.

Cognitive modes

Taking this a step further, Mikhail Rabinovich, a physicist and neurocognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and a group of researchers have now mathematically modeled how the mind switches among different ways of thinking about a sequence of objects, events, or ideas that are based on the activity of “cognitive modes.”

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When a star wanders too close to a black hole, immense gravitational forces begin to rip it apart in an epic cosmic slaying called a “tidal disruption event.” Some of the star’s mass is flung outward into space, while the rest is drawn in, triggering a powerful flare that showers the sky with x-rays.

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, a team of astronomers has now pieced together one such astronomical feasting frenzy. The event in question, appropriately named “ASASSN-14li,” was spotted near the center of PGC 043234, a galaxy that lies 290 million light years from Earth.

It’s the closest tidal disruption event we’ve discovered in a decade, and astronomers are hopeful that it’ll help us develop theories on the structure and evolution of such cosmic happenings. Findings to date, including hints of wind attempting to flee the black hole’s gravity, are detailed today in the journal Nature.

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Treating the brain isn’t like the rest of the body. Your blood-brain barrier shields it; filtering the blood to ensure nothing untoward makes it through. This protection is normally a good thing, but it becomes a problem if you want to deliver therapeutic drugs through it. This method could be a solution.

Smuggling therapeutics

Many diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease are extremely difficult to treat. Only very specific molecules can make it through the brain’s secure barrier, and most drugs don’t make the cut. This poses a challenge when you want to treat disease inside the brain, and so efforts have been focused on finding a way to overcome this. New research has now demonstrated a way of treating Parkinson’s disease with a surgical treatment that opens up a small route to bypass the barrier; essentially a smuggling hatch into your brain.

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The much pursued fountain of youth can become a reality if humans agree to share their DNA information, according to Google Ventures’ CEO Bill Maris, who has warned that “we’re all going to die” earlier if we keep our genetic codes secret.

Maris, who aims to digitize DNA, stressed during a Wall Street Journal technology conference in California that our genomes “aren’t really secret,” urging those protective of their genetic information to loosen the reins a bit.

Noting that genetic material is constantly left lying around in public, Maris addressed those who remain nervous about the digitization of DNA. “What are you worried about?” he said on Tuesday, adding that a person could easily gather information by fishing a used cup out of the trash and taking it to a lab for analysis.

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In one of my first articles for Lifeboat,* I provided an experimental methodology for demonstrating (or proving) the instantaneous ‘communication’ between quantum entangled particles. Even though changes to one particle can be provably demonstrated at its far away twin, the very strange experimental results suggested by quantum theory also demonstrate that you cannot use the simultaneity for any purpose. That is, you can provably pass information instantly, but you cannot study the ‘message’ (a change in state at the recipient), until such time as it could have been transmit by a classical radio wave.

Now, scientists have conducted an experiment proving that objects can instantaneously affect each other, regardless o the distance between them. [continue below]

delft quantum entanglement apparatus

[From The New York Times—Oct 21, 2015]:

Sorry Einstein.
Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ is Real

In a landmark study, scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported that they had conducted an experiment that they say proved one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory — that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other’s behavior.

The finding is another blow to one of the bedrock principles of standard physics known as “locality,” which states that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings. The Delft study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, lends further credence to an idea that Einstein famously rejected. He said quantum theory necessitated “spooky action at a distance,” and he refused to accept the notion that the universe could behave in such a strange and apparently random fashion.

[Read John Markoff’s full article in The New York Times]

* The original Lifeboat article—in which I describe an experimental apparatus in lay terms—was reprinted from my Blog, A Wild Duck.

The $1.7 billion investment has finally opened its doors to the public, and the robots are ready to provide patients with a medical experience that’s truly revolutionary.

Hailed as the first fully digital hospital in North America, the Humber River Hospital in Toronto, CA finally opened its doors to the public on October 18. In addition to being equipped with the most advanced technologies, robots currently man several areas of the facility. This includes the radiology area where they facilitate the X-Ray procedure and the chemotherapy area where they mix, prepare, and monitor the drugs being administered to the patients. Before the drugs get to the patients, each package is checked and scanned thoroughly through an information management system to make sure that the patients get the correct treatment. These automated robots will also be assisting the health care staff by carrying and delivering medical supplies and food for patients.

Here’s a video of one of the automated robots in action:

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