Lifeboat Foundation

Every day we encounter circumstances we consider wrong: a starving child, a corrupt politician, an unfaithful partner, a fraudulent scientist. These examples highlight several moral issues, including matters of care, fairness and betrayal. But does anything unite them all?

Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have passionately argued whether moral judgments share something distinctive that separates them from non-moral matters. Moral monists claim that morality is unified by a common characteristic and that all moral issues involve concerns about harm. Pluralists, in contrast, argue that moral judgments are more diverse in nature.

Fascinated by this centuries-old debate, a team of researchers set out to probe the nature of morality using one of moral psychology’s most prolific theories. The group, led by UC Santa Barbara’s René Weber, intensively studied 64 individuals via surveys, interviews and brain imaging on the wrongness of various behaviors.

The Y chromosome is a never-ending source of fascination (particularly to men) because it bears genes that determine maleness and make sperm. It’s also small and seriously weird; it carries few genes and is full of junk DNA that makes it horrendous to sequence.

However, new “long-read” sequencing techniques have finally provided a reliable sequence from one end of the Y to the other. The paper describing this Herculean effort has been published in Nature.

The findings provide a solid base to explore how genes for sex and sperm work, how the Y chromosome evolved, and whether—as predicted—it will disappear in a few million years.

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In 2022, leaders in the U.S. military technology and cybersecurity community said that they considered 2023 to be the “reset year” for quantum computing. They estimated the time it will take to make systems quantum-safe will match the time that the first quantum computers that threaten their security will become available: both around four to six years. It is vital that industry leaders quickly start to understand the security issues around quantum computing and take action to resolve the issues that will arise when this powerful technology surfaces.

Quantum computing is a cutting-edge technology that presents a unique set of challenges and promises unprecedented computational power. Unlike traditional computing, which operates using binary logic (0s and 1s) and sequential calculations, quantum computing works with quantum bits, or qubits, that can represent an infinite number of possible outcomes. This allows quantum computers to perform an enormous number of calculations simultaneously, exploiting the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office launched their newest space observation satellites today in a largely classified mission called “Silent Barker.”

The joint mission flew Sept. 10 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida. Once operational, the satellites will track objects — and potentially nefarious activities — within geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles above Earth.

“Working together, we’ve developed a system in a relatively short amount of time that is going to provide us with unprecedented coverage of what’s going on in the GEO belts,” NRO director Christopher Scolese told reporters during an Aug. 28 pre-launch briefing.

Elon Musk tweeted out his congratulatins to SpaceX for completing and documented the 57 items required by the FAA for Flight 2 of Starship. He said taht 6 of the 63 items refer to later flights.

Congrats to SpaceX for completing & documented the 57 items required by the FAA for Flight 2 of Starship!

Apptronik, an Austin-based robotics start-up, has revealed its latest humanoid robot, Apollo. Standing at 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds, Apollo is designed for mass production and safe human-robot collaboration. Unlike traditional robots, Apollo uses electricity instead of hydraulics, making it both safer and more efficient.

Apollo is equipped with a four-hour battery life that can be easily exchanged for continuous use up to 22 hours, allowing it to perform physically demanding and dangerous tasks, improving supply chains and reducing human risk.

To ensure that Apollo is accessible and friendly, Austin-based company Argodesign has equipped the robot with features such as digital panels on its chest for clear communication, intentional movements like head rotation, and a friendly face.

America’s No. 2 publicly traded rocket company just became No. 1 in reusing soggy rocket engines.

Roman Space Telescope team is integrating a complex electrical harness, crucial for the spacecraft’s communication and power. After a detailed two-year construction and a preparatory “bakeout” process, assembly into the spacecraft is ongoing, with future installations planned for power components.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has begun integrating and testing the spacecraft’s electrical cabling, or harness, which enables different parts of the observatory to communicate with one another. Additionally, the harness provides power and helps the central computer monitor the observatory’s function via an array of sensors. This brings the mission a step closer to surveying billions of cosmic objects and untangling mysteries like dark energy following its launch by May 2027.

Tesla’s (TSLA) stock is rising in pre-market trading on an optimistic new report about the automaker’s Dojo supercomputer coming from Morgan Stanley.

The firm massively increased its price target on Tesla’s stock because of it.

Dojo is Tesla’s own custom supercomputer platform built from the ground up for AI machine learning and, more specifically, for video training using the video data coming from its fleet of vehicles.