Lifeboat Foundation

The United States Air Force has completed a critical AI-controlled autonomous flight of its modified Osprey Mark III unmanned aerial system.

The USAF reports that the United States Air Force’s (USAF) “Osprey” Mark III unmanned aerial system (UAS) has completed its first fully autonomous test flight. Conducted on July 20, 2023, the test formed part of the USAF’s larger Autonomy, Data, and AI Experimentation (ADAx) Proving Ground effort for the program, specifically the USAF’s Autonomy Prime Environment for Experimentation or APEX, a subset of ADAx. The trial was conducted to evaluate and operationalize artificial intelligence and autonomy concepts to support warfighters on the evolving… More.

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Scientists have been left baffled by the discovery of the wreck of a 2,000-year-old “computer” that is amazingly complex.

The Antikythera mechanism – an astronomical calendar – has been dubbed “‘the first computer” and has baffled scientists for generations after it was first discovered inside a Greek shipwreck in 1901.

The device is a hand-powered time-keeping instrument that used a wing-up system to track the sun, moon and planets’ celestial time. It also worked as a calendar, tracking the phases of the Moon and the timing of eclipses.

A team led by NASA in Utah’s West Desert is in the final stages of preparing for the arrival of the first U.S. asteroid sample – slated to land on Earth in this month.

A mockup of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) sample capsule was dropped last Wednesday from an aircraft and landed at the drop zone at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range in the desert outside Salt Lake City. This was part of the mission’s final major test prior to the arrival of the actual capsule on September 24 with its sample of asteroid Bennu, collected in space almost three years ago.

The study reveals a strong association between gut microbial carbohydrate metabolism and insulin resistance, pointing to gut microbes as a key player in metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Targeting these microbial activities could offer a new therapeutic pathway for improving insulin resistance and overall metabolic health.

Don’t be deceived: Artificial intelligence will be just as ubiquitous and transformative as advertised.

Microsoft is going to update its services agreement very soon and rival Mozilla is relentlessly questioning the Redmond giant about its true intentions with user data regarding AI services.

Global worming?

Scientists recently revived microscopic creatures frozen for 46,000 years in the Siberian permafrost.

The ancient nematodes, better known as roundworms, are able to shut their bodies down in unsuitable environments — a process called anabiosis.

This comprehensive study explores ChatGPT’s ability to answer questions about diabetes, comparing it to human experts in a Danish diabetes center. While familiar users could more often spot the AI-generated answers, the research underscores the need for rigorous evaluation and safe integration of AI in healthcare.

Like biomarker tests, germline testing can help doctors determine the best treatments for patients, but such testing may also help identify people whose family members should be offered testing for potential cancer-causing gene changes.

Guidelines recommend that germline testing be offered to all people with male breast cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and metastatic prostate cancer. For other cancers with lower likelihood of harmful inherited mutations, recommendations for germline testing vary.

But new findings from a study that is examining the extent of testing for germline mutations among people diagnosed with cancer in California and Georgia between 2013 and 2019 found that germline testing rates are still low. Among the more than 1.3 million people in the study, only about 93,000, or 6.8%, underwent germline genetic testing through March 31, 2021, according to findings published July 3 in JAMA.