Menu

Blog

Page 1729

Aug 2, 2023

PODCAST: In the Pacific’s depths, they found animals thought extinct since before the dinosaurs

Posted by in category: futurism

The animals were thought to have gone extinct before the dinosaurs arrived on the scene.

Brian Kennedy, one of the lead scientists of NOAA’s deep sea expedition, said the stalked crinoid “are these big beautiful flower looking animals, but they grow on this long stalk. They’re called sea lilies, and that’s really what they look like a lot of times.”

Continue reading “PODCAST: In the Pacific’s depths, they found animals thought extinct since before the dinosaurs” »

Aug 2, 2023

Aging process slows when older mice share circulatory system of young

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, life extension

A process of surgically joining the circulatory systems of a young and old mouse slows the aging process at the cellular level and lengthens the lifespan of the older animal by up to 10%.

Published in the journal Nature Aging, a study led by researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, found that the longer the animals shared circulation, the longer the anti-aging benefits lasted once the two were no longer connected.

The findings suggest that the young benefit from a cocktail of components and chemicals in their blood that contributes to vitality, and these factors could potentially be isolated as therapies to speed healing, rejuvenate the body, and add years to an older individual’s life.

Aug 2, 2023

Venture Capital Firm Releases Instructions for Creating AI Girlfriend

Posted by in categories: finance, robotics/AI

Another day, another step closer to the normalization of build-your-own AI chatbot partners.

Per Decrypt, top-shelf Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz last week took to the developer site GitHub to lay out detailed instructions on how to build an AI companion bot from scratch. The VC outfit has a lot of money in various AI ventures, the billion-dollar AI companion startup Character. AI included; now, it seems that the folks at the firm are so enthusiastic about companion bots that they’re encouraging curious developers out there to start DIYing versions for themselves — and among several other potential use cases, it feels notable that romantic partnership was listed as use case number one.

“There are many possible use cases for these companions — romantic (AI girlfriends / boyfriends), friendship, entertainment, coaching, etc,” reads the description, noting elsewhere that the “project is purely intended to be a developer tutorial and starter stack for those curious on how chatbots are built.”

Aug 2, 2023

This flying electric car gets the green light for test rides in the US

Posted by in categories: space travel, sustainability

Transforming cars that go from tearing up the tarmac to soaring through the skies at the touch of a button. It sounds like science fiction, but that might be the future we’re looking at, as America’s regulatory body for commercial flight and transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, certified to test a bona fide flying car.

The vehicle — which has a flying range of around 177km on a full charge — is the brainchild of Alef Automotive, a Californian startup backed by high-profile venture capitalist Tim Draper (whose other seed investments include Tesla and SpaceX).

Aug 2, 2023

Elon Musk’s giant ‘X’ sign is going to cost his landlord fees for building without a permit

Posted by in category: Elon Musk

It’s not yet clear how much the property owner will be billed over the sign.

X and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Insider on Tuesday, nor did the reps for the landlord of the company’s headquarters, SRI Nine Market Square LLC, an affiliate of real estate investment firm Shorenstein.

Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media company now rebranded as X, had the huge “X” logo put on the roof of the company’s headquarters on Friday, prompting a slew of complaints from angry neighbors.

Aug 2, 2023

OceanGate co-founder now plans to send 1000 people to Venus after Titanic implosion

Posted by in categories: futurism, space

After the tragic implosion of the Titan submersible. OceanGate’s co-founder is all prepped up for another venture. The co-founder of OceanGate, Guillermo Söhnlein has grand aspirations for future. By 2050, he would like to see 1,000 humans living in the clouds of Venus.

Aug 2, 2023

Giant alien-like virus structures with arms and tails found in the US

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, education, particle physics

If there’s one thing the Covid pandemic taught us, it’s that viruses shouldn’t be underestimated.

People are, therefore, taking note after scientists discovered a whole new range of giant virus-like particles (VLP) that have taken on “previously unimaginable shapes and forms.”

The microscopic agents, resembling everything from stars to monsters, were found in just a few handfuls of forest soil.

Aug 2, 2023

Brain Organoids and Robotics / AI — Sanford Stem Cell Symposium

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, neuroscience, robotics/AI

A model of human cortical development could be used to instruct novel computational learning approaches. Alysson Muotri, Phd, Sujeeth Bharadwaj, PhD, Weiwei Yang, and Gabrial Silva, MSc, PhD, discuss the promise, the problems, and the potential when biology and artificial intelligence meet. Recorded on 10/14/2021. [3/2022] [Show ID: 37556]

00:00 Start.
00:17 Introduction — Alysson Muotri, PhD, UC San Diego.
11:51 An Information Theoretic Approach to Learning — Sujeeth Bharadwaj, PhD, Microsoft.
30:44 An Alternate Approach to Collectively Solving Intelligence: Machine Learning to Artificial Intelligence — Weiwei Yang, Microsoft.
47:54 Organoids May Have Just the Right Amount of Complexity to Make Sense of the Brain — Gabriel Silva, MSc, PhD, UC San Diego.

Continue reading “Brain Organoids and Robotics / AI — Sanford Stem Cell Symposium” »

Aug 2, 2023

Unprecedented Precision: Physicists Measure the Wave-Like Vibration of Atomic Nuclei

Posted by in category: physics

Utilizing ultra-high-precision laser spectroscopy on a simple molecule, a team of physicists headed by Professor Stephan Schiller Ph.D. of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) measured the wave-like vibration of atomic nuclei with an unprecedented level of precision.

In their paper published in the scientific journal Nature Physics.

As the name implies, Nature Physics is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal covering physics and is published by Nature Research. It was first published in October 2005 and its monthly coverage includes articles, letters, reviews, research highlights, news and views, commentaries, book reviews, and correspondence.

Aug 2, 2023

Aromas while sleeping boost cognitive capacity

Posted by in category: neuroscience

When a fragrance wafted through the bedrooms of older adults for two hours every night for six months, memories skyrocketed. Participants in this study by University of California, Irvine neuroscientists reaped a 226% increase in cognitive capacity compared to the control group. The researchers say the finding transforms the long-known tie between smell and memory into an easy, non-invasive technique for strengthening memory and potentially deterring dementia.

The team’s study appears in Frontiers in Neuroscience. (Link to the open access study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1200448/full).

The project was conducted through the UCI Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory. It involved men and women aged 60 to 85 without memory impairment. All were given a diffuser and seven cartridges, each containing a single and different natural oil. People in the enriched group received full-strength cartridges. Control group participants were given the oils in tiny amounts. Participants put a different cartridge into their diffuser each evening prior to going to bed, and it activated for two hours as they slept.