Lifeboat Foundation

Microsoft Research, the R&D arm of the Redmond software giant, is testing the storage of huge amounts of data on glass plates in a futuristic initiative dubbed “Project Silica.” If successful, it could be used to store information for thousands of years without degradation.

The Microsoft researchers store the data in the glass using three-dimensional pixels called voxels. In contrast to classical storage methods such as magnetic spinning disks, the “saucer-sized glass plates of Project Silica will store data for thousands of years and create sustainable storage for the world,” as Microsoft describes it.

Magnetic storage, while widely used, is problematic, according to Microsoft. Because of their limited lifespan, they need to be recopied frequently, which increases energy consumption and operating costs over time: “A hard disk drive might last five years. A tape, well, if you’re brave, it might last ten years”, explains Ant Rowstron, Distinguished Engineer, Project Silica.

Dogs of War bots.

Armed with a rocket launcher or other kinds of weapons, including small arms, a quadrupedal robot could also just be used to scout ahead of friendly forces, and then have the ability to immediately engage any threats it finds.

Uncrewed ground systems like this have the ability to get in and out of spaces where a person might not be able to at all, as well, which could again be particularly useful when maneuvering through dense urban environments. The U.S. military sees operations in large built-up areas as a key component of any future major conflict.

Continue reading “Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Armed With Rocket Launcher” »

Here’s my latest Opinion piece just out for Newsweek…focusing on cyborg rights.

Over the past half-century, the microprocessor’s capacity has doubled approximately every 18–24 months, and some experts predict that by 2030, machine intelligence could surpass human capabilities. The question then arises: When machines reach human-level intelligence, should they be granted protection and rights? Will they desire and perhaps even demand such rights?

Beyond advancements in microprocessors, we’re witnessing breakthroughs in genetic editing, stem cells, and 3D bioprinting, all which also hold the potential to help create cyborg entities displaying consciousness and intelligence. Notably, Yale University’s experiments stimulating dead pig brains have ignited debates in the animal rights realm, raising questions about the ethical implications of reviving consciousness.

Continue reading “Creating Sapient Technology and Cyborg Rights Should Happen Soon” »

Tomorrow Bio’s founder and CEO Dr. Emil Kendziorra will give a presentation introducing the topic of cryonics, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Möbius strips are fun geometrical shapes that only have one side. Take a strip of paper – it’s got a front and a back. Now twist it and glue the two short edges together. Suddenly there is no front or back. You could draw a line across its whole surface without having to lift the pencil from the paper. Forty-six years ago mathematicians suggested the minimum size for such a strip but they couldn’t prove it. Now, someone finally has.

Since the creation of the strip by August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing, its simplicity in making and visualizing it had to be balanced with the mathematical complexity of such a shape. It is not surprising that in 1977, Charles Sidney Weaver and Benjamin Rigler Halpern created the Halpern-Weaver Conjecture, which stated the minimal ratio between the width of the strip and its length. They suggested that for a strip with a width of 1 centimeter (0.39 inches), the length had to be at least the square root of 3 centimeters (about 1.73 centimeters or 0.68 inches).

For smooth Möbius strips that are “embedded”, meaning they don’t intersect with each other, the conjecture had no solution. If the strip can go through itself, it is a much easier problem to solve, Brown University’s mathematician Richard Evan Schwartz proposed in 2020 – but he had made a mistake. In a paper posted as a preprint – meaning it is yet to be subjected to peer review – Schwartz corrected the error and found the right solution for the conjecture.

Study finds that in worms, the HSN neuron uses multiple chemicals and connections to orchestrate egg-laying and locomotion over the course of several minutes.

A new MIT

MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. Their stated goal is to make a better world through education, research, and innovation.

Recent studies have found that Gires-Tournois (GT) biosensors, a type of nanophotonic resonator, can detect minuscule virus particles and produce colorful micrographs (images taken through a microscope) of viral loads. But they suffer from visual artifacts and non-reproducibility, limiting their utilization.

In a recent breakthrough, an international team of researchers, led by Professor Young Min Song from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, has leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome this problem. Their work was published in Nano Today.

Rapid and on-site diagnostic technologies for identifying and quantifying viruses are essential for planning treatment strategies for infected patients and preventing further spread of the infection. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for accurate yet decentralized diagnostic tests that do not involve complex and time-consuming processes needed for conventional laboratory-based tests.

Check out the The Cryosphere community on Discord — hang out with 1,002 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

Ever since the 17th-century debates between Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens about the essence of light, the scientific community has grappled with the question: Is light a wave or a particle — or perhaps, at the quantum level, even both at once? Now, researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology have revealed a new connection between the two perspectives, using a 350-year-old mechanical theorem — ordinarily used to describe the movement of large, physical objects like pendulums and planets — to explain some of the most complex behaviors of light waves.

The work, led by Xiaofeng Qian, assistant professor of physics at Stevens and reported in the August 17 online issue of Physical Review Research, also proves for the first time that a light wave’s degree of non-quantum entanglement exists in a direct and complementary relationship with its degree of polarization. As one rises, the other falls, enabling the level of entanglement to be inferred directly from the level of polarization, and vice versa. This means that hard-to-measure optical properties such as amplitudes, phases, and correlations – perhaps even those of quantum wave systems – can be deduced from something a lot easier to measure: light intensity.