Lifeboat Foundation

Neuroscientist Sergiu P. Pasca has made it his life’s work to understand how the human brain builds itself — and what makes it susceptible to disease. In a mind-blowing talk laden with breakthrough science, he shows how his team figured out how to grow “organoids” and what they call brain “assembloids” — self-organizing clumps of neural tissue derived from stem cells that have shown the ability to form circuits — and explains how these miniature parts of the nervous system are bringing us closer to demystifying the brain.

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Continue reading “How We’re Reverse Engineering the Human Brain in the Lab | Sergiu P. Pasca | TED” »

Can you imagine if we had computer/brain interfaces what would happen? We’ll need brain firewalls and antivirus.

Android apps digitally signed by China’s third-biggest e-commerce company exploited a zero-day vulnerability that allowed them to surreptitiously take control of millions of end-user devices to steal personal data and install malicious apps, researchers from security firm Lookout have confirmed.

The malicious versions of the Pinduoduo app were available in third-party markets, which users in China and elsewhere rely on because the official Google Play market is off-limits or not easy to access. No malicious versions were found in Play or Apple’s App Store. Last Monday, TechCrunch reported that Pinduoduo was pulled from Play after Google discovered a malicious version of the app available elsewhere. TechCrunch reported the malicious apps available in third-party markets exploited several zero-days, vulnerabilities that are known or exploited before a vendor has a patch available.

Continue reading “Android app from China executed 0-day exploit on millions of devices” »

For decades, mathematicians have been inching forward on a problem about which sets contain evenly spaced patterns of three numbers. Last month, two computer scientists blew past all of those results.

It is well-known that an ordinary high frequency electromagnetic (EM) wave radiated into the ionosphere at the Spitze angle is totally transformed at the reflection height (z₀) into the Z-mode. This mode, in turn, penetrates deeper into the ionosphere and it is reflected at some height (z_ref) usually significantly higher than the O-mode reflection height. This result is reconsidered in the present paper. It is argued that the wave appearing as a continuation of the propagating upward quasi-electrostatic wave changes the direction of motion along the vertical axis slightly above z₀ and takes the form of the down-going wave. This wave is excited in the vicinity of the height z₀ due to the phase resonance with the up-going O-mode wave which transforms into the Z-mode propagating upward. Thus, the ionospheric window is not totally transparent for the O-mode radiated at the Spitze angle. The up-going O-mode wave loses some part of its energy due to excitation of the down-going EM wave. This wave, in turn, propagates to the ground as the O-mode wave.

The Weibel instability is investigated using relativistic intense short laser pulses. A relativistic short laser pulse can generate a sub-relativistic high-density collisionless plasma. By irradiating double parallel planar targets with two relativistic laser pulses, sub-relativistic collisionless counterstreaming plasmas are created. Since the growth rate of the Weibel instability is proportional to the plasma density and velocity, the spatial and temporal scales of the Weibel instability can be much smaller than that from nanosecond large laser facilities. Recent theoretical and numerical studies have revealed that astrophysical collisionless shocks in sub-relativistic regimes in the absence and presence of an ambient magnetic field play essential roles in cosmic ray acceleration. With experimental verification in mind, we discuss the possible experimental models on the Weibel instability with intense short laser pulses. In order to show the experimental feasibility, we perform 2D particle-in-cell simulations in the absence of an external magnetic field as the first step and discuss the optimum conditions to realize the nonlinear evolutions of the Weibel instability in laboratories.

Electron-ion collisional effect on Weibel instability in a Kappa distributed unmagnetized plasma.

This AI tool automatically animates, lights, and composes CG characters into a live-action scene. No complicated 3D software, no expensive production hardware—all you need is a camera.

Wonder Dynamics: https://wonderdynamics.com.

Continue reading “This New A.I Will CHANGE VFX Forever!” »

Russia cannot meet its arms delivery commitments to India because of its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, according to the Indian Air Force (AIF).

The statement, aired during a parliamentary committee meeting earlier this week, was the first official confirmation from New Delhi of Moscow’s defense export shortfalls.

It confirmed speculation that Russia’s defense industry is experiencing serious problems producing military supplies.

I read enough to realize it’s in depth enough to make it worthwhile. I’ll finish tomorrow as it’s 10:35 pm and I’m beat. I need to rest for my mother’s cardiac rehab tomorrow. She had a heart attack about a month ago.

Ray Kurzweil discusses having a universe filled with Computronium.

Continue reading “Computronium universe” »