Lifeboat Foundation

How did complex systems emerge from chaos? Physicist Sean Carroll explains.

Summary: Findings support modern thought that neural networks store information by making short-term alterations to the synapses. The study sheds new light on short-term synaptic plasticity in recent memory storage.

Source: picower institute for learning and memory.

Between the time you read the Wi-Fi password off the café’s menu board and the time you can get back to your laptop to enter it, you have to hold it in mind. If you’ve ever wondered how your brain does that, you are asking a question about working memory that has researchers have strived for decades to explain. Now MIT neuroscientists have published a key new insight to explain how it works.

Lasers have been used to throw and catch extremely cold, single atoms. The technique could be used to assemble quantum computers in the future.

From cyborgs to the Sugababes, IT expert Robert Anderson talks about a world where the line between humans and machines becomes blurred. Drawing on his personal experiences of facing prejudices and bigotry while growing up, he shares his insight on how we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past in order to create a society where humans and transhumans can live together in an open and equal manner. He urges us to take action now because as he says, “Transhumanism is coming and it’s coming sooner than you think. We cannot afford to have the fear of the other rule this world.“
Robert Anderson has been interested in how technology can improve humans’ lives ever since he can remember. He started programming computers at age 10 and has been working in IT for the past 20 years with blue-chip companies to develop IT strategies and roadmaps.

Robert says he likes how ‘TEDxFolkstone cares about developing a group of people who are speakers, not just about people who are doing TED talks.’

Continue reading “Avoiding prejudices in the future world of transhumanism | Robert Anderson | TEDxFolkestone” »

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Junior Division.

Individual Documentary.

NHD 2020

Most viewed blog of mine on Big Think in 2022 with about 175,000 views:

Was there an intelligent, technologically advanced species long before humans existed? Could there have been a dinosaur civilization?

When you stop and think about bubbles, you realize that they’re everywhere: in the dishwasher, on the top of your beer, on the crests of waves, in the saliva between your teeth, and, of course, in bubble gun toys.

That means the physics of bubbles are important in all kinds of scenarios. With that in mind, researchers from the Université Paris-Saclay in France have made an intriguing discovery about the film surrounding bubbles.

This film can, in some cases, be up to 8°C (14.4°F) cooler than the environment around it, the researchers say. The findings build on previous investigations into how changes in temperature can trigger the thinning and evaporation of a liquid film.

Ordinarily, to measure an object we must interact with it in some way. Whether it’s by a prod or a poke, an echo of sound waves, or a shower of light, it’s near impossible to look without touching.

In the world of quantum physics, there are some exceptions to this rule.

Researchers from Aalto University in Finland propose a way to ‘see’ a microwave pulse without the absorption and re-emission of any light waves. It’s an example of a special interaction-free measurement, where something is observed without being rattled by a mediating particle.