Lifeboat Foundation

Horgan: Okay, maybe I have been too critical. But can you tell readers, briefly, why they should take panpsychism seriously?

Mørch : Physicalism and dualism are the two main alternatives to panpsychism.

Physicalism implies that consciousness doesn’t exist. Physical science cannot capture what it’s like for someone to have conscious experiences, such as seeing red or being in pain, or any of the qualitative or subjective features of consciousness. So if consciousness is physical, it’s not qualitative or subjective, and therefore not really consciousness after all.

Here’s why you’ve been hearing so much about ChatGPT.

The asteroid strike simulation website lets users customize material, size, and speed then witness the destruction, in the name of science.

Recently, I learned about the World Nobel Peace Summit — fascinating. Young people can go there, mingle with Nobel Peace Laureates, network and share ideas.

Amma introduces the concept of two types of education: one that allows you to earn a living and another to attain a happy, fulfilled life. Modern education should focus on not just academic skills but a culture of human rights and peaceful coexistence of peoples, the ethics of non-violence. Too often, education is propelled by vanity and the desire for individual success. Over and over, it is just competition, pressure, and a vast amount of information pumped into one’s head without instilling the habit of exploring the future consequences of one’s actions. Imagine a good physics student who becomes a scientist just to invent a bomb that could destroy the whole world. We want a child to fulfill their potential — but stay aware of the outcomes of their choices at individual and societal levels. Ethics allows one to maintain this balance. As a society, we may want to establish ethical think tanks that simulate the future and guide us as we develop new technologies and community practices.

JB: Should the ways of peaceful coexistence be taught starting from pre-school age and reinforced over the years?

Continue reading “How Nobel Peace Laureates Inspire Youth To Believe In Themselves” »

Scientists have been trying to understand the nature of the cosmos for hundreds of years. Recent technological advances have allowed scientists to gain more insight into the world and have led to new hypotheses regarding how it all works.

Some seem plausible while others are crazy. We’ll be discussing two of the most bizarre, but intriguing, hypotheses about the construction of our cosmos.

How is the cosmos organized the way it is? This topic has been studied by scientists over the years. They have proposed many theories to explain how it works and what is ahead.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and Texas A&M University demonstrated bio-inspired devices that accelerate routes to neuromorphic, or brain-like, computing.

Results published in Nature Communications report the first example of a lipid-based “memcapacitor,” a charge storage component with memory that processes information much like synapses do in the brain. Their discovery could support the emergence of computing networks modeled on biology for a sensory approach to machine learning.

“Our goal is to develop materials and computing elements that work like biological synapses and neurons—with vast interconnectivity and flexibility—to enable autonomous systems that operate differently than current computing devices and offer new functionality and learning capabilities,” said Joseph Najem, a recent postdoctoral researcher at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, and current assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State.

But a team including Zhang has a suggestion for what might have caused it: the merger of a neutron star not with another neutron star, as is common for short gamma ray bursts, but with a white dwarf. White dwarfs are larger than neutron stars, but not nearly as big as the massive stars that cause supernovae, which would account for the length and intensity of the unusual burst.

Since there are lots of white dwarf-neutron star binaries and events like this are rare enough that it’s the first to be observed in half a century of looking, he suggests it needs some qualifications: first, the white dwarf needs to be “close to the upper mass limit,” and afterwards the two need to merge into a rapidly-spinning magnetar, which would “inject additional energy into the kilonova.”

Government support is needed, however, to help consumers overcome heat pumps’ higher upfront costs relative to alternatives. The costs of purchasing and installing a heat pump can be up to four times as much as those for a gas boiler. Financial incentives for heat pumps are now available in 30 countries.

In the IEA’s most optimistic scenario – in which all governments achieve their energy and climate pledges in full – heat pumps become the main way of decarbonising space and water heating worldwide. The agency estimates that heat pumps have the potential to reduce global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by at least 500 million tonnes in 2030 – equal to the annual CO₂ emissions of all cars in Europe today. Leading manufacturers report promising signs of momentum and policy support and have announced plans to invest more than US$4 billion in expanding heat pump production and related efforts, mostly in Europe.

Opportunities also exist for heat pumps to provide low-temperature heat in industrial sectors, especially in the paper, food, and chemicals industries. In Europe alone, 15 gigawatts of heat pumps could be installed across 3,000 facilities in these three sectors, which have been hit hard by recent rises in natural gas prices.

Year 2019 😗

Scientists have shown how a drug cocktail of four compounds can convert glia, or support cells, next to damaged neurons into new working neurons.