Lifeboat Foundation

Notion wants to write you a poem. The popular note-taking and database app has released Notion AI in private alpha today, becoming the latest consumer technology company to incorporate generative artificial intelligence.

In response to a request from a user, the new functionality can create functional scaffolds for blogs, social media posts, and other assets. A meeting agenda, press release, brainstorm, or poem can also be generated by Notion AI.

Aside from that, Notion AI can speed up the research and editing process for writers. The AI can, for example, analyze and summarize articles, pulling out critical points and action items.

Continue reading “Notion Releases Alpha of Generative AI Copywriting Tool” »

‘I was one of the world’s greatest fundraisers; now I’m the fallen wreckage of one.’

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former chief executive of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange Futures Exchange (FTX), has asserted that FTX is still solvent and plans to raise money even while the formal bankruptcy procedure is underway.

“I have 2 weeks to raise $8 billion; that’s basically all that matters for the rest [of] my life.” he wrote, responding to a question about his plans.

Continue reading “Defiant Sam Bankman-Fried declares he has ‘2 weeks to raise $8b’ after FTX bankruptcy” »

Twitter could see organizational restructuring this week.

Getty Images.

Musk was among the people who were asked to testify to determine if the Tesla CEO had undue influence on the decision. Former Tesla board member, James Murdoch also testified later on Wednesday, The Verge report said.

The meteorites that bombarded Mars during the early days of the inner solar system may have carried enough water to create a 300-metre-deep ocean on the planet.

Martin Bizzarro at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and his colleagues have analysed the concentration of a rare chromium isotope, known as chromium-54, in samples of meteorites that have come to Earth from Mars to estimate how much water was deposited on the Red Planet by asteroids.

The uppermost layer of Mars contains the chemical signatures of carbonaceous, or C-type, meteorites that bombarded it as its crust solidified some 4.5 billion years ago.

Scientists from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Osaka University introduced a method for manufacturing complex microrobots driven by chemical energy using in situ integration. By 3D-printing and assembling the mechanical structures and actuators of microrobots inside a microfluidic chip, the resulting microrobots were able to perform desired functions, like moving or grasping. This work may help realize the vision of microsurgery performed by autonomous robots.

As medical technology advances, increasingly complicated surgeries that were once considered impossible have become reality. However, we are still far away from a promised future in which microrobots coursing through a patient’s body can perform procedures, such as microsurgery or cancer cell elimination.

Continue reading “3D-printing microrobots with multiple component modules inside a microfluidic chip” »

Kazuaki Ikeda, Masaki Kataoka, and Nobuaki K. Tanaka.

(see pages 8621–8628)

Current flowing through the plasma membrane of individual neurons causes fluctuations in the surrounding electrical field that can be detected with extracellular electrodes. Changes in the local field potential can influence the activity of all neurons within that field. For example, when two unmyelinated axons are closely apposed, an action potential in one axon alters the membrane potential of the other. This phenomenon is called ephaptic signaling. Ephaptic signaling is most prominent in layered neural structures in which numerous similarly oriented neurons are synchronously active. In fact, ephaptic signaling is thought to promote synchronous firing of cerebellar Purkinje cells and cortical and hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Ikeda et al. now show that ephaptic signaling originating in Drosophila eyes can influence activity in olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) in the antennae.

One thing I learned today is that one of the many SpaceX explosions didn’t have to happen. It turns out that NASA gave SpaceX the option of doing the in-flight abort test via simulation or in reality. The problem with doing it in reality is that SpaceX would likely lose an expensive rocket.

Boeing decided to do their in-flight abort test via simulation for their Starliner capsule. Luckily, SpaceX doesn’t trust simulations and did it for real. I say luckily, because we are overdue to lose more humans in space. So far this century, Virgin Galactic has had 1 death and 1 serious injury, NASA has had 7 deaths, and Soyuz has injured 2 people bad enough to require hospitalization.

Continue reading “Watch a SpaceX rocket blow up during abort test” »

We still don’t entirely understand how microbiomes shift on Earth.

Scientists are still figuring out how space will change astronauts’ microbiome, and it isn’t even clear how our guts shift on Earth.

Models that map spoken language to objects in an image would make it easier for customers to communicate with multimodal devices.