Lifeboat Foundation

The US power grid is growing! According to our latest inventory of electric generators, 15 gigawatts (GW) of new utility-scale electric generating capacity came online in the United States during the first half of 2022. Based on the most recently reported plans, developers could add another 29 GW of capacity in the second half of the year.

Our Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory compiles information on all U.S. utility-scale power plants (plants with a nameplate capacity of at least 1 megawatt [MW]) that are currently operating, planning to come online, or retired. The inventory includes all utility-scale plants that have retired since 2002.

We update this inventory once a month with preliminary data and then finalize that data annually with a survey that provides additional information about the power plants. Our Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory includes information through the preceding month; for example, the inventory published in July includes information through June.

The bizarre remarks were an answer to a question during a Shareholder meeting. Elon Musk was ask about the fate of Tesla if he had to step down as CEO after being forced to buy Twitter.

WASHINGTON – The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on May 4 issued a solicitation for proposals for the next phase of a demonstration of a nuclear powered spacecraft.

The project, called Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO), started over a year ago when DARPA selected a preliminary design for a rocket engine reactor developed by General Atomics, and chose two conceptual spacecraft designs by Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin.

The next phases of the program will focus on the design, development, fabrication and assembly of a nuclear thermal rocket engine. DARPA will conduct a “full and open competition” so this opportunity is not limited to the companies that participated in the first phase, a spokesperson told SpaceNews. Proposals are due Aug. 5.

Summary: Study reveals the molecular mechanism that allows neural networks to grow and branch out.

Source: Yale.

Our nervous system is composed of billions of neurons that speak to one another through their axons and dendrites. When the human brain develops, these structures branch out in a beautifully intricate yet poorly understood way that allows nerve cells to form connections and send messages throughout the body. And now, Yale researchers have discovered the molecular mechanism behind the growth of this complex system.

A trio of researchers, two with Princeton University, the other the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, has developed a reinforcement learning–based simulation that shows the human desire always to want more may have evolved as a way to speed up learning. In their paper posted in the open-access PLOS Computational Biology, Rachit Dubey, Thomas Griffiths and Peter Dayan describe the factors that went into their simulations.

Researchers studying human behavior have often been puzzled by people’s seemingly contradictory desires. Many people have an unceasing desire for more of certain things, even though they know that meeting those desires may not result in the desired outcome. Many people want more and more money, for example, with the idea that more money would make life easier, which should make them happier. But a host of studies has shown that making more money rarely makes people happier (with the exception of those starting from a very low income level). In this new effort, the researchers sought to better understand why people would have evolved this way. To that end, they built a simulation to mimic the way humans respond emotionally to stimuli, such as achieving goals. And to better understand why people might feel the way they do, they added checkpoints that could be used as a happiness barometer.

The simulation was based on reinforcement learning, in which people (or a machine) continue doing things that offer a positive reward and cease doing things that offer no reward or a negative reward. The researchers also added simulated emotional reactions to the known negative impacts of habituation and comparison, whereby people become less happy over time as they get used to something new and become less happy when seeing that someone else has more of something they want.

Summary: Researchers have identified a new type of retinal ganglion cells.

Source: Northwestern University.

Northwestern Medicine investigators have identified a new type of retinal ganglion cell, the neurons in the retina that encode the visual environment and transmit information back to the brain, according to a study published in Neuron.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Presidential Palace said cyberattack traffic on its website spiked by 200 times hours before Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taipei.

Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led a $44 million funding round for a startup that aims to accelerate solar far construction.

Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led a $44 million funding round for a startup that aims to accelerate solar far construction.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate change solution-focused VC firm backed by the likes of Bill Gates, has joined a $44 million backing of solar startup Terabase Energy, a press statement reveals.

Continue reading “Bill Gates-backed startup is using robots to build enormous solar farms” »

(Reuters) — An artificial intelligence system cannot be an inventor under United States patent law, a U.S. appeals court affirmed Friday.

The Patent Act requires an “inventor” to be a natural person, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said, rejecting computer scientist Stephen Thaler’s bid for patents on two inventions he said his DABUS system created.

Thaler said in an email Friday that DABUS, which stands for “Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience,” is “natural and sentient.”