Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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New research from a team of scientists at the Cornell University Center for Bright Beams has made significant strides in developing new techniques to guide the growth of materials used in next-generation particle accelerators.

The study, published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, reveals the potential for greater control over the growth of superconducting Nb3Sn films, which could significantly reduce the cost and size of cryogenic infrastructure required for .

Superconducting accelerator facilities, such as those used for X-ray free-electron laser radiation, rely on niobium superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities to generate high-energy beams. However, the associated cryogenic infrastructure, energy consumption, and operating costs of niobium SRF cavities limit access to this technology.

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So if you’re going to make a xenobot, where do you start? Well, the Vermont team starts in a virtual Petri dish, on a computer, where an artificial intelligence (AI) program ‘evolves’ bunches of frog cells, based on their shape, to perform whatever task it is the scientists are interested in.

“It creates a population of virtual xenobots, deletes the ones that do a poor job and makes randomly modified copies of the survivors,” explains Bongard.

The scientists tell the AI how many rounds of this artificial selection process to complete and in just a few seconds, they have their design.

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(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/)
1:39 — Understanding Primate Brain Development Using Stem Cell Systems — Rick Livesey.
18:58 — Human-Specific Genes and Neocortex Expansion in Development and Evolution — Wieland Huttner.
37:17 — Cellular and Molecular Features of Human Brain Expansion and Evolution — Arnold Kriegstein.

The human brain is one of, if not the most important factor that distinguishes our species from all others. Three experts explore the use of stem cells in understanding the primate brain, genes that guided the evolution of the human brain, and the features that enabled the expansion of human neural characteristics. Recorded on 09/29/2017. Series: “CARTA — Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny” [11/2017] [Show ID: 32927].

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The latest bit of brilliance from the field of robotics is a tiny micro-motor that can identify, trap, and transport individual cells. It’s a serious feat of engineering that could find uses from medicine to air purification.

Importantly, both electric and magnetic fields can control the machine – and the latter will be vital if the microscopic robot is eventually going to be deployed in the human body, which is what its inventors intend.

The bot ranges from 5 to 27 micrometers across and is made from a specially engineered polystyrene sphere coated with the conductive materials chromium, nickel, and gold.

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