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Get up to speed on the rapidly evolving world of AI with our roundup of the week’s developments.
SpinLaunch was founded in 2014, and its leadership team has since raised tens of millions of dollars in funding. The company has been working with NASA, Airbus, and Cornell University, launching some of their equipment as part of testing. The tech has so far endured 10,000 Gs, “10,000 times the force of Earth’s gravity,” all per the Space.com report.
If SpinLaunch’s concept proves reliable, it could eliminate the loads of fuel that is burned to launch spacecraft. In 2016, Business Insider noted that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket used more than 900,000 pounds of propellant for each liftoff, for reference. The fuel efficiency may have improved some since then.
A new method in spectromicroscopy significantly improves the study of chemical reactions at the nanoscale, both on surfaces and inside layered materials. Scanning X-ray microscopy (SXM) at MAXYMUS beamline of BESSY II enables the investigation of chemical species adsorbed on the top layer (surface) or intercalated within the MXene electrode (bulk) with high chemical sensitivity. The method was developed by a HZB team led by Dr. Tristan Petit. The scientists demonstrated among others first SXM on MXene flakes, a material used as electrode in lithium-ion batteries.
Since their discovery in 2011, MXenes have gathered significant scientific interest due to their versatile tunable properties and diverse applications, from energy storage to electromagnetic shielding. Researchers have been working to decipher the complex chemistry of MXenes at the nanoscale.
The team of Dr. Tristan Petit now made a significant progress in MXene characterization, as described in their recent publication (Small Methods, “Nanoscale surface and bulk electronic properties of Ti 3 C 2 Tx MXene unraveled by multimodal X-ray spectromicroscopy”). They utilized SXM to investigate the chemical bonding of Ti 3 C 2 Tx MXenes, with Tx denoting the terminations (Tx=O, OH, F, Cl), with high spatial and spectral resolution. The novelty in this work is to combine simultaneously two detection modes, transmission and electron yield, enabling different probing depths.
Using generative AI, this time lapse sequence shows how melanoma skin cancer develops over 10 years. Starting with normal skin, slow progression to stage 4 melanoma is shown.
New Anthropic research: Investigating Reward Tampering.
Could AI models learn to hack their own reward system?
In a new paper, we show they can, by generalization from training in simpler settings.
Continue reading “Sycophancy to subterfuge: Investigating reward tampering in language models” »
China´s Moon Mission May Reveal the Origin of Life on Earth Blog posted on Big Think, direct link on searchforlifeintheuniverse.com
“Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to about 30 solar masses, possess much smaller event horizons and stronger tidal forces, which can rip apart approaching objects before they get to the horizon.”
The simulated black hole is designed to imitate the supermassive one at the heart of our galaxy, which has a mass over 4.3 million times that of our Sun. That is almost unfathomably large: the distant view of it you see in the visualizer is from nearly 400 million miles away.
Continue reading “NASA Releases Video of What It’s Like to Fall Into a Black Hole” »
New research indicates tDCS headsets may help reduce post-breakup misery and depression:
Researchers theorized that using transcranial direct current stimulation in specific brain areas might alleviate the emotional distress linked to heartache.
LISTEN NOW I follow Ithell Colquhoun in describing myself as a Magician born of Nature, and although I reject the Theory of Supernatural Causation nevertheless many posthuman objectives and those of ancient…
Provided to YouTube by Ditto MusicThoth Djehuty’s Book of Magick · Steve NicholsThoth Djehuty’s Book of Magick℗ Steven Leslie NicholsReleased on: 2024–06-17A…
From the article:
Longtermism asks fundamental questions and promotes the kind of consequentialism that should guide public policy.
Based on a talk delivered at the conference on Existential Threats and Other Disasters: How Should We Address Them? May 30–31, 2024 – Budva, Montenegro – sponsored by the Center for the Study of Bioethics, The Hastings Center, and The Oxford Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics.
Continue reading “Are Children The Future?: Longtermism, Pronatalism, and Epistemic Discounting” »
