Lifeboat Foundation

A team of researchers at Google’s Deep Mind London project, has taught animated players how to play a realistic version of soccer on a computer screen. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes teaching the animated players to play as solo players and also in teams.

For several years, robot engineers have been working diligently to create robots capable of playing soccer. Such work has resulted in competition between various groups to see who can devise the best robot players. And that has led to the creation of RoboCup, which has several leagues, both in the real world and simulated. In this new effort, the researchers applied a new degree of artificial intelligence programming and learning networks to teach simulated robots how to play soccer without ever giving them the rules.

Continue reading “Watch how an AI system learns to play soccer from scratch” »

Using a single memory atom in a cavity, a deterministic protocol is implemented to efficiently grow Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger and linear cluster states by means of single-photon emissions.

Researchers from North Carolina State University used computational analysis to predict how optical properties of semiconductor material zinc selenide (ZnSe) change when doped with halogen elements, and found the predictions were confirmed by experimental results. Their method could speed the process of identifying and creating materials useful in quantum applications.

Creating semiconductors with desirable properties means taking advantage of point defects—sites within a material where an atom may be missing, or where there are impurities. By manipulating these sites in the material, often by adding different elements (a process referred to as “doping”), designers can elicit different properties.

“Defects are unavoidable, even in ‘pure’ materials,” says Doug Irving, University Faculty Scholar and professor of materials science and engineering at NC State. “We want to interface with those spaces via doping to change certain properties of a material. But figuring out which elements to use in doping is time and labor intensive. If we could use a computer model to predict these outcomes it would allow material engineers to focus on elements with the best potential.”

James Webb Space Telescope’s first exoplanet image could tell us a lot about our own Solar System.

NASA just released the James Webb Space Telescope’s first infrared images of an exoplanet, and it could shed light on how solar systems evolve.

The trial was only on 8 people, but it appears to have worked well across the board.

Published in GeroScience, a groundbreaking study from the renowned Conboy lab has confirmed that plasma dilution leads to systemic rejuvenation against multiple proteomic aspects of aging in human beings.

This paper takes the view that much of aging is driven by systemic molecular excess. Signaling molecules, antibodies, and toxins, which gradually accumulate out of control, cause cells to exhibit the gene expression that characterizes older cells.

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The aircraft is one of Northrop Grumman’s best models.

The Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye is an American all-weather, carrier-capable tactical airborne early warning aircraft. Its latest and most advanced version is the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye.

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“It’s historic,” says MIT scientists.

In a significant breakthrough, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) lunchbox-sized machine has been producing oxygen from the Red Planet’s atmosphere for more than a year, giving hope of life on Mars one day.

Since April 2021, the MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) successfully made oxygen from the Red Planet’s carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere, according to a press release published by the institute on Wednesday.

Continue reading “MIT’s MOXIE experiment reliably produces oxygen on Mars” »

To smash atoms with unimaginable power.

Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is back online after a three-year technical shutdown period. The expert scientists at the famous research facility ran the powerful accelerator at the end of April, and Run 3 physics started in early July. The entire process ran at the highest energy level ever achieved in an accelerator.

The LHC experiments are expected to collect so much data on nature at its smallest levels that it is measured in petabytes.

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The contract will run through 2030 and makes SpaceX over $4.9 billion in total.

You haven’t seen the tail end of SpaceX launches to the International Space Station (ISS) quite yet. NASA awarded the Elon Musk-founded company a $1.4 billion contract to send five more astronaut missions to the ISS, per NASA’s press release.

The contract, part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap), runs through 2030 and brings the total value of the signed agreement with SpaceX to over $4.9 billion.

Continue reading “NASA Awards SpaceX More Crew Flights to Space Station” »