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Mar 16, 2022

The Hydrogen Stream: Universal Hydrogen builds manufacturing facility in the United States

Posted by in categories: business, chemistry, economics, energy, engineering, government, policy, sustainability, transportation

Abundant fuel cell raw materials and renewables potential could add up to a green hydrogen economy in the Philippines, according to Jose Mari Angelo Abeleda Jr and Richard Espiritu, two professors at the University of the Philippines Diliman. In a paper published in this month’s Energy Policy, they explained the country is a latecomer to the sector and should develop basic and applied knowledge for training and research. The country should also establish stronger links between industry and academia, the report’s authors suggested. “The establishment of the Philippine Energy Research and Policy Institute (Perpi) is a move towards the right direction as it will be instrumental in crafting policies and pushing for activities that will usher for more private-academ[ic] partnerships for the development of fuel cell technology in the Philippines,” the scholars wrote. “However, through enabling legislation, a separate and dedicated Hydrogen Research and Development Center (HRDC) will be pivotal in ensuring that sufficient government and private funding are provided.” The authors reported progress in the production of fuel cell membranes but few developments towards large scale production, transport, and storage facilities. “The consolidation of existing renewable energy sources for hydrogen production can also be explored in order to ensure reliable and sustainable hydrogen fuel supply,” they wrote. “This is because the country will gain more benefit if it focuses more on the application of fuel cell technology on rural electrification via renewa[ble] energy-based distributed power generation, rather than on transportation such as fuel cell vehicles.”

Paris-based energy engineering company Technip Energies and Indian energy business Greenko ZeroC Private have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to explore green hydrogen project development opportunities in the refining, petrochemicals, fertilizer, chemical, and power plant sectors in India. “The MOU aims to facilitate active engagement between the teams of Technip Energies in India and Greenko to step up collaborative opportunities on a build-own-operate (BOO) model – in which Greenko will be the BOO operator and owner of the asset and Technip Energies will support with engineering services, integration and EP/EPC [engineering and procurement/engineering, procurement and constructrion] – for pilot and commercial scale green hydrogen and related projects in India in order to offer economically feasible technology solutions to clients,” the French company wrote today.

Mar 16, 2022

David Chalmers On The Singularity (2 of 2)

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, singularity

The upward spiral of artificial intelligence looks set to produce machines which are cleverer and more powerful than any humans. What happens when machines can themselves create super-intelligent machines? ‘The Singularity’ is the name science fiction writers gave to this situation. Philosopher David Chalmers discusses the philosophical implications of this very real possibility with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

Mar 16, 2022

David Chalmers On The Singularity (1 of 2)

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, singularity

The upward spiral of artificial intelligence looks set to produce machines which are cleverer and more powerful than any humans. What happens when machines can themselves create super-intelligent machines? ‘The Singularity’ is the name science fiction writers gave to this situation. Philosopher David Chalmers discusses the philosophical implications of this very real possibility with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

Mar 16, 2022

Fastest Artificial Intelligence Ever Made (µ-Parametrization)

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

A new Artificial Intelligence from Microsoft and OpenAI utilizes advanced µ-Parametrization in order to increase performance and allow huge AI models to be trained much more easily. This means that we can soon expect AI models which beat any old ones and even humans at trillions of parameters in the future. The future of machine learning sure looks interesting.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 The AI Bottleneck.
00:38 SKILLSHARE: MAKE YOUR OWN AI
02:28 How AI was made much faster.
04:37 A new Revolutionary Artificial Intelligence.
07:18 Hardcoding Machine Intelligence.
09:17 Last Words.

#ai #deepmind #google

Mar 16, 2022

Technology in agriculture is reaching new heights

Posted by in categories: drones, food, surveillance, sustainability

BOW ISLAND, AB — Patrick Fabian is quickly picking up a new skill. The seed farmer plans to start using drones…


BOW ISLAND, AB – Patrick Fabian is quickly picking up a new skill.

The seed farmer plans to start using drones to monitor his 1,250 irrigated acres.

Continue reading “Technology in agriculture is reaching new heights” »

Mar 16, 2022

Moore’s Law: Scientists Just Made a Graphene Transistor Gate the Width of an Atom

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics

Pushing Moore’s Law to its bitter limits, a new graphene transistor gate measures a mere 0.34 nanometers—a mark that’ll be hard to beat.

Mar 16, 2022

Simple fix prevents perovskite solar cells from degradation in sunlight

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

The fix could pave the way for commercialization of the high-performance, sunlight-to-electricity discovery.

Mar 16, 2022

Billionaire Space Tourism Has Become Insufferable

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, climatology, finance, government, space travel, sustainability

Last summer, at a time when the pandemic had strained many people’s finances, inflation was rising and unemployment was still high, the sight of the richest man in the world joyriding in space hit a nerve. On July 20 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rode to the edge of space onboard a rocket built by his company Blue Origin. A few weeks earlier ProPublica had revealed that he did not pay any income taxes for two years, and in other years he paid a tax rate of just 0.98 percent. To many watching, it rang hollow when Bezos thanked Amazon’s workers, whose low-paid labor had enriched him enough to start his own rocket company, even though Amazon had quashed workers’ efforts to unionize several months before. The fact that another billionaire, Richard Branson, had also launched himself onboard his own company’s rocket just a week earlier did not help.

COVID changed many people’s willingness to shrug off the excesses of the rich. The pandemic drew an impossible-to-ignore distinction between those who can literally escape our world and the rest of us stuck on the ground confronting the ills of Earth: racism, climate change, global diseases. Even several members of Congress expressed their disapproval of Bezos. “Space travel isn’t a tax-free holiday for the wealthy,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. Bezos and Branson putting the spotlight on themselves as passengers served to downplay the work that hundreds of scientists and engineers at Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic had put into designing, building and testing their spacecraft. It also masked the reality that advances in private spaceflight really could eventually pay off in greater access to space for all and more opportunities for scientific research that could benefit everyone. All their flights did was give the impression that space—historically seen as a brave pursuit for the good of all humankind—has just become another playground for the 0.0000001 percent.

Mar 16, 2022

BIG designs virtual office in the metaverse for Vice

Posted by in categories: blockchains, innovation

Danish architecture studio BIG has designed its first building in the metaverse, a virtual office for employees at media company Vice Media Group called Viceverse.

The recently opened Viceverse office is located on the Decentraland platform, where it will serve as the agency’s virtual innovation lab and allow employees to work in the metaverse on Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and other digital projects.

Mar 16, 2022

A talk by David Pearce for the Stepping into the Future conference 2022

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, evolution, health, neuroscience, transhumanism

Synopsis: No sentient being in the evolutionary history of life has enjoyed good health as defined by the World Health Organization. The founding constitution of the World Health Organization commits the international community to a daringly ambitious conception of health: “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing”. Health as so conceived is inconsistent with evolution via natural selection. Lifelong good health is inconsistent with a Darwinian genome. Indeed, the vision of the World Health Organization evokes the World Transhumanist Association. Transhumanists aspire to a civilization of superhappiness, superlongevity and superintelligence; but even an architecture of mind based on information-sensitive gradients of bliss cannot yield complete well-being. Post-Darwinian life will be sublime, but “complete” well-being is posthuman – more akin to Buddhist nirvana. So the aim of this talk is twofold. First, I shall explore the therapeutic interventions needed to underwrite the WHO conception of good health for everyone – or rather, a recognisable approximation of lifelong good health. What genes, allelic combinations and metabolic pathways must be targeted to deliver a biohappiness revolution: life based entirely on gradients of well-being? How can we devise a more civilized signalling system for human and nonhuman animal life than gradients of mental and physical pain? Secondly, how can genome reformists shift the Overton window of political discourse in favour of hedonic uplift? How can prospective parents worldwide – and the World Health Organization – be encouraged to embrace genome reform? For only germline engineering can fix the problem of suffering and create a happy biosphere for all sentient beings.

https://www.scifuture.org/the-end-of-suffering-genome-reform…id-pearce/