Lifeboat Foundation

‘Bringing archaeological perspectives to an active space domain’.

While most people naturally associate archaeology with ancient remains and treasured artifacts, one group of scientists is breaking that mold by kickstarting the first-ever archaeological project aboard the International Space Station (ISS), a press statement reveals.

It is the first time such a project has taken place aboard any space habitat and its aim is to catalog how humans adapt their living behaviors while in space for months at a time. As a point of reference, the longest stay aboard the ISS so far is NASA astronaut Christina Koch’s 328-day stay, which ended last year.

Continue reading “The First Archaeological Space Experiment Is Happening Aboard the ISS” »

A common concern surrounding automation in recent years is that it will result in widescale job losses as the work previously done by people is taken over by technology. Of course, the reality doesn’t really support this narrative, and indeed, companies that invest in technology often end up employing more people as a result of the improvement in their fortunes heralded by the investment.

The leadership team of the fintech company Kashat highlight the reality of investing in technology. They reveal that microfinance has traditionally been highly labor intensive, with many of the skills the same as those used in the sector for years. With the introduction of AI, new skills have been introduced into the underwriting process in order to serve at scale, while enabling employees to further expand their skillset and become even more valuable in the future.

The impact of this distinction is clearly visible in the growth rates across the sector, with those more tech-enabled firms growing far faster, and therefore employing more people, than their more traditional peers.

Last week saw an announcement that Optimus Ride, an autonomous shuttle company in Boston was purchased in an acqui-hire by Magna, the Ontario based Tier One Automotive company. In an acqui-hire, the company has generally failed, but a buyer pays to pick up the assets and to hire the team, which took time to create. Usually it’s only enough to reward the preferred investors, the team gets options in their new employer.

Optimus Ride built a shuttle on top of the GEM 6-seater electric shuttle platform, adding sensors and their autonomy tools. It evolved out of MIT.

Also announced as shutting its doors was Local Motors, maker of the Olli shuttle. Local Motors began with a focus on 3D printing to make smaller volume vehicles. The started with the Rally Fighter, a vehicle that was crowd designed after contests. Over time, founder Jay Rogers believed that 3D printing could bring a vehicle to production faster and at lower cost than conventional methods than conventional methods, and entered the Shuttle market, partnering with various partners to make them autonomous. Recently, we reported how an Olli shuttle in Whitby, Ontario had a crash resulting in serious injuries. Early reports suggested it was in autonomous mode, but it was later revealed it was being manually driven at the time. That made it mostly a non-story, but the real story of Olli did not go so well, either.

Continue reading “Two Self-Driving Shuttle Companies Fail In One Week. What Does It Bode?” »

Please join us on January 18th at 6pm Pacific / 9pm Eastern for Episode 7 of Red Planet Live! We are excited to welcome Astrobiologist Dr. Graham Lau to the show!

Known online as “The Cosmobiologist”, Dr. Graham is a research scientist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, director of communications & marketing for Blue Marble Space, host of the show “Ask an Astrobiologist”, sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Program and SAGANet, and director of logistics for the Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge.

Continue reading “Red Planet Live — Dr. Graham Lau — Episode 7” »

Kawasaki has shoehorned the supercharged 1,000cc engine from its wild H2R hyperbike into a heavy-lift autonomous cargo helicopter, and has now demonstrated a robotic system for loading and unloading it without exposing humans to those big blades.

The K-Racer X1 is a beast of a drone, roughly the size of a small car. It rises vertically on a helicopter-style top rotor, but where there’s normally a tail rotor to balance out torque, this machine uses two forward-facing props mounted at the end of stubby wings. These props double as forward propulsion, with the wings providing some lift.

Continue reading “Kawasaki’s supercharged cargo copter tests robotic ground crew” »

While they don’t give the physical thrill of a real one, model roller coasters are always fun to watch. However, they actually make a poor analog of a full-sized ride, as gravitational force and aerodynamic drag don’t scale down in the same way, model roller coasters usually move way faster than the same design would in the real world. [Jon Mendenhall] fixed this deficiency by designing a model roller coaster that accurately simulates a full-sized ride.

The track and cart are all made of 3D printed pieces, which altogether took about 400 hours to print. The main trick to the system’s unique motion is that the cart is motorized: a brushless DC motor moves it along the track using a rack-and-pinion system. This means that technically this model isn’t a roller coaster, since the cart never makes a gravity-powered drop; it’s actually a small rack railway, powered by a lithium-ion battery carried on board the cart. An ESP32 drives the motor, receiving its commands through WiFi, while the complete setup is controlled by a Raspberry Pi that runs the cart through a predetermined sequence.

Continue reading “3D Printed Model Roller Coaster Accurately Simulates The Real Thing” »

Genetically modified crops have a bad rep. How could something so unnatural be good for us?

Well, we finally get to hear from the plants themselves. New evidence shows that plants have been genetically modifying themselves — and the process, called lateral gene transfer, could lead to new plants that are resilient to climate change.

The research: We all know that genes are transferred from parent to offspring. The same is true for all species, including plants. Some bacteria can swap genes with each other, but more complex life (usually) stays in its lane.

Poor Artificial Intelligence (AI). For years, it has had to sit there (like a dormant Skynet) listening to its existence being debated, without getting to have a say. A recent debate held at the University of Oxford tried to put that right by including an AI participant in a debate on the topic of whether AI can ever be ethical.

The debate involved human participants, as well as the Megatron Transformer, an AI created by the Applied Deep Research team at computer-chip maker Nvidia. The Megatron has been trained on a dataset called “the pile”, which includes the whole of Wikipedia, 63 million English news articles, and 38 gigabytes of Reddit conversations — more than enough to break the mind of any human forced to do likewise.

“In other words, the Megatron is trained on more written material than any of us could reasonably expect to digest in a lifetime,” Oxford’s Professor Andrew Stephen wrote in a piece on the debate published in The Conversation. “After such extensive research, it forms its own views.”

The G Train is an all-glass marvel designed for one owner to travel the world’s railways in ultimate luxury. Oh, and it’s totally doable.