Lifeboat Foundation

Alpha Centauri seems almost within grasp as promising research soars into reality.

Lightsails were once a thing of science fiction, evolving through several variations over the last 40 years. Now, science fiction is becoming reality. Advances in laser technology and new ultrastrong, ultralight materials open up the possibility of venturing beyond our solar system in the not-too-distant future.

Researchers from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania recently published two papers outlining various shapes and heat-dissipating materials they tested to evaluate lightsails beyond previous limits. The research was conducted in conjunction with the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, a project with the goal of sending a microchip-sized probe to the Alpha Centauri system, which, at just over 4 light-years away, is the closest and possibly most habitable neighboring star system. Breakthrough Starshot plans to use a high-powered laser array to propel tiny lightsail probes through space at a top speed of some 20 percent the speed of light. Incorporated into the sails would be minuscule scientific instruments, such as cameras, magnetometers, and communicators that could beam information back to Earth as they fly through the Alpha Centuari system.

Continue reading “Lightsail technology billows into the future” »

Almost 1,000 adults and children with type 1 diabetes have been given a potentially life-altering ‘artificial pancreas’ by the NHS in England as part of the first nationwide test into the effectiveness of this technology in the world.

Health and high quality care for all, now and for future generations.

NVIDIA says their 3D scene rendering AI runs up to 1,000 times faster than older models without sacrificing image quality.

We’ve seen this funky dual disk polar printer already recently, but [Heinz Loepmeier] has been busy working on it, so here’s an update. The primary focus here is nozzleboss, a blender plugin which enables the surface textures of already sliced objects to be manipulated. The idea is to read in the gcode for the object, and convert it to an internal mesh representation that blender needs in order to function. From there the desired textures can be applied to the surfaces for subsequent stages to operate upon. One trick that nozzleboss can do is to create weight maps to tweak the extrusion flow rate or print velocity value according to the pixel value at the surface — such ‘velocity painting’ can produce some very subtle surface effects on previously featureless faces. Another

Continue reading “Texture Map GCode Directly In Blender With NozzleBoss” »

The young man has made several statements that compromise the scientific community, but the most shocking is related to CERN and how it could have destroyed our universe.

Regarded as a genius child and listed as the “most intelligent young man in the world”, Max Laughlin surprised the world with his great intellectual abilities.

With only 13 years old he could develop from scratch its own device for energy access. A system that is capable of providing all the necessary energy without the need for oil, coal or solar energy.

Training datasets are very important for experimenting with varied data to train new AI models. However, many commonly used public data sets contain labeling errors. This makes it challenging to train robust models, particularly for novel tasks. Many researchers use techniques such as employing a variety of data quality control procedures to overcome these shortcomings. However, there is no centralized repository consisting of examples of using these strategies.

Meta AI researchers have recently released Mephisto. It is a new platform to collect, share, and iterate on the most promising approaches to collecting training datasets for AI models. Researchers can exchange unique collecting strategies with Mephisto in a reusable and iterable format. It also allows them to change out components and quickly locate the exact annotations required, minimizing the barrier to custom task creation.

The team uncovers many common pathways for driving a complex annotation activity from concept to data collection in Mephisto. In addition to improving the quality of datasets, Mephisto also enhances the experience of the researchers and annotators who created the data set.

A new approach to in-memory computing proposes a new set up to create an artificial synapse that can both store and process data.

In this blossoming era of AI, efficient computational approaches to processing and storing large amounts of data are required. However, current computer designs have inherent performance limitations.

In recent years, research has been focused on the development of alternative computing architectures that mimic the brain. These devices, called neuromorphic computers, circumvent many of the issues associated with the traditional von Neumann architecture, which has been around since 1945 and is composed of processing and memory units.

Speculate to accumulate lifespan – how crypto-conglomerate Moon Rabbit is going bigger and better for everyone.

Engineers have discovered a way to more than double the lifespan of batteries used in smartphones and electric cars.

The battery breakthrough was successfully demonstrated by researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia, who increased the lifespan of a lithium-ion (li-ion) battery from several hundred charge/ discharge cycles, to more than 1,000.

“Our process will increase the lifespan of batteries in many things, from smartphones and laptops, to power tools and electric vehicles,” said Professor Lianzhou Wang from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.