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The Fermi Paradox contemplates the weirdness of our galaxy seemingly being devoid of intelligent alien life, but Many Worlds Theory, Multiverses, Parallel Universe, and Alternate Realities may radically alter our thinking on Aliens & SETI.

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Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Multiverse” | >

Here’s an intriguing idea. What if you were informed that everything in your life was pre-planned? Even crazier, what if your history, present, and future are all taking place right now?

An incredible new theory established as the “block universe” theory asserts that time does not actually “flow like a river”; rather, everything is ever-present.

Dr. Bradford Skow, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposes that if we “look down” on the cosmos as if it were a piece of paper, we would see time stretched out in all directions, just as we perceive space at any given time.

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Circa 2021

Finding and fixing bugs in code is a time-consuming, and often frustrating, part of everyday work for software developers. Can deep learning address this problem and help developers deliver better software, faster? In a new paper, Self-Supervised Bug Detection and Repair, presented at the 2021 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), we show a promising deep learning model, which we call BugLab can be taught to detect and fix bugs, without using labelled data, through a “hide and seek” game.

To find and fix bugs in code requires not only reasoning over the code’s structure but also understanding ambiguous natural language hints that software developers leave in code comments, variable names, and more. For example, the code snippet below fixes a bug in an open-source project in GitHub.

Here the developer’s intent is clear through the natural language comment as well as the high-level structure of the code. However, a bug slipped through, and the wrong comparison operator was used. Our deep learning model was able to correctly identify this bug and alert the developer.

Continue reading “Finding and fixing bugs with deep learning” | >

Near-invisible graphene tattoos deliver high-speed and long-term continuous monitoring of blood pressure with high accuracy.

Wrapping a cuff around a patient’s arm and inflating it to measure blood pressure is one of the most routinely performed medical tests. It provides a quick and reliable assessment of cardiovascular health, as blood pressure is an independent predictor of all-cause mortality. But such arm cuffs are bulky and uncomfortable, making them impractical for continuous monitoring outside of clinics.

For this reason, researchers are developing cuffless alternatives with the goal of unlocking new possibilities for patient diagnostics and management, as well as providing new understanding of physiology. However, none of these tools has become a mainstay yet.

One option, acoustic sensors, slide during movements and are too large to be easily incorporated into untethered ambulatory sensors. Meanwhile, optical modalities such as smart watches are limited by the low penetration of light into tissues, which hinders their ability to capture haemodynamic parameters in the arteries. Studies also show that optical sensors are sometimes inaccurate when used with darker skin tones or larger wrists.

Continue reading “Graphene tattoo provides cuffless blood pressure monitoring” | >

Researchers in Germany have demonstrated quantum entanglement of two atoms separated by 33 km (20.5 miles) of fiber optics. This is a record distance for this kind of communication and marks a breakthrough towards a fast and secure quantum internet.

Quantum entanglement is the uncanny phenomenon where two particles can become so inextricably linked that examining one can tell you about the state of the other. Stranger still, changing something about one particle will instantly alter its partner, no matter how far apart they are. That leads to the unsettling implication that information is being “teleported” faster than the speed of light, an idea that was too much for even Einstein, who famously described it as “spooky action at a distance.”

Despite its apparent impossibility, quantum entanglement has been consistently demonstrated in experiments for decades, with scientists taking advantage of its bizarre nature to quickly transmit data over long distances. And in the new study, researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU) and Saarland University have now broken a distance record for quantum entanglement between two atoms over fiber optics.

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Continuing our look at Dyson Spheres we examine the concept of the Nicoll-Dyson Beam, a type of advanced weapon that uses the output of an entire sun to create a laser that can strike target across the galaxy.

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Continue reading “Megastructures 09 Nicoll Dyson Beams” | >

Tokyo/New Delhi: Tetsuya Yamagami, who shot Shinzo Abe in Nara City, used a handmade gun to attack the former Japanese Prime Minister, said reports. The 41-year-old shooter, a resident of Nara City in Japan shot Abe in his chest from 10 feet away, said reports. For the unversed, Abe was shot during live address in Western Japan. The attack was a shock in one of the world’s safest countries with some of the strictest gun control laws. During interrogation, the attacker has confessed that he was dissatisfied with Abe.

NHK public broadcaster aired dramatic footage of Abe giving a speech outside of a train station in the western city of Nara. He is standing, dressed in a navy blue suit, raising his fist, when a gunshot is heard. Footage then shows Abe collapsed on the street, with security guards running toward him. He holds his chest, his shirt smeared with blood.

Second video shows the attempted assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

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Despite the fact that sex is a basic instinct and a near-universal experience, we know remarkably little about it. And so, this week, we’re teaming up with our friends at Futurism, oracles of all things science, technology and medicine, to look at the past, present and future of pleasure from a completely scientific perspective.

For a while now, the neurotransmitter dopamine has been seen as the conductor of good feelings. It’s the subject of love songs, the seductress of biohackers and the ostensible “pleasure chemical.” But as research continues to uncover more about our brain’s reward system, dopamine is beginning to look less like the maestro and more like a member of the band.

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Buoyed by research that says inhabiting someone else’s body can change how you perceive your own, researchers have started to investigate the vast, erotic potential of virtual sex.

Despite the fact that sex is a basic instinct and a near-universal experience, we know remarkably little about it. And so, this week, we’re teaming up with our friends at Futurism, oracles of all things science, technology and medicine, to look at the past, present and future of pleasure from a completely scientific perspective.

Sexual psychologist Cathline Smoos spent most of last year having freaky, virtual sex with her two then-boyfriends. Usually, they fooled around together in the trippy, immersive game VRChat, but one day, they decided to explore what it would be like to have sex as objects instead. In their respective bedrooms on different corners of the globe, they strapped on their VR headsets, and embodied two non-human avatars; Smoos chose a chest of drawers, her partner a TV.

Continue reading “The Brave New World of Erotic VR Body-Swapping” | >