Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 50

Most computers run on microchips, but what if we’ve been overlooking a simpler, more elegant computational tool all this time? In fact, what if we were the computational tool?

As crazy as it sounds, a future in which humans are the ones doing the computing may be closer than we think. In an article published in IEEE Access, Yo Kobayashi from the Graduate School of Engineering Science at the University of Osaka demonstrates that living tissue can be used to process information and solve complex equations, exactly as a computer does.

This achievement is an example of the power of the computational framework known as , in which data are input into a complex “reservoir” that has the ability to encode rich patterns. A computational model then learns to convert these patterns into meaningful outputs via a neural network.

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More than seven years ago, cybersecurity researchers were thoroughly rattled by the discovery of Meltdown and Spectre, two major security vulnerabilities uncovered in the microprocessors found in virtually every computer on the planet.

Perhaps the scariest thing about these vulnerabilities is that they didn’t stem from typical software bugs or physical CPU problems, but from the actual processor architecture. These attacks changed our understanding of what can be trusted in a system, forcing to fundamentally reexamine where they put resources.

These attacks emerged from an optimization technique called “speculative execution” that essentially gives the processor the ability to execute multiple instructions while it waits for memory, before discarding the instructions that aren’t needed.

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A joint research team has successfully developed a next-generation soft robot based on liquid. The research was published in Science Advances.

Biological cells possess the ability to deform, freely divide, fuse, and capture foreign substances. Research efforts have long been dedicated to replicating these unique capabilities in artificial systems. However, traditional solid-based robots have faced limitations in effectively mimicking the flexibility and functionality of living cells.

To overcome these challenges, the joint research team successfully developed a particle-armored liquid robot, encased in unusually dense hydrophobic (water-repelling) particles.

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Scientists from TU Delft and EPFL have created a quadruped robot capable of running like a dog without the need for motors. This achievement, a product of combining innovative mechanics with data-driven technology, was published in Nature Machine Intelligence and could pave the way for energy-efficient robotics.

“Commercial quadruped robots are becoming more common, but their energy inefficiency limits their operating time,” explains Cosimo Della Santina, assistant professor at TU Delft. “Our goal was to address this issue by optimizing the robot’s mechanics by mimicking the efficiency of biological systems.”

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A new study published in Frontiers in Computer Science investigated if placing smartphones just out of our reach while we’re at work influenced device use for activities not related to work.

“The study shows that putting the smartphone away may not be sufficient to reduce disruption and procrastination, or increase focus,” said the paper’s author Dr. Maxi Heitmayer, a researcher at the London School of Economics. “The problem is not rooted within the device itself, but in the habits and routines that we have developed with our devices.”

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In a potential step toward sending small spacecraft to the stars, researchers have developed an ultra-thin, ultra-reflective membrane designed to ride a column of laser light to incredible speeds.

Since its launch in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has traveled over 15 billion miles into deep space. That’s a long way—but it’s not even 1% of the distance to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the sun. If humans are going to send ships to the stars, space travel will have to get a lot faster.

One promising way to pick up that kind of speed is a “”—a thin, reflective membrane that can be pushed by light much the same way that wind pushes a sailboat. Lightsails have the potential to reduce flight time to nearby stars from several thousand years using current propulsion systems to perhaps just a decade or two.

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A quantum state of light was successfully teleported through more than 30 kilometers (around 18 miles) of fiber optic cable amid a torrent of internet traffic – a feat of engineering once considered impossible.

The impressive demonstration by researchers in the US in 2024 may not help you beam to work to beat the morning traffic, or download your favourite cat videos faster.

However, the ability to teleport quantum states through existing infrastructure represents a monumental step towards achieving a quantum-connected computing network, enhanced encryption, or powerful new methods of sensing.

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Throughout the course of their lives, humans are known to establish and navigate an intricate web of social relationships, ranging from friendships to family bonds, romances, acquaintances, professional relationships and, today, online interactions. Over the past decades, some behavioral scientists have been trying to better understand how people make sense of these different types of relationships.

The overall organization and effects on the well-being of different kinds of social relationships has been widely investigated. However, how people conceptualize them (i.e., mentally make sense of different types of bonds) is not yet fully understood.

Researchers at Beijing Normal University carried out a study aimed at better understanding how humans across time and from different cultural backgrounds make sense of their relationships.

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