Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Associate Professor of the Department of Information Technologies and Computer Sciences at MISIS University, Ph.D., mathematician and doctor Alexandra Bernadotte has developed algorithms that significantly increase the accuracy of recognition of mental commands by robotic devices. The result is achieved by optimizing the selection of a dictionary. Algorithms implemented in robotic devices can be used to transmit information through noisy communication channels. The results have been published in the peer-reviewed international scientific journal Mathematics.

The task of improving the object (audio, video or electromagnetic signals) classification accuracy, when compiling so-called “dictionaries” of devices is faced by developers of different systems aimed to improve the quality of human life.

The simplest example is a voice assistant. Audio or video transmission devices for remote control of an object in the line-of-sight zone use a limited set of commands. At the same time, it is important that the commands classifier based on the accurately understands and does not confuse the commands included in the device dictionary. It also means that the recognition accuracy should not fall below a certain value in the presence of extraneous noise.

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A tentacle robot can gently grasp fragile objects by entangling and ensnaring them – just as a jellyfish would.

Drawing inspiration from nature or, more specifically, from a jellyfish collecting stunned prey, a Harvard team of engineers developed a robotic gripper equipped with thin, soft tentacles to handle irregularly shaped or fragile objects.

A collection of pneumatic rubber tentacles – or filaments – are weak individually, but together they can grasp and securely hold heavy or oddly shaped items. They wrap around the objects by way of simple inflation without sensing, planning, or feedback control.

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The race to create a solid-state battery that could compete with today’s lithium-ion cells is heating up. In the past few years, there’s been a lot of R&D around solid electrolytes that promise to be safer and more powerful. In this video, we visit Sakuú, a company that doesn’t just want to make solid-state batteries, they also want to 3D-print them.

0:00 Intro.
0:29 Battery basics feat. a potato.
1:29 Lithium-ion batteries 101
2:18 What is a solid-state battery?
3:28 Intro to Sakuú
4:00 Why 3D-printing?
5:35 3D-printing prototype.
6:25 Customized battery shapes.
7:34 Challenges of total reinvention.
8:09 Looking forward.

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An artificial intelligence system from Google’s sibling company DeepMind stumbled on a new way to solve a foundational math problem at the heart of modern computing, a new study finds. A modification of the company’s game engine AlphaZero (famously used to defeat chess grandmasters and legends in the game of Go) outperformed an algorithm that had not been improved on for more than 50 years, researchers say.

The new research focused on multiplying grids of numbers known as matrices. Matrix multiplication is an operation key to many computational tasks, such as processing images, recognizing speech commands, training neural networks, running simulations to predict the weather, and compressing data for sharing on the Internet.

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Are we alone in the universe? What could a future for humans in space look like? And what would Creon’s advise to Elon Musk be if he wants to make a self-sufficient mass colony there? This Hope Drop features Creon Levit, chief technologist and director of R&D at Planet Labs.

Creon Levit is chief technologist at Planet Labs, where he works to move the world toward existential hope via novel satellite technologies. He also hosts Foresight Institute’s Space Group.

Creon speaks on:

- His experiences working with NASA & Planet Labs.
- Natural systems technologies.
- Regenerative Agriculture.
- His vision for the future.
- And much more!

Creon is chief technologist and director of R&D at Planet Labs, and a Foresight Institute senior fellow. He previously worked at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he was one of the founders of the NAS (NASA Advanced Supercomputing) division, co-PI on the Virtual Wind Tunnel project, co-founder of the NASA Molecular Nanotechnology Group (the first federally funded research lab devoted to molecular nanotechnology), co-PI on the hyperwall project, investigator on the Columbia accident investigation board, member of the NASA engineering and safety center, investigator on the millimeter-wave thermal rocket project, the Stardust re-entry observation campaign, PI on the LightForce project, special assistant to the center director, and chief scientist for the programs and projects directorate.

Submit your contribution to the storytelling bounty from Creon’s prompt to “Imagine a shift in human nature where we could all have love, community, technology, and adventure, as well as lack of severe hardship or fear.” here: https://680d4kcs6ki.typeform.com/to/jHROTs6z.

Continue reading “Existential Hope: Creon Levit | On space and the long-term future” | >

We live in very interesting times, especially if you happen to be a tinkerer, hobbyist, or what is commonly called a “maker” these days. From affordable palm-sized computer boards like the Raspberry Pi to the almost magical 3D printers, it has never been easier to bring ideas to life or, at the very least, prototype designs quickly before they hit final production. Not everyone might have access to these parts and tools, though, but those same things have also made it easier to create and sell products that bigger companies would never dare make. Those include niche yet popular designs, like this quirky pocket computer kit that you can assemble on your own to become not just a portable game emulator but a real computer you could use for more serious business, like even developing your own retro-style game on the go.

Designer: Clockwork.

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Pipeline corrosion resulting in leaks is very common. There are only a few current methods to detect defects before they cause leaks. Often, the pipe is repaired and re-inspected after a leak occurs.

Now, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has created the next generation of transducers that use ultrasonic-guided wave technology to detect anomalies in pipes, enabling users to prevent leaks before they start.

Originally developed by SwRI in 2002, the technology is known as a Magnetostrictive Transducer (MsT) Collar. The updated version has a flat, thin design, which allows it to be used on pipes in tight spaces. The new MsT design also features eight sensors that give the transducer the ability to consistently monitor the pipe’s condition and accurately identify where the pipe corrosion is occurring, hopefully preventing leaks from happening in the first place.

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In the style of Sleeping Beauty, Tardigrades, the adorable, tiny animals that can withstand extreme environments and are also known as “water bears,” can withstand freezing without losing their vitality. Despite harsh environmental conditions, tardigrades are very adaptable. According to Ralph Schill, a professor at the University of Stuttgart, anhydrobiotic (dry) tardigrades can survive for many years without absorbing water. In a frozen state, there was no clear indication of whether aging increased or decreased. It turns out that frozen tardigrades don’t age.

Water bears, also known as tardigrades, are nematodes. They have the same gait as bears, but that’s about the only thing that connects them to bears. As a result of their adaptability to rapidly changing environmental conditions, tardigrades, which are barely one millimeter in size, can freeze in extreme cold and dry out in extreme heat. Rather than dying, Schill explains that they fall into a deep sleep. A cell organism experiences different types of stress when it freezes or dries out. Despite this, tardigrades are equally capable of surviving both extremes of heat and cold. No obvious signs of life can be seen on them. In this state of rest, the animal’s internal clock might be slowed down, which raises the question of whether it ages.

Schill and his team investigated the aging process of dried tardigrades several years ago, which waited in their habitat for rain for many years. Grimm brothers’ fairytales depict a princess who is deeply asleep. A young prince kisses her 100 years later, and she awakes looking as beautiful and young as ever. In a dried state, tardigrades are the same, and therefore this hypothesis is called the “Sleeping Beauty” hypothesis. Schill explains that the internal clock stops during inactivity and resumes once the organism has been reactivated. Accordingly, the researcher explained that tardigrades, whose lifespan usually lasts only a few months without rest, can survive for decades.

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Commonly assumed to be silent, 53 animals have had their ‘voices’ added to a family tree of vocalizations in an effort to determine when acoustic communication emerged in evolutionary history.

The species that are finally being heard come from four different animal clades, including 50 turtle species, the South American lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxa), a limbless amphibian called Cayenne caecilian (Typhlonectes compressicauda), and a reptile from New Zealand known as a tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus).

“All recorded species were found to possess a varied acoustic repertoire comprising a number of different sounds,” the authors conclude.

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