Lifeboat Foundation

Rather than engineering robotic solutions from scratch, some of our most impressive advances have come from copying what nature has already come up with.

New research shows how we can extend that approach to robot ‘minds’, in this case by getting a robot to learn the best route out of a maze all by itself – even down to keeping a sort-of memory of particular turns.

Continue reading “This Robot Learned to Solve a Maze Using Mammal-Like ‘Brain’ Circuits For Memory” »

“How do we use these new innovative technologies to really mitigate disparities in diabetes outcomes?” asked Risa Wolf, a pediatric endocrinologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Karlsruhe, germany and novato, CA, USA

The Forever Healthy Foundation and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging today announced a new partnership to advance early-stage discoveries at the Institute that show promise to reverse physiologic aging in humans. The focus will be on cutting-edge research aimed at the repair of age-related damage at the cellular and molecular level, a hallmark of the aging process. Forever Healthy will commit up to $1 million per year for five years to drive this innovation. The funding aims to advance early-stage research with high translational potential in order to speed up the transition from lab to product.

German entrepreneur and longevity pioneer Michael Greve founded his humanitarian Forever Healthy initiative with the mission of accelerating the development of therapies to impede the aging process and the diseases that accompany it. This mission is in perfect alignment with the Buck Institute, the first independent biomedical facility in the world focused solely on the biology of aging.

The new machine-learning system can generate a 3D scene from an image about 15,000 times faster than other methods. Humans are pretty good at looking at a single two-dimensional image and understanding the full three-dimensional scene that it captures. Artificial intelligence agents are not.

The hunt is on for leptoquarks, particles beyond the limits of the standard model of particle physics —the best description we have so far of the physics that governs the forces of the Universe and its particles. These hypothetical particles could prove useful in explaining experimental and theoretical anomalies observed at particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and could help to unify theories of physics beyond the standard model, if researchers could just spot them.

DARPA-funded research is focused on “biobots” with potential environmental and health applications.

Scientists have successfully taught a collection of human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the video game “Pong” — kind of.

Researchers at the biotechnology startup Cortical Labs have created “ mini-brains ” consisting of 800,000 to one million living human brain cells in a petri dish, New Scientist reports. The cells are placed on top of a microelectrode array that analyzes the neural activity.

We think it’s fair to call them cyborg brains, Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer at Cortical Labs and research lead of the project, told New Scientist.

Researchers combine adhesives based on gecko toes with a customized robotic hand.

In the first episode of Humans+, Motherboard dives into the world of future prosthetics, and the people working on closing the gap between man and machine.

We follow Melissa Loomis, an amputee from Ohio, who had experimental nerve reversal surgery and is going to Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab to test out its latest Modular Prosthetic Limb, a cutting-edge bionic arm funded in part by DARPA. Neuro-interfacing machinery is a game changer in terms rehabilitating patients, but what possibilities do these advancements open for the future?

Continue reading “The Mind-Controlled Bionic Arm With a Sense of Touch” »

The Wright brothers had designed the world’s first successful, heavier-than-air, powered airplane.

Find U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded research about the Wright brothers’ innovative approach to development on OSTI.GOV:
• Accelerating Learning with Set-Based Concurrent Engineering: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1605517
• Control Co-Design: An engineering game changer: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1615248
• Engineering a Better Future: Interplay between Engineering Social Sciences and Innovation: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1530161