Lifeboat Foundation

Now researchers have used US economic, health, and demographic data to put a price on just how valuable such an intervention could be. In a paper in Nature Aging, they showed that treatments that slow down aging could be worth US$38 trillion for every extra year of life they give people.

This isn’t the first time someone has tried to pin a number on the benefits of slowing aging. The authors reference a 2013 study in Health Affairs, which estimated that a 2.2-year increase in life expectancy could be worth as much as $7.1 trillion over 50 years.

The new study uses a different methodology, though, known as value of statistical life. This is the measure used by various US agencies and represents how much people would be willing to pay to reduce their risk of dying. It incorporates concepts like health, consumption, and leisure, and therefore measures not just quantity but quality of life.

Why can atoms or elementary particles behave like waves according to quantum physics, which allows them to be in several places at the same time? And why does everything we see around us obviously obey the laws of classical physics, where that is impossible? To answer those questions, in recent years researchers have coaxed larger and larger objects into behaving quantum mechanically. One consequence of this is that, when passing through a double slit, they form an interference pattern that is characteristic of waves.

Up to now this could be achieved with molecules consisting of a few thousand atoms. However, physicists hope one day to be able to observe such quantum effects with properly macroscopic objects. Lukas Novotny, Professor of Photonics, and his collaborators at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich have now made a crucial step in that direction. Their results were recently published in the scientific journal Nature.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have trapped a tiny sphere measuring a hundred nanometres using laser light and slowed down its motion to the lowest quantum mechanical state. Based on this, one can study quantum effects in macroscopic objects and build extremely sensitive sensors.

Continue reading “Nanosphere at the quantum limit” »

The company’s research into a mind-reading device is over, for now. Some scientists said it was never possible anyway.

Hackers were targeting SolarWinds’ Serv-U software.

Microsoft reported Tuesday that it identified a zero-day exploit in SolarWinds’ software. The zero-day originated from a group of Chinese hackers trying to reach the US defense industry. SolarWinds has since patched the exploit.

United Airlines and one of its regional carriers each plan to buy up to 100 small electric planes that could be used on short-haul United flights.

The “show” starts with a robot grabbing a handful of dough and depositing it on a pan, where another bot flattens it, a third applies tomato sauce, etc. From dough-grabbing to inserting in the oven, preparing a pizza takes just 45 seconds. The oven can bake 6 pizzas at a time, yielding about 80 pizzas per hour. Once a pizza is baked to gooey perfection, a robot slices it and places it in a box, and it’s then transferred (by a robot, of course) to a numbered cubby from which the customer can retrieve it.

It’s a shame the pizzeria didn’t open during the height of the pandemic, as its revenues likely would have gone through the roof given that there’s zero person-to-person contact required for you to get a fresh, custom-made pizza in your hands (and more importantly, your belly!).

Continue reading “Watch Robots Make Pizzas From Start to Finish at an Automated Pizzeria” »

IBM chief data scientist John Thomas makes the case for building AI factories to increase adoption of best data science practices at scale.

Scientists have discovered a novel way to classify magnetized plasmas that could possibly lead to advances in harvesting on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars. The discovery by theorists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) found that a magnetized plasma has 10 unique phases and the transitions between them might hold rich implications for practical development.

The spatial boundaries, or transitions, between different phases will support localized wave excitations, the researchers found. “These findings could lead to possible applications of these exotic excitations in space and laboratory plasmas,” said Yichen Fu, a graduate student at PPPL and lead author of a paper in Nature Communications that outlines the research. “The next step is to explore what these excitations could do and how they might be utilized.”

You don’t need to be a roboticist to make Spot dance. Learn how Spot’s Choreographer software and athletic intelligence bridge the gap between the creative and the technical process. https://bit.ly/36xIbkA

Bringing It All Together

Continue reading “In Step with Spot” »