Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2018

The birth of the world’s first “test-tube” lion cubs have sparked hope that the some of the world’s most endangered big cat species could be saved from extinction.

The male and female lion cubs were born in South Africa last week and mark the first time a successful pregnancy has been achieved through artificial insemination.

Continue reading “Test-tube lion cubs spark hope endangered species could be saved” »

How much is that pet imposter in the window?

“While there have been published doubts raised about the accuracy of some of this CMB data, taken at face value it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today,” Riess said at the time.

“This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95% of everything and don’t emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter and dark radiation.” Given its breadth and scope, astronomers around the world have taken the findings of Riess and his colleagues very seriously. After all, in 2011 Riess had shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the initial discovery that the universe wasn’t just expanding, but that the rate at which it was doing so was also increasing.

Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam has spent much of his time since 2010 attempting to develop a totally new theory of gravity, one that explains such observations without the need to invoke the likes of dark matter and dark energy. This resulted in his theory of emergent gravity, so-called because gravity is not a fundamental force after all, but an emergent phenomenon, similar to temperature emerging from the movement of particles.

BepiColombo will fly by the planet’s night side, so images during the closest approach wouldn’t be able to show much detail.

The mission team anticipates the images will show large impact craters that are scattered across Mercury’s surface, much like our moon. The researchers can use the images to map Mercury’s surface and learn more about the planet’s composition.

Some of the instruments on both orbiters will be turned on during the flyby so they can get a first whiff of Mercury’s magnetic field, plasma and particles.

Looks kind of like a computer printer on big wheels.

We got to see Amazon’s latest gadget early — it’s the long-rumored robot.

We spent about 50 minutes with Astro. Like robots of the past (some have fizzled out; others have gone extinct like Anki’s Vector and Cozmo robots), it focuses on peace of mind in the likes of home monitoring and checking in on household members, along with providing entertainment. At the heart of Astro is Amazon’s smart assistant and artificial intelligence chops — so, yes, Alexa is on board just with an “Astro” wake word so that you can ask for the weather, a question or to go to a specific room.

Continue reading “Amazon’s Astro home robot puts Alexa on wheels — but is it worth $1,000?” »

What’s so special about this artificial kidney? The device was engineered to sustainably support a culture of human kidney cells without provoking an immune response.

This means that kidney failure patients can forgo the often painful and uncomfortable dialysis procedures and the lifetime on immunosuppressant drugs that are taken when a kidney transplant is performed and which can have severe side effects. project just earned a $650,000 prize from KidneyX for its first-ever demonstration of a functional prototype.

According to kidney.org, kidney disease causes more deaths than breast cancer or prostate cancer, affecting an estimated 37 million people in the U.S. or 15% of the adult population; more than 1 in 7 adults.

As 5G is deployed in the next several years, engineers and policymakers must start thinking about a 6G in the decade ahead. For example, the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue is launching a task force on “Roadmap to 6G” in October, with participation from Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm, and other partners. We don’t know exactly how 6G will turn out, but we get to shape it today.

With the current speed of 5G phones not quite as advertised — and it will take some time to get even close — some may wonder why we need to already think about the next generation.

Google announced today it will be applying AI advancements, including a new technology called Multitask Unified Model (MUM) to improve Google Search. At the company’s Search On event, the company demonstrated new features, including those that leverage MUM, to better connect web searchers to the content they’re looking for, while also making web search feel more natural and intuitive.

One of the features being launched is called “Things to know,” which will focus on making it easier for people to understand new topics they’re searching for. This feature understands how people typically explore various topics and then shows web searchers the aspects of the topic people are most likely to look at first.

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How close is nuclear fusion to break-even? If you trust the headlines we’re getting close and the international project ITER is going to be the first to produce energy from fusion power. But not so fast. Scientists have, accidentally or deliberately, come to use a very misleading quantity to measure their progress. Unfortunately we’re much farther away from generating fusion power than the headlines suggest.

Continue reading “How close is nuclear fusion power?” »