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Oct 25, 2020

Space Force activates Space Operations Command in Colorado

Posted by in categories: military, space

Oct. 22 (UPI) — Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond established Space Operations Command during an activation ceremony at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado this week.

According to the Space Force, Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting will serve as commander of the new unit, which is mostly formed from former Air Force units 14th Air Force and Air Force Space Command.

At the ceremony Wednesday, Raymond and Whiting both talked about the decades of work that made the new organization possible, and the role of that history in preparing warfighters for space.

Oct 25, 2020

Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, Elon Musk, neuroscience

Rock-climb without fear. Play a symphony in your head. See radar with superhuman vision. Discover the nature of consciousness. Cure blindness, paralysis, deafness, and mental illness. Those are just a few of the applications that Elon Musk and employees at his four-year-old neuroscience company Neuralink believe electronic brain-computer interfaces will one day bring about.

None of these advances are close at hand, and some are unlikely to ever come about. But in a “product update” streamed over YouTube on Friday, Musk, also the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, joined staffers wearing black masks to discuss the company’s work toward an affordable, reliable brain implant that Musk believes billions of consumers will clamor for in the future.

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Oct 25, 2020

Optical Computing: Solving Problems at the Speed of Light

Posted by in categories: computing, internet, quantum physics

Optical computing, which uses photons instead of electrons, has been one of the great promises of this field for decades.


According to Moore’s law —actually more like a forecast, formulated in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore— the number of transistors in a microprocessor doubles about every two years, boosting the power of the chips without increasing their energy consumption. For half a century, Moore’s prescient vision has presided over the spectacular progress made in the world of computing. However, by 2015, the engineer himself predicted that we are reaching a saturation point in current technology. Today, quantum computing holds out hope for a new technological leap, but there is another option on which many are pinning their hopes: optical computing, which replaces electronics (electrons) with light (photons).

The end of Moore’s law is a natural consequence of physics: to pack more transistors into the same space they have to be shrunk down, which increases their speed while simultaneously reducing their energy consumption. The miniaturisation of silicon transistors has succeeded in breaking the 7-nanometre barrier, which used to be considered the limit, but this reduction cannot continue indefinitely. And although more powerful systems can always be obtained by increasing the number of transistors, in doing so the processing speed will decrease and the heat of the chips will rise.

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Oct 25, 2020

Scientists create COVID-19 treatment using llama antibodies

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

If this works out… Thank you llamas! 😃


An antibody produced by llamas seems particularly effective at neutralizing a key protein of the novel coronavirus.

Oct 25, 2020

China Just Built a 250-Acre Solar Farm Shaped Like a Giant Panda

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Well, at least they’re having fun with it.


Most sun oriented homesteads adjust their sunlight based exhibits in lines and segments to shape a matrix.

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Oct 25, 2020

Scientists make digital breakthrough in chemistry that could revolutionize the drug industry

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, robotics/AI

At the Cronin Lab at the University of Glasgow chemists developed a robotic chemist called a “chemputer” that turns words into molecules.

Oct 25, 2020

New nuclear engine concept could help realize 3-month trips to Mars

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nuclear energy, space travel

Seattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies (USNC-Tech) has developed a concept for a new Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) engine and delivered it to NASA. Claimed to be safer and more reliable than previous NTP designs and with far greater efficiency than a chemical rocket, the concept could help realize the goal of using nuclear propulsion to revolutionize deep space travel, reducing Earth-Mars travel time to just three months.

Because chemical rockets are already near their theoretical limits and electric space propulsion systems have such low thrust, rocket engineers continue to seek ways to build more efficient, more powerful engines using some variant of nuclear energy. If properly designed, such nuclear rockets could have several times the efficiency of the chemical variety. The problem is to produce a nuclear reactor that is light enough and safe enough for use outside the Earth’s atmosphere – especially if the spacecraft is carrying a crew.

According to Dr. Michael Eades, principal engineer at USNC-Tech, the new concept engine is more reliable than previous NTP designs and can produce twice the specific impulse of a chemical rocket. Specific impulse is a measure of a rocket’s efficiency.

Oct 25, 2020

Chernobyl fungus could shield astronauts from cosmic radiation

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nuclear energy, space

Will astronauts have fungi shields as protection against radiation in the future? 😃


When astronauts return to the moon or travel to Mars, how will they shield themselves against high levels of cosmic radiation? A recent experiment aboard the International Space Station suggests a surprising solution: a radiation-eating fungus, which could be used as a self-replicating shield against gamma radiation in space.

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Oct 25, 2020

U.S. Army Awards Pocket-Sized Drones $20.6 Million Contract

Posted by in categories: drones, military

The U.S. army will have pocket sized drones.


Nano drones have become a major military tool over the past few years, and the most recent announcement of FLIR Systems being awarded an additional $20.6 million contract for their Black Hornet 3 Personal Reconnaissance Systems (PRS) by the U.S. Army is one big example of that.

While the contract is huge, the FLIR Systems Black Hornet 3 is only the size of a cellphone. This extremely light and nearly silent drone can fly up to 25 minutes, and provide many military advantages in combat.

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Oct 25, 2020

French Court Asks Microsoft for Safeguards Against U.S. Surveillance of Health Data

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, health, law, robotics/AI, surveillance

U.S. company can keep hosting vast coronavirus-related project but must protect French citizens’ health data from American government, court rules.


A French court has ruled that Microsoft Corp. can continue hosting a government-run project aggregating citizens’ anonymous health data to use for AI-based research, but must guarantee no data will be sent to the U.S. or be shared with American intelligence authorities.

The ruling, handed down last week, contradicts the stance of France’s data protection authority, which told the court this month that any U.S. cloud provider could be forced to comply with U.S. surveillance laws and should therefore not be allowed to host sensitive health data. The regulator’s opinion could provide clues for other companies handling such data, legal experts say.

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