Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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When robots appear to engage with people and display human-like emotions, people may perceive them as capable of “thinking,” or acting on their own beliefs and desires rather than their programs, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

“The relationship between anthropomorphic shape, human-like behavior and the tendency to attribute independent thought and intentional behavior to robots is yet to be understood,” said study author Agnieszka Wykowska, Ph.D., a principal investigator at the Italian Institute of Technology. “As increasingly becomes a part of our lives, it is important to understand how interacting with a that displays human-like behaviors might induce higher likelihood of attribution of intentional agency to the robot.”

The research was published in the journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior.

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It’s just a “speck of the universe.”

The first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope offered humanity a stunning new view of the universe on Monday — a first-of-its-kind infrared image so distant in the cosmos that it shows stars and galaxies as they appeared 13 billion years ago.

President Joe Biden revealed the new image Monday at the White House alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and NASA officials. Dubbed “Webb’s First Deep Field,” it is the first full-color image from the $10 billion observatory that launched into space last year, and the highest-resolution infrared view of the universe yet captured.

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Remission of depression with new magnetic therapy:3.

Although she’d tried medications and therapy, Chase felt her symptoms get worse over the course of a few months. And she knew things were really getting serious when thoughts of suicide crept in.

That’s when her mother found research about a new type of treatment for depression called Stanford neuromodulation therapy, which uses magnetic fields to stimulate the brain. (It was previously referred to as Stanford accelerated intelligent neuromodulation therapy or SAINT.)

The treatment is similar to transcranial magnetic stimulation, a non-invasive therapy that’s been used to help treat depression for about 15 years.

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The BA.5 variant is now the most dominant strain of COVID-19 in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while it’s hard to get an exact count — given how many people are taking rapid tests at home — there are indications that both reinfections and hospitalizations are increasing.

For example: Some 31,000 people across the U.S. are currently hospitalized with the virus, with admissions up 4.5% compared to a week ago. And data from New York state shows that reinfections started trending upwards again in late June.

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The first image from the James Webb Space Telescope will be released in 45 minutes! 😱 Watch with us.

Last week, NASA administrator Bill Nelson told us we’d see the “deepest image of our Universe that has ever been taken” on July 12, thanks to the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). And we know many of you excitedly marked the date in your calendar.

But over the weekend the space agency announced that they’d actually be releasing one the very first image a day ahead of schedule – at 5.30pm EDT (2130 UTC and 7.30am AEST on Tuesday 12 July).

The first image will be released by US President Joe Biden in a special live stream that you can view in real time below. We’ll be watching live and sharing the first image with all of you as soon as it’s available. Suffice to say, we can’t freaking wait!

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Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are devices that enable direct communication/translation between biological neuronal networks (e.g. a brain or a spine) and external machines. They are currently being used as a tool for fundamental neuroscience research and also for treating neurological disorders and for manipulating neuro-prosthetic devices. As remarkable as today’s BMIs are, however, the next generation BMIs will require new hardware and software with improved resolution and specificity in order to precisely monitor and control the activities of complex neuronal networks. In this talk, I will describe my group’s effort to develop new neuroelectronic devices enabled by silicon nanotechnology that can serve as high-precision, highly multiplexed interface to neuronal networks. I will then describe the promises, as well as potential pitfalls, of next generation BMIs. Hongkun Park is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and a Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and a member of the Harvard Center for Brain Science and Harvard Quantum Optics Center. He serves as an associate editor of Nano Letters. His research interests lie in exploring solid-state photonic, optoelectronic, and plasmonic devices for quantum information processing as well as developing new nano-and microelectronic interfaces for living cells, cell networks, and organisms. Awards and honors that he received include the Ho-Am Foundation Prize in Science, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, and the US Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

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