Lifeboat Foundation

Lockheed Martin Space hired 2700 people plus 700 interns in 2020, a year unlike any other for human resources managers. Almost overnight, the prime contractor with about 23000 employees switched from its traditional in-person approach to virtual recruitment, interviewing and training.

SpaceNews correspondent Debra Werner spoke with Lockheed Martin Space executives Nick Spain, human resources vice president, Renu Aggarwal, talent acquisition director, and Heather Erickson, organizational development director, about the opportunities and challenges posed by heightened demand for talent amid a pandemic.

Circa 2020 o.o!

Japanese researchers have had success with miniscule robots that are small enough to get inside and neutralize a cancer cell — and they want their creations to be ready to deal with future outbreaks of lethal viruses.

To enable the efficient operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in instances where a global localization system (GPS) or an external positioning device (e.g., a laser reflector) is unavailable, researchers must develop techniques that automatically estimate a robot’s pose. If the environment in which a drone operates does not change very often and one is able to build a 3D map of this environment, map-based robot localization techniques can be fairly effective.

Ideally, map-based pose estimation approaches should be efficient, robust and reliable, as they should rapidly send a robot the information it needs to plan its future actions and movements. 3D light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems are particularly promising map-based localization systems, as they gather a rich pool of 3D information, which drones can then use for localization.

Researchers at Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Spain have recently developed a new framework for map-based localization called direct LIDAR localization (DLL). This approach, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, could overcome some of the limitations of other LIDAR localization techniques introduced in the past.

Despite virtual reality (VR) technology being more affordable than ever, developers have yet to achieve a sense of full immersion in a digital world. Among the greatest challenges is making the user feel as if they are walking.

Now, researchers from the Toyohashi University of Technology and The University of Tokyo in Japan have published a paper to the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality describing a custom-built platform that aims to replicate the sensation of walking in VR, all while sitting motionlessly in a chair.

“Walking is a fundamental and fun activity for human in everyday life. Therefore, it is very worthwhile to provide a high-quality walking experience in a VR space,” says Yusuke Matsuda.

A breakthrough astrophysics code, named Octo-Tiger, simulates the evolution of self-gravitating and rotating systems of arbitrary geometry using adaptive mesh refinement and a new method to parallelize the code to achieve superior speeds.

This new code to model stellar collisions is more expeditious than the established code used for numerical simulations. The research came from a unique collaboration between experimental computer scientists and astrophysicists in the Louisiana State University Department of Physics & Astronomy, the LSU Center for Computation & Technology, Indiana University Kokomo and Macquarie University, Australia, culminating in over of a year of benchmark testing and scientific simulations, supported by multiple NSF grants, including one specifically designed to break the barrier between computer science and astrophysics.

“Thanks to a significant effort across this collaboration, we now have a reliable computational framework to simulate stellar mergers,” said Patrick Motl, professor of physics at Indiana University Kokomo. “By substantially reducing the computational time to complete a simulation, we can begin to ask new questions that could not be addressed when a single-merger simulation was precious and very time consuming. We can explore more parameter space, examine a simulation at very high spatial resolution or for longer times after a merger, and we can extend the simulations to include more complete physical models by incorporating radiative transfer, for example.”

Ingenuity is three for three on Mars.

Ingenuity aced its third-ever Martian flight early this morning (April 25), adding to its already impressive resume.

The only thing bad about Star Trek was they made the Borg evil.

Emerging technologies have unprecedented potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues. Among the most powerful — and controversial — is the gene-editing tech, CRISPR-Cas9, which will improve agricultural yields, cure genetic disorders, and eradicate infectious diseases like malaria. But CRISPR and other disruptive technologies, like brain-machine interfaces and artificial intelligence, also pose complex philosophical and ethical questions. Perhaps no one is better acquainted with these questions than Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE Foundation and co-founder of Singularity University and Human Longevity Inc. In this session, Peter will give a state of the union on the near future and explore the profound ethical implications we will face in the ongoing technological revolution.

Continue reading “CRISPR, AI & Brain-Machine Interface: The Future Is Faster Than You Think, Peter Diamandis” »

O,.o.

Livescience.com | By LIVESCIENCE

Gravitational wave detectors could soon uncover hints of new physics from exotic compact objects.

Great episode from a great channel and creator. Though I’m sure almost everyone here is familiar with the channel in question, It’s still worth pointing out subscribing and supporting even if only 1 or 2 people who otherwise haven’t heard it get the opportunity to do so!

Get a free month of Curiosity Stream: https://curiositystream.com/isaacarthur.
As Humanity moves into the future, traveling to other worlds and exploring genetics, AI, transhumanism, and cybernetics, we may begin to diverge into a thousand post-human species.

Continue reading “Post-Human Species” »