Lifeboat Foundation

Some four years after it was originally due to be completed, and over a decade after first being commissioned, Vincent Callebaut’s twisting Tao Zhu Yin Yuan (aka Agora Garden Tower) in Taipei, Taiwan, is finally nearing completion – and it’s looking like the wait has been worth it. The high-rise residential project has an ambitious DNA-inspired form incorporating thousands of plants on its facade and sustainability features including solar power, rainwater collection, and more.

Rising to a height of 93.2 m (305 ft), Tao Zhu Yin Yuan consists of 21 floors (plus four basement levels), and is defined by an unusual twisting design inspired by the DNA double helix. Twenty of the floors twist 4.5 degrees per floor as the building rises, for a total of 90 degrees from bottom to top.

Though it’s not looking quite as green as was suggested in early renders, this is understandable as the 23000 trees, shrubs and plants that are planted throughout the ground floor garden, balconies and terraces, still have some time to grow. SWA is leading landscaping duties and Vincent Callebaut Architectures (VCA) reckons that all those plants will remove significant amounts of CO₂ from the local atmosphere each year.

Beyond AI-powered weapons, the panel’s lengthy report recommended use of AI by intelligence agencies to streamline data gathering and review; $32 billion in annual federal funding for AI research; and new bodies including a digital corps modeled after the army’s Medical Corps and a technology competitiveness council chaired by the U.S. vice president.

The United States should not agree to ban the use or development of autonomous weapons powered by artificial intelligence (AI) software, a government-appointed panel said in a draft report for Congress.

I realize this will step on a lot of toes, but, its time to accept that the AI will be what solves it.

Targeting aging may extend the average life expectancy more substantially than prevention or treatment of individual diseases.

Behold, Starships SN9 and SN10.

SpaceX has two Starship vehicles, SN9 and SN10, on the test pad at the same time at its South Texas facility, a first for the company.

The domain name perl.com was stolen this week and is now points to an IP address associated with malware campaigns.

“In a paper recently published the Journal of Cleaner Production, the researchers detail how they grew wood-like plant tissue from cells extracted from the leaves of a zinnia plant, without soil or sunlight. “The plant cells are similar to stem cells,” says Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a principal scientist in MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and co-author of the paper. “They have the potential to be many things.” With the ability to “tune” the plant cells into whatever shape they decide, Ashley Beckwith, mechanical engineering PhD student and the paper’s lead author, says they could use this process to grow more efficient materials. “Trees grow in tall cylindrical poles, and we rarely use tall cylindrical poles in industrial applications,” she says. “So you end up shaving off a bunch of material that you spent 20 years growing and that ends up being a waste product.” Instead, their idea is to grow structures that are more practical, like rectangular boards or eventually an entire table that doesn’t need to be assembled, which would reduce waste and potentially let land currently used for logging instead be preserved as forest.”

Why cut down trees when you can grow wood in the exact shape you need?

The FDA had promised to render a decision on the approval of aducanumab by March 7. The process is now being extended to June 7.

The unique design of the plasma thruster could enable spacecraft to travel to distant planets much faster than they can now.