Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists have created the world’s first living, self-healing robots using stem cells from frogs.

Named xenobots after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which they take their stem cells, the machines are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide — small enough to travel inside human bodies. They can walk and swim, survive for weeks without food and work together in groups.

These are “entirely new life-forms,” said the University of Vermont, which conducted the research with Tufts University.

Australian researchers solve challenge that can unlock cheaper, longer lasting batteries and substantially increase EV range.

This robot is a ridiculously fast pizza chef.

A Chinese facial-recognition database with information on thousands of children was stored without protection on the internet, a researcher discovered, raising questions about school surveillance and cybersecurity in China.

The cache was connected to a surveillance system labeled “Safe School Shield” and contained facial-identification and location data, according to Victor Gevers, a researcher at the Dutch nonprofit GDI Foundation, which scans the internet for vulnerabilities and flags them to owners for fixing.

Fungus Among Us

The idea is to ship dormant fungus to a Moon base and, once it arrives, give it water and the right conditions to trigger growth, according to a NASA press release. That would also require a supply of photosynthetic bacteria to provide the fungus with nutrients. Once the fungus grows into the shape of a structure, it would be heat-treated, effectively killing it and turning it into a compact brick.

Continue reading “NASA Wants to Grow a Moon Base Out of Mushrooms” »

Humans might not be so special after all.

Ride-sharing company hopes the vehicle is the future of transportation.

Google’s parent company Alphabet ($GOOG) is now the fourth US company to hit a market cap of $1 trillion. It hit the number just before markets closed on Thursday, ending the day’s trading at $1,451.70 per share, up 0.87 percent.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai took over as CEO of Alphabet in December, after Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin relinquished control of Alphabet. It’s been a bumpy couple of years at the company that included allegations of sexual misconduct by executives and a 20,000-person Google Walkout employee protest.

Alphabet is slated to report fourth-quarter earnings on February 3rd, and Wall Street analysts are expecting it to report revenue of $46.9 billion, a year-over-year uptick of almost 20 percent.

The virus is from the same family as MERS and SARS, which caused deadly international outbreaks.