Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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The film features Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence; Japanese roboticist, Hiroshi Ishiguro; Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human; Ben Goertzel, founder of Singularity.net; and Deepak Chopra, who is creating his own A.I. mind twin.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s the first trailer for Hot Docs opener Artificial Immortality by filmmaker Ann Shin.

The documentary explores the latest advancements in AI, robotics and biotech with visionaries who argue for a new age of post-biological life. It poses the questions: if you were able to create an immortal version of yourself, would you?; and will AI be the best, or the last thing we ever do as a species?

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Antisense oligonucleotide therapy works by altering the RNA, the messenger that carries instructions from your DNA to crank out proteins.

An article in Nature Reviews Neurology describes antisense oligonucleotides as “short, synthetic, single-strand” molecules, which can alter RNA to cause protein creation to be reduced, enhanced, or modified.

In the Penn study, the targeted protein was created by the mutated LCA gene.

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Microsoft Corp. is in advanced talks to buy artificial intelligence and speech technology company Nuance Communications Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

An agreement could be announced as soon as this week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The price being discussed could value Nuance at about $56 a share, though the terms could still change, one of the people said.

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Circa 2014 essentially this could make endless computer chips from light.

Princeton researchers have managed to cause light to behave like a crystal within a specialized computer chip, according to a recent paper. This is the first time anyone has accomplished this effect in a lab.

Here’s why it’s so hard: Atoms can easily form solids, liquids, and gasses, because when they come into contact they push and pull on each other. That push and pull forms the underlying structure of all matter. Light particles, or photons, do not typically interact with one another, according to Dr. Andrew Houck, a professor of electrical engineering at Princeton and an author on the study. The trick of this research was forcing them to do just that.

“We build essentially an artificial atom, using lots of atoms acting in concert,” Houck tells Popular Science, “What emerges is a quantum mechanical object that [at about half a millimeter] is visible on the classical scale.”

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MediaTek and Qualcomm may be the dominant players in the 5G smartphone SoC sector, but Chinese phone vendors Oppo and Xiaomi are mounting a challenge by developing their own chips. Shortages plaguing the semidoncutor industry are sending firms scrambling for supply. NOR flash chipmakers say that more of their clients are now willing to strike long-term supply contracts. For backend firms, demand from MCU clients remains robust.

Unisoc, Oppo, Xiaomi gearing up for new 5G mobile chips roll-outs: Oppo and Xiaomi will introduce their in-house-developed sub-6GHz 5G chip solutions between late 2021 and early 2022, joining fabless chipmaker Unisoc in competing against chip vendors such as Qualcomm and MediaTek, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

NOR flash chipmakers see more customers eager for long-term deals: Taiwan-based NOR flash chipmakers have seen more of their clients eager to strike long-term supply agreements, according to industry sources.

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Total semiconductor shipments including shipments of ICs as well as optoelectronics, sensor/actuator and discrete (O-S-D) devices are forecast to rise 13% to a record high of 1.135 trillion units in 2021, according to IC Insights. It would mark the third time that semiconductor units have surpassed one trillion units in a calendar year — the first time being in 2018.

The 13% increase follows a 3% increase in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was wreaking havoc across many segments of the economy, IC Insights indicated. From 1978, when 32.6 billion units were shipped, through 2021, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for semiconductor units is forecast to be 8.6%. The strong CAGR also demonstrates that new market drivers continue to emerge that fuel demand for more semiconductors.

Between 2004 and 2007, semiconductor shipments broke through the 400-, 500-, and 600-billion unit levels before the global financial meltdown led to a steep decline in semiconductor shipments in 2008 and 2009. Unit growth rebounded sharply in 2010 with a 25% increase and surpassed 700 billion devices that year. Another strong increase in 2017 (12% growth) lifted semiconductor unit shipments beyond the 900-billion level before the one-trillion mark was surpassed in 2018, IC Insights said.

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https://youtu.be/AZeWPlVoLko

Permanent magnetic motors circa 2014.

The AZ-PM thruster is the latest in a range of Rolls-Royce propulsion products using its permanent magnet technology. This technology is based on electric drive where the motor is in the form of a ring round the propeller. The moving part of the ring is a rim around the propeller blades which carries a series of strong permanent magnets. The rotor, fitted within a series of magnets, turns within an outer ring which form the stator.

When current is supplied to the motor from the variable frequency power supply the electromagnets are excited in a particular sequence and the resulting magnetic fields interact with the field from the rotor magnets creating a torque that turns the rotor and its propeller blades.

At the centre of the thruster the propeller blades are joined to a hub, which has two functions; to carry the bearings taking propeller thrust and provide radial location of the rotor, and to improve the hydro-dynamic efficiency of the thruster. Loads are transferred to the stator through struts. Both rotor and stator are sealed against water ingress and operate fully submerged.

Rolls-Royce PM technology is flexible, and is currently applied in this integrated propeller drive form to tunnel thrusters (TT-PM) and azimuth thrusters (AZ-PM). Other versions in which the PM rotor is arranged to turn an output shaft provide a high torque, low speed, drive for winches.

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