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Aug 2, 2019

5 Animals & 1 Superbug That Can Freeze, Thaw & Live

Posted by in category: futurism

As an Earth Touch crew leaves sunny South Africa behind to do some serious chilling out in Antarctica (check out their journey to the bottom of the world!), we’ve been thinking about some of the extreme adaptations necessary for survival when temperatures plummet below zero. From powerful antifreeze to crazy cryogenics and dehydration verging on death, these animals (and one amazing bacterium) have evolved some impressive tactics for sub-zero survival.

2013 02 21 Freeze Thaw Live 01

Image credit: Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, Flickr.

Aug 2, 2019

A 3D map of stars reveals the Milky Way’s warped shape

Posted by in categories: computing, space travel

Like a misshapen potato chip, our home galaxy is warped. A new 3D map brings the contorted structure of the Milky Way’s disk into better view, thanks to measurements of special stars called Cepheids, scientists report in the Aug. 2 Science.

Making 3D measurements of the galaxy requires estimating how far away stars are from Earth, typically a matter of guesswork. But unlike other stars, Cepheids vary in brightness over time in a particular way that can be used to determine a precise distance to each star.

Continue reading “A 3D map of stars reveals the Milky Way’s warped shape” »

Aug 2, 2019

An Interview With Dr. Daniel Ives of Shift Bioscience

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, life extension

Shift Bioscience is a company aiming to solve the problem of mitochondrial dysfunction, one of the hallmarks of aging, by repairing the aging mitochondria in our cells so that they work as if they were younger.

Mitochondrial dysfunction is at the heart of aging

The mitochondria are often called the powerhouses of cells, and they convert the food we eat into usable energy in the form of a chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP supplies energy for many cellular processes, such as muscle contraction, nerve impulse propagation, and protein synthesis. ATP is found in all forms of life and is often referred to as the “molecular unit of currency” of intracellular energy transfer.

Aug 2, 2019

Scientists Built a Ball of Plasma They Call a “Mini-Sun”

Posted by in category: futurism

It’s letting them study the Sun in a more “hands-on” way.

Aug 2, 2019

Pentagon pauses $10 billion cloud contract over Amazon concerns

Posted by in categories: computing, government, military

The Pentagon is hitting pause on awarding its $10 billion cloud computing contract until the Defense Department examines whether the process was rigged in favor of Amazon, according to Business Insider.

“Keeping his promise to Members of Congress and the American public, Secretary Esper is looking at the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program,” a Pentagon spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “No decision will be made on the program until he has completed his examination.”

The contract was supposed to be awarded sometime this month.

Aug 2, 2019

NASA –Faster-than-Speed-of-Light Space Travel? “Will ‘Warp Bubbles’ Enable Dreams of Interstellar Voyages?”

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, space travel

A number of NASA scientists are currently researching the feasibility of warp drive (and EMdrive and a number of other modes of faster than light travel); however, most scientists think that such forms of space travel simply aren’t viable, thanks to the fundamental physics of our universe.

“Routine travel among the stars is impossible without new discoveries regarding the fabric of space and time, or capability to manipulate it for our needs,” says Neil deGrasse Tyson, the “Cosmos famous” astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, said “By my read, the idea of a functioning warp drive remains far-fetched, but the real take-away is that people are thinking about it — reminding us all that the urge to explore continues to run deep in our species.”

There have been hints the past few years that NASA may be on the path to discovering warp bubbles that could make the local universe accessible for human exploration. NASA scientists may be close announcing they may have broken the speed of light. According to state-of-the art theory, a warp drive could cut the travel time between stars from tens of thousands of years to weeks or months.

Aug 2, 2019

Half Rabbit Half Chicken Chimera. Another Advance Is The Existence

Posted by in category: futurism

FINALLY!!!


Half rabbit half chicken chimera 32%: when rabbit howls truddi chase jove publications %: the piano teacher sophie elliot chimera %: the half life of stars louise wener hodder.

Aug 2, 2019

Mass Surveillance: 1 in 2 Americans Are Already In A Government Facial Recognition Database

Posted by in categories: government, robotics/AI, surveillance, transportation

As well as Gait Recognition. (Go ahead and wear a disguise.)


The mass surveillance of innocent Americans continues as George Orwell’s 1984 becomes more of a reality with each passing day. “All told, we are barreling toward a future where every ritual of public life carries implicit consent to be surveilled,” writes Sidney Fussell for The Atlantic.

A new report from Georgetown Law‘s Center on Privacy & Technology (CPT) suggests that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be using the rampant problem of illegal immigration as a type of cover to track and spy on Americans in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. Three years ago, the center revealed that nearly half of all U.S. adults are already in the FBI’s facial recognition database, which is largely sourced from DMV photos.

Continue reading “Mass Surveillance: 1 in 2 Americans Are Already In A Government Facial Recognition Database” »

Aug 2, 2019

The next step in AI? Mimicking a baby’s brain

Posted by in categories: biological, nanotechnology, robotics/AI

The phrase “positive reinforcement,” is something you hear more often in an article about child rearing than one about artificial intelligence. But according to Alice Parker, Dean’s Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a little positive reinforcement is just what our AI machines need. Parker has been building electronic circuits for over a decade to reverse-engineer the human brain to better understand how it works and ultimately build artificial systems that mimic it. Her most recent paper, co-authored with Ph.D. student Kun Yue and colleagues from UC Riverside, was just published in the journal Science Advances and takes an important step towards that ultimate goal.

The AI we rely on and read about today is modeled on traditional computers; it sees the world through the lens of binary zeros and ones. This is fine for making complex calculations but, according to Parker and Yue, we’re quickly approaching the limits of the size and complexity of problems we can solve with the platforms our AI exists on. “Since the initial deep learning revolution, the goals and progress of deep-learning based AI as we know it has been very slow,” Yue says. To reach its full potential, AI can’t simply think better—it must react and learn on its own to events in . And for that to happen, a massive shift in how we build AI in the first place must be conceived.

To address this problem, Parker and her colleagues are looking to the most accomplished learning system nature has ever created: the . This is where comes into play. Brains, unlike computers, are analog learners and biological memory has persistence. Analog signals can have multiple states (much like humans). While a binary AI built with similar types of nanotechnologies to achieve long-lasting memory might be able to understand something as good or bad, an analog brain can understand more deeply that a situation might be “very good,” “just okay,” “bad” or “very bad.” This field is called and it may just represent the future of artificial intelligence.

Aug 2, 2019

Using a diverse microbiome, scientists look to create a better lab mouse

Posted by in category: genetics

In a new paper, researchers describe their new model that is genetically a lab mouse, but has the microbiome of a wild mouse.