Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 7652

“‘Aurora will enable us to explore new frontiers in artificial intelligence and machine learning,’ said Narayanan ‘Bobby’ Kasthuri, assistant professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago and researcher at Argonne. ‘This will be the first time scientists have had a machine powerful enough to match the kind of computations the brain can do.’”

Super computer Aurora will help map the human brain at “quintillion—or one billion billion—calculations per second, 50 times quicker than today’s most powerful supercomputers.”

Note: the article discusses implications beyond neuroscience.

Argonne, DOE and Intel announce exascale computer built for next-generation AI and machine learning.

Continue reading “New Argonne supercomputer, built for next-gen AI, will be most powerful in U.S.” | >

Summary: Cortical thickness and regional brain connectivity pay an equally important role in linking brain and behavior.

Source: Penn State

Most people think of the brain as divided into regions that are each responsible for different functions, such as language and fine motor skills. A new study by Penn State researchers suggests that there’s more to the story: The thickness of the brain’s tissue and a brain region’s connectivity may play an equally important role in linking brain and behavior.

Read more | >

Featured Image Source: SpaceX Starlink

SpaceX aims to offer Starlink broadband internet service worldwide. The aerospace company has deployed 540 internet-beaming satellites into low Earth orbit. The entire network will consist of over 12,000 satellites beaming low latency, high-speed internet down to Earth. When SpaceX reaches 1,440 satellites in orbit, it will commence its commercial service. The company will first offer service in northern portions of the United States and Canada. “With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable,” the company’s website states.

Jonathan Hofeller SpaceX Vice-President of Starlink and Commercial Sales, revealed some details of the Starlink internet network during a satellite conference on Thursday. He shared that SpaceX is ready to start its private Starlink Beta testing phase with employees, friends, and family this Summer. [*The public will also have the opportunity during a Public Beta test, sign up for updates at Starlink.com]

Read more | >

As I get ready to launch to Mars in days, take a look at some of the tools I’m taking to help me search for signs of ancient life.

Zoom in, rotate or mouse over a 3D interactive of the Mars 2020 Perseverance science tools.

Read more | >

With the coronavirus raging across the world and the United States, I would to talk about one particular issue that is currently and will wreck havoc on the US: evictions due to the coronavirus and coronavirus-related unemployment.

Update: Turns out the federal government did have an eviction moratorium in the past. However, it ended a few days ago. Luckily, however, many in the government are thinking about extending the moratorium.

Discord Link: https://discord.gg/brYJDEr
Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/TheFuturistTom
Please follow our instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/the_futurist_tom
For business inquires, please contact [email protected]

Read more | >

Discovery by scientists at Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley could help find silicon’s successor in race against Moore’s Law.

In the search for new materials with the potential to outperform silicon, scientists have wanted to take advantage of the unusual electronic properties of 2D devices called oxide heterostructures, which consist of atomically thin layers of materials containing oxygen.

Scientists have long known that oxide materials, on their own, are typically insulating – which means that they are not electrically conductive. When two oxide materials are layered together to form a heterostructure, new electronic properties such as superconductivity – the state in which a material can conduct electricity without resistance, typically at hundreds of degrees below freezing – and magnetism somehow form at their interface, which is the juncture where two materials meet. But very little is known about how to control these electronic states because few techniques can probe below the interface.

Read more | >

Spectroscopy is the use of light to analyze physical objects and biological samples. Different kinds of light can provide different kinds of information. Vacuum ultraviolet light is useful as it can aid people in a broad range of research fields, but generation of that light has been difficult and expensive. Researchers created a new device to efficiently generate this special kind of light using an ultrathin film with nanoscale perforations.

The wavelengths of light you see with your eyes constitute a mere fraction of the possible wavelengths of light that exist. There’s infrared light which you can feel in the form of heat, or see if you happen to be a snake, that has a longer wavelength than visible light. At the opposite end is ultraviolet (UV) light which you can use to produce vitamin D in your skin, or see if you happen to be a bee. These and other forms of light have many uses in science.

Within the UV range is a subset of wavelengths known as vacuum ultraviolet light (VUV), so called because they are easily absorbed by air but can pass through a vacuum. Some VUV wavelengths in the region of around 120–200 nanometers (nm) are of particular use to scientists and medical researchers as they can be used for chemical and physical analyses of different materials and even biological samples.

Read more | >