Lifeboat Foundation

The era of telecommunications systems designed solely by humans is coming to an end. From here on, artificial intelligence will play a pivotal role in the design and operation of these systems. The reason is simple: rapidly escalating complexity.

Each new generation of communications system strives to improve coverage areas, bit rates, number of users, and power consumption. But at the same time, the engineering challenges grow more difficult. To keep innovating, engineers have to navigate an increasingly tangled web of technological trade-offs made during previous generations.

In telecommunications, a major source of complexity comes from what we’ll call impairments. Impairments include anything that deteriorates or otherwise interferes with a communications system’s ability to deliver information from point A to point B. Radio hardware itself, for example, impairs signals when it sends or receives them by adding noise. The paths, or channels, that signals travel over to reach their destinations also impair signals. This is true for a wired channel, where a nearby electrical line can cause nasty interference. It’s equally true for wireless channels, where, for example, signals bouncing off and around buildings in an urban area create a noisy, distortive environment.

Glucose metabolism plays a key role in the cytokine storm seen in influenza, and the link could have potential implications for novel coronavirus infections.

Data transmission that works by means of magnetic waves instead of electric currents: For many scientists, this is the basis of future technologies that will make transmission faster and individual components smaller and more energy-efficient. Magnons, the particles of magnetism, serve as moving information carriers. Almost 15 years ago, researchers at the University of Münster (Germany) succeeded for the first time in achieving a novel quantum state of magnons at room temperature—a Bose-Einstein condensate of magnetic particles, also known as a ‘superatome,’ i.e. an extreme state of matter that usually occurs only at very low temperatures.

Breakthrough could lead to better atomic clocks and atom lasers.

Circa 2009

Light stored for over a second in an ultracold cloud of sodium atoms.

In a paper, Google researchers reveal that they’ve developed an AI framework that can produce chip designs in less than six hours.

The Pentagon’s cutting edge science department is working to create a therapeutic “shield” that could be mass produced to provide temporary protection for people from diseases like the coronavirus, boosting their immunity until an actual vaccine is developed. The result could also help slow the viruses’ advance, buying time for hard-pressed hospitals and clinics worldwide.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has funded efforts to create such therapies from studying COVID-19 samples from individuals who have already recovered from the virus. Scientists working with the organization’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (PPP) are sequencing the B cells of one individual who recovered from COVID-19. B cells create antibodies, proteins created by the human immune system to fight a particular invading microorganism.

BEIJING (Reuters) — China’s space agency on Friday unveiled the name of its first Mars exploration mission, coinciding with China’s annual Space Day and the 50th anniversary of the launch of its first satellite.

Jessica Meir said she’s not used to isolation on Earth.