Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at Northern Illinois University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, are reporting today (Feb. 19) in the journal Nature on a potential breakthrough in the development of hybrid perovskite solar cells.

Considered rising stars in the field of solar energy, perovskite solar cells convert light into electricity. They’re potentially cheaper and simpler to produce than traditional silicon-based solar cells and, on a small scale in laboratory settings at least, have demonstrated comparable efficiency levels. But key challenges remain before they can become a competitive commercial technology.

One major challenge is the use of lead. Most top-performing hybrid perovskite solar cells contain water-dissolvable lead, raising concerns over potential leakage from damaged cells.

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Engineers from Johns Hopkins have looked to how snakes move around to inform the design of a nimble new robot. It is hoped that the development could lead to search and rescue bots able to tackle all kinds of obstacles with ease.

“We look to these creepy creatures for movement inspiration because they’re already so adept at stably scaling obstacles in their day-to-day lives,” said senior author on the study, Chen Li. “Hopefully our robot can learn how to bob and weave across surfaces just like snakes.”

Observing how a variable kingsnake climbed up steps of varying height and having different surfaces, the researchers noted that the snake combined lateral undulation with cantilevering. When faced with a step, the reptile seemed to partition its body into three – the front and rear both moved back and forth while the middle section remained stiff.

Researchers at Keio University and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan have recently introduced a new design for a terahertz wave radar based on a technique known as leaky-wave coherence tomography. Their paper, published in Nature Electronics, could help to solve some of the limitations of existing wave radar.

The use of radar, particularly millimeter-wave radar, has increased significantly over the past few years, particularly in the development of smart and self-driving vehicles. The distance and angular resolutions of radar are typically limited by their bandwidth and wavelength, respectively.

Terahertz waves, which have higher frequencies and shorter wavelengths than millimeter waves, allow for the development of radar systems with a smaller footprint and higher resolution. As wavelengths become shorter, however, the attenuation resulting from wave diffraction rapidly increases.

By definition, posthumanism (I choose to call it ‘cyberhumanism’) is to replace transhumanism at the center stage circa 2035. By then, mind uploading could become a reality with gradual neuronal replacement, rapid advancements in Strong AI, massively parallel computing, and nanotechnology allowing us to directly connect our brains to the Cloud-based infrastructure of the Global Brain. Via interaction with our AI assistants, the GB will know us better than we know ourselves in all respects, so mind-transfer, or rather “mind migration,” for billions of enhanced humans would be seamless, sometime by mid-century.

I hear this mantra over and over again — we don’t know what consciousness is. Clearly, there’s no consensus here but in the context of topic discussed, I would summarize my views, as follows: Consciousness is non-local, quantum computational by nature. There’s only one Universal Consciousness. We individualize our conscious awareness through the filter of our nervous system, our “local” mind, our very inner subjectivity, but consciousness itself, the self in a big sense, our “core” self is universal, and knowing it through experience has been called enlightenment, illumination, awakening, or transcendence, through the ages.

Any container with a sufficiently integrated network of information patterns, with a certain optimal complexity, especially complex dynamical systems with biological or artificial brains (say, the coming AGIs) could be filled with consciousness at large in order to host an individual “reality cell,” “unit,” or a “node” of consciousness. This kind of individuated unit of consciousness is always endowed with free will within the constraints of the applicable set of rules (“physical laws”), influenced by the larger consciousness system dynamics. Isn’t too naïve to presume that Universal Consciousness would instantiate phenomenality only in the form of “bio”-logical avatars?

A bitter blast of Arctic air that brought dangerous wind chills across the Midwest last weekend created erupting “ice volcanoes” on a Lake Michigan beachfront.

The National Weather Service in Grand Rapids said the sight was captured Sunday at Oval Beach in Saugatuck, Mich.

“You never know what you’ll find at the lake until you go out there,” the NWS tweeted. “Today it was volcanoes.”

They found it buried in the muddy shores of the Potomac River more than three decades ago: a strange “sediment organism” that could do things nobody had ever seen before in bacteria.

This unusual microbe, belonging to the Geobacter genus, was first noted for its ability to produce magnetite in the absence of oxygen, but with time scientists found it could make other things too, like bacterial nanowires that conduct electricity.

For years, researchers have been trying to figure out ways to usefully exploit that natural gift, and they might have just hit pay-dirt with a device they’re calling the Air-gen. According to the team, their device can create electricity out of… well, almost nothing.

And the revolution has already begun.

Today’s genetic moment is not the stuff of science fiction. It’s not Jules Verne’s fanciful 1865 prediction of a moon landing a century before it occurred. It’s more equivalent to President Kennedy’s 1962 announcement that America would send men to the moon within a decade. All of the science was in place when Kennedy gave his Houston speech. The realization was inevitable; only the timing was at issue. Neil Armstrong climbed down the Apollo 11 ladder seven years later.

Continue reading “Homo Sapiens 2.0? We need a species-wide conversation about the future of human genetic enhancement” »

Not quite green energy, but a step in the right direction.