Lifeboat Foundation

Toyota announced today that it will invest $1.3 billion in the development of future electric vehicles at its flagship Kentucky facility.

The Japanese automaker said it would bring an all-new, three-row battery electric SUV to the U.S. market thanks to the investment. Toyota has now committed nearly $10 billion in investments to the Kentucky plant, aiming to build high-quality vehicles and offer job stability to its employees at the factory.

The investment is also set to support the addition of a battery pack assembly line to the Kentucky plant. The batteries used in the packs assembled in Kentucky will come from Toyota’s Battery Manufacturing Plant in North Carolina.

The UK’s best-selling car is going electric. Ford said it will reveal the all-electric Puma Gen-E later this year as it expands its European EV lineup.

After unveiling the new Puma on Wednesday, Ford said that the all-electric Gen-E model will be revealed later this year.

Ford announced last October that it would be ending production of its once-best-selling Fiesta model to focus on its next-gen EVs. The American automaker already revealed the electric version of its best-selling SUV, the Explorer, last March.

“The way we teach critical thinking will change with AI,” said Dr. Stephen Aguilar. “Students will need to judge when, how and for what purpose they will use generative AI. Their ethical perspectives will drive those decisions.”

Can AI be integrated into the classroom? This is what a recent study titled “AI in K-12 Classrooms: Ethical Considerations and Lessons Learned” hopes to address and is one of three studies published in the “Critical Thinking and Ethics in the Age of Generative AI in Education” report by the USC Center for Generative AI and Society. The purpose of the study is to examine the ethics behind how teachers should use AI in the classroom and holds the potential for academics, researchers, and institutional leaders to better understand the implications of AI for academic purposes.

“The way we teach critical thinking will change with AI,” said Dr. Stephen Aguilar, who is the associate director for the USC Center for Generative AI and Society and one of the authors of the study. “Students will need to judge when, how and for what purpose they will use generative AI. Their ethical perspectives will drive those decisions.”

Continue reading “Ethics and AI in Education: Self-Efficacy, Anxiety, and Ethical Judgments” »

New LISA satellite trio will be able to detect the forgotten ‘middle children’ of the black hole family.

“We’d witness advances like mind-uploading,” B.T. said, and described the process by which the knowledge, analytic skills, intelligence, and personality of a person could be uploaded to a computer chip. “Once uploaded, that chip could be fused with a quantum computer that couples biological with artificial intelligence. If you did this, you’d create a human mind that has a level of computational, predictive, analytic, and psychic skill incomprehensibly higher than any existing human mind. You’d have the mind of God. That online intelligence could then create real effects in the physical world. God’s mind is one thing, but what makes God God is that He cometh to earth —”

When B.T. said earth, he made a sweeping gesture, like a faux preacher, and in his excitement, he knocked over Lily’s glass of wine. A waiter promptly appeared with a handful of napkins, sopping up the mess. B.T. waited for the waiter to leave.

“Don’t give me that look.”

In just four years, the Tesla Model Y became the uncontested best-selling car in the world!

In a twist that’s got the auto world going nuts, the Tesla Model Y has raced past the finish line to become the world’s best-selling car of 2023. This means that for the first time ever, an electric vehicle (EV) has snagged the title of the planet’s favorite ride, leaving traditional gas guzzlers and even hybrid contenders in the dust.

The Model Y, Tesla’s entry-level crossover, didn’t just nudge past the competition; it zoomed ahead with over 1.2 million units finding new homes across the globe last year. This electric crossover outpaced the stalwarts of the industry, the Toyota RAV4 and the Toyota Corolla, which managed to sell 1.07 million and 1.01 million units, respectively. The fact that the Model Y did this just four years after it started rolling off the production lines is indeed remarkable.

Read about the recent stunning image of Jupiter’s moon, Io, obtained by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Dec 30, 2023!

Jupiter’s first Galilean moon, Io, is one of the most fascinating objects in the entire solar system, exhibiting hundreds of volcanoes that send molten lava hundreds of miles into space, some of which come raining back down onto the small moon’s surface. While Io was explored in depth with NASA’s Galileo spacecraft during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Io hasn’t been imaged up close since then. But NASA’s Juno spacecraft recently broke this dry spell when it passed within 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of Io’s surface on December 30, 2023, capturing stunning images of active volcanic plumes and several lava fields.

Image of Jupiter’s moon Io, obtained by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Dec 30, 2023, with its night side being illuminated by reflected sunlight bouncing off Jupiter, also called “Jupitershine.” (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Emma Wälimäki © CC BY)

Continue reading “Exploring Io: Juno’s Closest Flybys in Over 20 Years Unveil Spectacular Views” »

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A protein that has been widely studied owing to its association with neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is also linked to medulloblastoma, a type of central nervous system cancer. Medulloblastoma is one of the most common and aggressive brain tumors in children, arising from undifferentiated cells during early neural development.

A study led by a group of Brazilian scientists has shown in vitro and in vivo that the gene VAPB is linked to cell proliferation in these tumors. An article on the study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The discovery points to a potential marker of severity and, after more research, a future therapeutic target. Medulloblastoma is currently treated with a combination of surgery to remove the tumor and radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy, both of which are aggressive and can cause long-lasting brain damage.