Lifeboat Foundation

We all know that maths is really hard. So hard, in fact, that there’s literally a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to unsolved mathematical problems, despite some of the greatest minds in the world working on them around the clock.

But as Avery Thompson points out at Popular Mechanics, from the outset at least, some of these problems seem surprisingly simple — so simple, in fact, that anyone with some basic maths knowledge can understand them… including us. Unfortunately, it turns out that proving them is a little harder.

Inspired by Thompson’s list, we’ve come up with our own list of deceptively simple maths problems to frustrate (and hopefully inspire) you.

Continue reading “6 Deceptively Simple Maths Problems That No One Can Solve” »

Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem is a famous example. Pierre de Fermat claimed in 1637 – in the margin of a copy of “Arithmetica,” no less – to have solved the Diophantine equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ, but offered no justification. When Wiles proved it over 300 years later, mathematicians immediately took notice. If Wiles had developed a new idea that could solve Fermat, then what else could that idea do? Number theorists raced to understand Wiles’ methods, generalizing them and finding new consequences.

No single method exists that can solve all Diophantine equations. Instead, mathematicians cultivate various techniques, each suited for certain types of Diophantine problems but not others. So mathematicians classify these problems by their features or complexity, much like biologists might classify species by taxonomy.

The physicist sees big things in humanity’s near future.

I loved the Thundercats cartoon as a child, watching cat-like humanoids fighting the forces of evil. Whenever their leader was in trouble, he’d unleash the Sword of Omens to gain “sight beyond sight,” the ability to see events happening at faraway places, or bellow “Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats, Hooo!” to instantaneously summon his allies to his location to join the fight. What kid didn’t want those superpowers?

I also wanted Green Lantern’s ring, Wonder Woman’s bracelets, Captain America’s shield, and, of course, Batman’s batsuit. I never imagined then that 30 years later, as National Superhero Day approaches, I’d be designing components of my own supersuits.

I didn’t really notice this until a few months ago. On that day, my childhood dreams were at once destroyed and fulfilled. Standing in a line, I noticed that everyone was focused on their smartphones’ screens. Suddenly it hit me: I already had Sword of Omens superpowers. With my smartphone, I can see video of faraway events and text my friends to meet up. Billions of people now have what used to be considered superpowers.

Continue reading “Humanity Has Officially Entered the Era of the Exosuit” »

India will become the fourth nation to land on the moon VERY soon.

Today, we want to highlight a new study that shows, for the first time, that established AGEs can be reversed via therapeutic intervention.

What are AGEs?

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are harmful compounds that are created when proteins or fats combine with sugars in the bloodstream in a process known as glycation. AGEs can also be encountered in foods, and foods that have been exposed to high temperatures, such as in grilling or frying, tend to be high in these compounds.

Continue reading “Reversal of Two Advanced Glycation End Products Achieved” »

Robotics specialist German Bionic is to present the first connected robot exoskeleton for use with the industrial internet of things, at the Hannover Messe industrial technology show.

The German Bionic IO cloud platform connects the third generation of the Cray X exoskeleton with all common enterprise solutions and networked manufacturing systems, enabling complete integration into “smart factory” and Industry 4.0 environments.

Besides cloud services such as wireless software updates – over the air – and predictive maintenance, German Bionic IO facilitates the continuous optimization of the intelligent control system through machine learning and lays the data-scientific foundation for the next development stages of bionics.

Continue reading “German Bionic to present its first robot exoskeleton for industrial IoT” »

Yara International, a crop nutrition company, and IBM, have signed an agreement to build the world’s leading digital farming platform, providing holistic digital services and instant agronomic advice.

Yara and IBM Services will jointly innovate and commercialize digital agricultural solutions that will help increase global food production by drawing on the two companies’ complementary capabilities.

Yara’s agronomic knowledge, backed by more than 800 agronomists and a century of experience, and IBM’s digital platforms, services, and expertise in artificial intelligence and data analytics.

Continue reading “Yara and IBM join forces to transform the future of farming” »

Abstract: DeepMind Lab is a first-person 3D game platform designed for research and development of general artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. DeepMind Lab can be used to study how autonomous artificial agents may learn complex tasks in large, partially observed, and visually diverse worlds. DeepMind Lab has a simple and flexible API enabling creative task-designs and novel AI-designs to be explored and quickly iterated upon. It is powered by a fast and widely recognised game engine, and tailored for effective use by the research community.