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Feb 17, 2018

Kepler scientists discover almost 100 new exoplanets

Posted by in category: space travel

Based on data from NASA’s K2 mission, an international team of scientists has confirmed nearly 100 new exoplanets. This brings the total number of new exoplanets found with the K2 mission up to almost 300.

“We started out analyzing 275 candidates, of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets. In turn, 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries,” said U.S. doctoral student Andrew Mayo at the National Space Institute (DTU Space) at the Technical University of Denmark. “This research has been underway since the first K2 data release in 2014.” Mayo is the main author of the work being presented in the Astronomical Journal.

The research was conducted partly as a senior project during his undergraduate studies at Harvard College. It also involved a team of international colleagues from institutions such as NASA, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Tokyo. The Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 to hunt for exoplanets in a single patch of sky, but in 2013, a mechanical failure crippled the telescope. However, astronomers and engineers devised a way to repurpose and save the space telescope by changing its field of view periodically. This solution paved the way for the follow-up K2 , which is still ongoing as the spacecraft searches for exoplanet transits.

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Feb 17, 2018

Lab-Grown Meat Is Coming, Whether You Like It or Not

Posted by in categories: engineering, food

Scientists have been culturing meat in labs for years, but Just and other startups like Finless Foods, which is growing fish meat, have been feverishly pursuing this so-called “clean meat” of late. Just is chasing a cultured chorizo and a cultured nugget in addition to the foie gras. And Tetrick claims his startup has finally made the process cost-effective enough to take to market: At the end of this year, he says, Just will officially introduce an as yet undisclosed lab-grown meat, the first time the stuff will hit shelves.

The challenges of engineering meat in the lab is one thing, but convincing consumers to turn away from the storied kill-it-and-grill-it method of eating is another. And while it’s easy to imagine how lab-grown meat would be better for the planet, there’s actually little data to back that up.

Whether or not Just makes it to market this year, and whether or not their meat tastes and smells and feels like meat, the era of clean meat is approaching. (Just declined to let us taste their food, saying it wasn’t ready for public consumption.) Soon enough, burgers will grow not just in fields, but in vats. Farther down the line, your T-bones may not come from a cow, at least not in the traditional sense. If the sound of that bothers you, know that you’re not alone.

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Feb 17, 2018

D.C. has given Elon Musk a permit to do a little digging for the Hyperloop

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, transportation

The man who brought the world Teslas can start excavating along the city’s New York Avenue, an early step in his plans to develop a new mode of transportation.

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Feb 17, 2018

Bioquark Inc. — Aging GreatFULLy Show — Ira S. Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, biotech/medical, business, cosmology, cryonics, DNA, futurism, genetics, health

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ctr-network/aging-greatfull…e/53449222

Feb 16, 2018

AR Eye Implant

Posted by in category: augmented reality

AR and human integration is no longer a possibility — it’s a REALITY.

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Feb 16, 2018

Researchers create first superatomic 2-D semiconductor

Posted by in categories: materials, particle physics

(Left) Superatomic structure and (right) exfoliated 15-nm-thick flakes of the material Re6Se8Cl2. Credit: Zhong et al. ©2018 American Chemical Society Atoms are the basic building blocks of all matter—at least, that is the conventional picture. In a new study, researchers have fabricated the first superatomic 2-D semiconductor, a material whose basic units aren’t atoms but superatoms—atomic clusters that exhibit some of the properties of one or more individual atoms. The researchers expect that the new material is just the first member of what will become a new family of 2-D semiconductors…

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Feb 16, 2018

New CRISPR-Cas9 tool edits both RNA and DNA precisely

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A tool that has already revolutionized disease research may soon get even better, thanks to an accidental discovery in the bacteria that cause many of the worst cases of meningitis.

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Feb 16, 2018

Chinese farmers are using AI to help rear the world’s biggest pig population

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

How do you keep track of 700 million pigs? AI can help.

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Feb 16, 2018

Authorities deactivate transit pass implanted in biohacker’s hand

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, cyborgs, law

Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow couldn’t just toss away his New South Wales transit pass even after he found out that it got deactivated while he was on a trip to the USee, Meow-Meow (yes, that is his legal name) cut the chip out of the travel card, encased it in biocompatible plastic and had it implanted under the skin on his left hand. The biohacker now plans to file a lawsuit against New South Wales’ transport authorities, not just to fight the decision, but also to help create laws around body-hacking tech. In addition to the transit pass chip, Meow-Meow has two other implanted elect…

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Feb 16, 2018

First glimpse of how genes may cause mental health problems

Posted by in categories: genetics, health, neuroscience

Geneticists are starting to unpick what causes psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and even some autism-like developmental conditions.

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