Lifeboat Foundation

An innovative deep-space concept that relies on a solar gravity lens (SGL) to enable enhanced viewing of exoplanets is under study by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and The Aerospace Corporation.

The SGL would provide 100-billion-fold optical magnification, allowing it to show details as small as 6 miles (10 kilometers) across — similar to being able to spot something the size of New York City on an exoplanet, study team members said.

As detailed in a press statement from The Aerospace Corporation, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, light traveling through space will bend if it passes near sufficiently massive objects. This means that distant light will bend around the periphery of the sun, eventually converging toward a focal region as if it had passed through a lens. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens].

Despite growing excitement around the transformative potential of quantum computing, leaders in many industries are still unfamiliar with the technology that’s likely to prove more disruptive than Artificial Intelligence and blockchain. This ignorance seems particularly acute in industries that deal with physical systems and commodities. In an informal survey of two dozen executives in transportation, logistics, construction and energy, only eight had heard of quantum computing and only two could explain how it works.

In many ways this lack of awareness is understandable. Quantum computing’s value to our digital infrastructure is obvious, but its value to our physical infrastructure is perhaps less evident. Yet, the explosion of power and speed that quantum computers will unleash could indeed have a profound impact on physical systems like our transportation and utility networks. For companies, municipalities and nation states to stay competitive and capture the full benefit of the quantum revolution, leaders must start thinking about how quantum computing can improve our infrastructure.

Unlike classical computers, in which a bit of information can be either a zero or a one, quantum computers are able to take advantage of a third state through a phenomenon known as superposition. Superposition, which is a property of physics at the quantum scale, allows a quantum bit or qubit to be a zero, a one or a zero and a one simultaneously. The result is an astronomical increase in computational capacity over existing transistor-based hardware. Google, for example, has found that its quantum machines can run some algorithms 100 million times faster than conventional processors.

Continue reading “Quantum Computing Can Reshape Our Physical Infrastructure If We Let It” »

And so it begins…

HONG KONG (AP) — A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world’s first genetically edited babies — twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life. If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics. A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes. Many mainstream scientists think it’s too unsafe to try, and some denounced the Chinese report as human experimentation.

Mounting an augmented reality device to a surgeon’s head — pioneering new research promises to save thousands of lives by merging classic techniques with modern technology.

At Pisa’s University, in Italy, researchers of the Vostars project, are working to develop a new kind of surgical visor in a bid to improve accuracy of interventions and reducing surgery times by at least 11%.

“The reality is of course the operating field, the anatomy that is in front of the surgeon; on this reality, we insert a virtual information that is acquired from the radiological images of the same patient. ”explained Vincenzo Ferrari, a biomedical engineer turned project coordinator for Vostars.

Continue reading “Augmented Reality to Change Surgery Techniques” »

Location data beamed from GPS satellites are used by smartphones, car navigation systems, the microchip in your dog’s neck and guided missiles — and all those satellites are controlled by the U.S. Air Force. That makes the Chinese government uncomfortable, so it’s developing an alternative that a U.S. security analyst calls one of the largest space programs the country has undertaken.

The Beidou Navigation System will be accessible worldwide by 2020.

His AI-based tool hopes to improve survival rates that are extremely low.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyvEdLCwWdc

America and Europe’s dairy industries cry over spilt milk.

The gap between the life expectancy of the richest and poorest sectors of society in England is increasing, according to new research from Imperial College London.

The research, published in the journal Lancet Public Health, also reveals that the life expectancy of England’s poorest women has fallen since 2011, in what researchers say is a “deeply worrying” trend.

The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, analysed Office for National Statistics data on all deaths recorded in England between 2001 and 2016—7.65 million deaths in total.

Continue reading “Poorest dying nearly 10 years younger than the rich in ‘deeply worrying’ trend for UK” »