Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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HELSINKI — China is preparing to launch new modules to its Tiangong space station to meet growing demands for science and potentially boost international cooperation.

The Long March 5B, currently China’s most powerful rocket, is slated to launch new Tiangong modules, according to an official with China’s state-owned main space contractor.

“According to the plan, the Long March 5B rocket will also carry out the future launches of additional modules for the crewed space station,” Wang Jue from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) told China Central Television (CCTV) April 30.

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Roboticists, from what I’ve seen, are normally a patient bunch. The first Roomba launched more than a decade after its conception, and it took more than 50 years to go from the first robotic arm ever to the millionth in production. Venture capitalists, on the other hand, are not known for such patience.

Perhaps that’s why Bank of America’s new prediction of widespread humanoid adoption was met with enthusiasm by investors but enormous skepticism by roboticists. Aaron Prather, a director at the robotics standards organization ASTM, said on Thursday that the projections were “wildly off-base.”

As we’ve covered before, humanoid hype is a cycle: One slick video raises the expectations of investors, which then incentivizes competitors to make even slicker videos. This makes it quite hard for anyone—a tech journalist, say—to peel back the curtain and find out how much impact humanoids are poised to have on the workforce. But I’ll do my darndest.

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Thin film solar cells such as CdTe and CIGSe have gained significant attention due to their low production cost and excellent power conversion efficiencies (PCE). Nevertheless, toxicity and scarcity of constituent elements restrict their widespread usage.

Recently, Cu2SrSnS4 semiconductor has emerged as a potential substitute due to its remarkable absorber characteristics, including non-toxicity, Earth abundance, tunable bandgap, etc. But still, it’s in the emerging stage with a low PCE of 0.6%, revealing that it requires remarkable enhancement to compete with traditional solar cells.

The large open circuit voltage (VOC) loss constricts its performance, which primarily originates from improper band alignment with the transport layers. Discovering the ideal device configuration is the best solution to enhance its PCE.

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Traditionally, bacterial diseases are diagnosed by the tedious isolation of pathogens and the creation of bacterial cultures. Waiting times of several days are the rule here. Only then can targeted treatment of the disease begin.

Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Imperial College London have developed a new method to identify bacteria with unprecedented speed. This means that the waiting time can be reduced from several days to just a few minutes.

The work is published in the journal Nature Communications.

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Northwestern University Trustee Kimberly K. Querrey (’22, ’23 P) has made a $10 million gift to create and enhance the Querrey Simpson Institute for Regenerative Engineering at Northwestern University (QSI RENU), bringing her total giving to the institute to $35 million. The new institute will advance the development of medical tools that empower the human body to heal, focusing on the regeneration or reconstruction of various tissues and organs, such as the eyes, cartilage, spinal cord, heart, muscle, bone and skin.

The Querrey Simpson Institute for Regenerative Engineering at Northwestern University will advance research to regenerate and reconstruct tissues and organs.

Guillermo Ameer, director of the new Querrey Simpson Institute for Regenerative Engineering at Northwestern University, showcases his bioresorbable bandage, which delivers electrotherapy to wounds, accelerating diabetic ulcer healing and dissolving safely after use. QSI RENU combines engineering, biology, medicine and data science to develop technologies for tissue and organ function.

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Researchers at Northwestern University and Israel’s Tel Aviv University have overcome a major barrier to achieving a low-cost solution for advanced robotic touch. The authors argue that the problem that has been lurking in the margins of many papers about touch sensors lies in the robotic skin itself.

In the study, inexpensive silicon rubber composites used to make skin were observed to host an insulating layer on the top and bottom surfaces, which prevented direct electrical contact between the sensing polymer and the monitoring surface electrodes, making accurate and repeatable measurements virtually impossible. With the error eliminated, cheap robotic skins could allow robots to mimic human touch, allowing them to sense an object’s curves and edges, necessary to properly grasp it.

Researchers provide accurate, more reliable method to measure touch reception.

Researchers at Northwestern University and Israel’s Tel Aviv University have discovered a problem with robotic skin, that, once eliminated, could allow robots to better mimic human touch.

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Today, we’re launching Anthropic’s AI for Science program – a new initiative designed to accelerate scientific research and discovery through access to our API. This program will provide free API credits to support researchers working on high-impact scientific projects, with a particular focus on biology and life sciences applications.

Why AI for Science? At Anthropic, we believe that AI has the potential to significantly accelerate scientific progress. Advanced AI reasoning and language capabilities can help researchers analyze complex scientific data, generate hypotheses, design experiments, and communicate findings more effectively. By reducing the time and resources needed for scientific discovery, we can help address some of humanity’s most pressing challenges.

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that’s working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

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