Lifeboat Foundation

Ray Kurzweil discusses how biotechnology is rapidly and radically changing our lives, which will improve our health and longevity.

Thanks to 21st century science and engineering, by the time we’re ready to visit the asteroid belt to mine minerals… we may not need to.

Scientists have developed new 3D-printed plastic objects that can hook up to Wi-Fi without the aid of any electronics or batteries, meaning household devices could get a lot smarter in the future without the need for any circuitry.

If that’s not blowing your mind just yet, think about this: the tech could be used to make a laundry bottle that orders a refill online as soon as it runs out, or a simple volume slider that connects to your speakers without any cabling or even a power source.

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(Tech Xplore)—Researchers exploring AI systems are making news and familiarizing the public with terms like reinforcement learning and machine learning. Recent headlines are still making some heads turn in surprise. AI software is “learning” how to replicate itself and to build its own AI child.

As such, Google’s AI created its child AI using reinforcement learning, entirely automated.

Meet ‘NASNet.’ Google researchers refer to it as a novel architecture.

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 14, to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data.

The briefing participants are:

But the best science and tech writing goes one step further. With delight and mystery—and sans unnecessary jargon and technical details—this genre can help us better understand some of the world’s most complex and abstract concepts, from gravitational waves (Gravity’s Kiss) to Darwinian evolution (The Evolution of Beauty) to antibiotic resistance (Big Chicken). Each of these remarkable tomes from 2017 does just that, shining a light on the hidden connections and invisible forces that shape the world around us. In doing so, they make our experience of that world that much richer.

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Some residents in Ventura are able to return to their homes, briefly, to sift through the rubble and gather belongings as fire threat continues.

This mysterious rock-comet is the parent body of this week’s Geminid meteor shower. It’ll brush closely past Earth on December 16, just a few nights after the Geminids’ peak. Will 2017 be a fantastic year for the Geminids?