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Jan 13, 2018

God in the machine: my strange journey into transhumanism

Posted by in categories: life extension, transhumanism

After losing her faith, a former evangelical Christian felt adrift in the world. She then found solace in a radical technological philosophy – but its promises of immortality and spiritual transcendence soon seemed unsettlingly familiar by .

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Jan 13, 2018

Meet the robo-MANTIS unveiled for the first time at CES

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space

MotivRobotics, which is also responsible for creating the robotic arms for NASA’s next Mars rover, debuted the robot for the first time at CES in Las Vegas. The mantis is semi-autonomous.

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Jan 12, 2018

Citizen science bags five-planet haul

Posted by in categories: science, space

Astronomy enthusiasts help to confirm the existence of a five-planet system orbiting a far-off star.

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Jan 12, 2018

NASA X-Ray Navigation System Aims to Be a Galactic GPS for Space Exploration

Posted by in category: space travel

The navigation system uses x-ray light emitted from pulsars the same way global positioning systems use atomic clocks, which could eliminate the need for costly ground-based guidance systems.

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Jan 12, 2018

GM Drops the Steering Wheel and Gives Robot Driver Control

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Next year, General Motors Co. will no longer need an engineer in the front seat babysitting the robot brain that controls its self-driving Chevrolet Bolt. The steering wheel and pedals will be gone, giving total control to the machine.

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Jan 12, 2018

Intel, Nervana Shed Light on Deep Learning Chip Architecture

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Almost two years after the acquisition by Intel, the deep learning chip architecture from startup Nervana Systems will finally be moving from its codenamed “Lake Crest” status to an actual product.

In that time, Nvidia, which owns the deep learning training market by a long shot, has had time to firm up its commitment to this expanding (if not overhyped in terms of overall industry dollar figures) market with new deep learning-tuned GPUs and appliances on the horizon as well as software tweaks to make training at scale more robust. In other words, even with solid technology at a reasonable price point, for Intel to bring Nervana to the fore of the training marke t–and push its other products for inference at scale along with that current, it will take a herculean effort–one that Intel seems willing to invest in given its aggressive roadmap for the Nervana-based lineup.

The difference now is that at least we have some insight into how (and by how much) this architecture differs from GPUs–and where it might carve out a performance advantage and more certainly, a power efficiency one.

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Jan 12, 2018

Introduction to Robotics — Stanford University

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Lecture by Professor Oussama Khatib for Introduction to Robotics (CS223A) in the Stanford Computer Science Department.

Lecture 1 | introduction to robotics

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Jan 12, 2018

Brain Cells Share Information Using a Gene that Came From Viruses

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Hundreds of millions of years ago, at a time when back-boned animals were just starting to crawl onto land, one such creature became infected by a virus. It was a retrovirus, capable of smuggling its genes into the DNA of its host. And as sometimes happens, those genes stayed put. They were passed on to the animal’s children and grandchildren. And as these viral genes cascaded through the generations, they changed, transforming from mere stowaways into important parts of their host’s biology.

One such gene is called Arc. It’s active in neurons, and plays a vital role in the brain. A mouse that’s born without Arc can’t learn or form new long-term memories. If it finds some cheese in a maze, it will have completely forgotten the right route the next day. “They can’t seem to respond or adapt to changes in their environment,” says Jason Shepherd from the University of Utah, who has been studying Arc for years. “Arc is really key to transducing the information from those experiences into changes in the brain.”

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Jan 12, 2018

Disruptive Technologies Push Bioterrorism To A Whole New Level

Posted by in category: terrorism

Disruptive technologies not only help true visionaries who want to make the world a better place but also the bad guys ready for bioterrorism. Here is how.

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Jan 12, 2018

Guns, germs and rice: how the winners of China’s top science prizes point to the future

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, government, science

Weapons developers, disease fighters and food engineers were among the biggest winners in China’s top awards for scientists this year, giving a glimpse of the government’s research priorities.


Awards signal the government’s research priorities for the years to come, analyst says.

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