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Bill and Melinda Gates say “the future will surprise the pessimists.”


They discovered childhood mortality is a symptom of other issues

Children’s deaths are often a result of lack of birth control, gender inequality, and poor women’s health. Melinda wrote, “Virtually all advances in society—nutrition, education, access to contraceptives, gender equity, economic growth—show up as gains in the childhood mortality chart, and every gain in this chart shows up in gains for society.”

Bill added, “When women in developing countries space their births by at least three years, their babies are almost twice as likely to reach their first birthday. Over time, the ability of women to use contraceptives and space their pregnancies will become one of the largest contributors in cutting childhood deaths.” In fact, the Gates Foundation reports “no country in the last 50 years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.”

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For over a year Elina Berglund nuclear physicist has been fighting authorities and malicious headlines. Now her app will be the first in the world to be approved as a contraceptive.

“It feels incredibly exciting that there is now an approved alternative to conventional pregnancy prevention methods, and that it’s possible to replace medication with technology,” says a more than satisfied Elina Berglund, who founded Natural Cycles together with her husband Raoul Scherwizl.

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What shall we do once machines become conscious? Do we need to grant them rights?

Check out Wisecrack and their video: https://goo.gl/oaUbAF

‘The Philosophy of Westworld’: https://goo.gl/8Tn2m5

Support us on Patreon so we can make more videos (and get cool stuff in return): https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt?ty=h

NASA’s Fermi Telescope has looked at the gamma-ray emission of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, and discovered the largest fraction of this powerful radiation comes from the core of the galaxy, very much like in our own Milky Way. The international team of researchers has considered this signature as potential indirect evidence of dark matter.

Some theoretical models predict gamma-ray emissions when dark matter particles interact with each other. Dark matter doesn’t like interacting at all, it doesn’t form clumps or clouds, so these gamma-ray signals might only happen in dense regions, like at the core of galaxies.

“We expect dark matter to accumulate in the innermost regions of the Milky Way and other galaxies, which is why finding such a compact signal is very exciting,” said lead scientist Pierrick Martin, an astrophysicist at the National Center for Scientific Research and the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse, France, in a statement. “M31 will be a key to understanding what this means for both Andromeda and the Milky Way.”

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The Los Angeles Times covered my libertarian campaign for CA governor. I do still support a libertarian version of a basic income due to coming automation—and the fact it will swallow welfare and other government programs, essentially reducing the size of government while distributing money to all residents.


Essential Politics: Lawmaker says California needs an estate tax if the federal version is scrapped, Sanders thanks supporters in Los Angeles

This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. Here’s what we’re watching right now:

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Quantum biomimetics consists of reproducing in quantum systems certain properties exclusive to living organisms. Researchers at University of the Basque Country have imitated natural selection, learning and memory in a new study. The mechanisms developed could give quantum computation a boost and facilitate the learning process in machines.

Unai Alvarez-Rodriguez is a researcher in the Quantum Technologies for Information Science (QUTIS) research group attached to the UPV/EHU’s Department of Physical Chemistry, and an expert in information technologies. Quantum information technology uses quantum phenomena to encode computational tasks. Unlike classical computation, quantum computation “has the advantage of not being limited to producing registers in values of zero and one,” he said. Qubits, the equivalent of bits in classical computation, can take values of zero, one or both at the same time, a phenomenon known as superposition, which “gives quantum systems the possibility of performing much more complex operations, establishing a computational parallel on a quantum level, and offering better results than classical computation systems,” he added.

The research group to which Alvarez-Rodriguez belongs decided to focus on imitating biological processes. “We thought it would be interesting to create systems capable of emulating certain properties exclusive of living entities. In other words, we were seeking to design protocols whose dynamics were analogous to these properties.” The processes they chose to imitate by means of quantum simulators were natural selection, memory and intelligence. This led them to develop the concept of quantum biomimetics.

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