Lifeboat Foundation

(A computer simulation of a black hole. NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI))

In case you haven’t heard, there is a very, very big problem with the universe: About 80% of all of the stuff inside it is missing.

Astronomers call this material “dark matter.” They know it’s out there because its huge mass tugs on and shapes galaxies, but no one has ever detected the material itself. Aside from exerting a gravitational pull, dark matter doesn’t seem to interact with stars, planets, dust, atoms, subatomic particles, or any other “normal” matter as we know it. It’s essentially invisible.

Continue reading “Most of the universe may be trapped inside of ancient black holes” »

Um microrobô com controlo remoto que parece e se move como uma bactéria.

Ao contrário dos robôs convencionais, estes microroboô são suaves, flexíveis,. Elas são feitas de um hidrogel biocompatível e nanopartículas magnéticas e sem motor. Estas nanopartículas têm duas funções. Eles dão aos microrobôs sua forma durante o processo de fabricação, e torná-los mover-se e nadar quando um campo magnético é aplicado.

(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers at Sichuan University’s West China Hospital has announced plans to begin a clinical trial where cells modified using the CRISPR gene editing technique will be used on human beings for the very first time. They plan to edit genes in such a way as to turn off a gene that encodes for a protein that has been shown by prior research to slow an immune response and by so doing treat patients with lung cancer.

The CRISPR gene editing technique has been in the news a lot of late as scientists creep ever closer to using it as a means to treat diseases or to change the very nature of biological beings. China has been a leader in promoting such research on human beings—they were the first to use the technique to on human embryos.

This new effort is seen as far less controversial—a team in the U.S. is planning a similar study as soon as they can get regulators to greenlight their project. The Chinese team plans to retrieve T cells from patients that have incurable lung cancer and then edit the genes in those cells. More specifically, they will be looking to disable a gene that encodes for a protein called PD-1—prior research has shown that it acts as a brake on an immune response to help prevent attacks on healthy cells. Once the cells have been edited and inspected very carefully to make sure there were no editing errors they will be allowed to multiply and then all of the cells will be injected back into the same patient’s bloodstream. It is hoped that the edited cells will cause the immune system to mount a more aggressive attack on tumor cells, killing them and curing the patient.

Continue reading “Chinese team to pioneer first human CRISPR trial” »

SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc (FB.O) said on Thursday it had completed a successful test flight of a solar-powered drone that it hopes will help it extend internet connectivity to every corner of the planet.

Aquila, Facebook’s lightweight, high-altitude aircraft, flew at a few thousand feet for 96 minutes in Yuma, Arizona, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his Facebook page. The company ultimately hopes to have a fleet of Aquilas that can fly for at least three months at a time at 60,000 feet (18,290 meters) and communicate with each other to deliver internet access.

Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) has also poured money into delivering internet access to under served areas through Project Loon, which aims to use a network of high-altitude balloons to made the internet available to remote parts of the world.

Continue reading “Facebook’s solar-powered internet drone takes flight” »

Google and a team of researchers from various universities managed to simulate the hydrogen molecule on a quantum computer for the first time.

The UK’s first double hand transplant operation has taken place at Leeds General Infirmary and the patient says his new hands look “tremendous”.

Chris King, from Doncaster, lost both his hands, apart from the thumbs, in an accident involving a metal pressing machine at work three years ago.

The 57-year-old received two new hands from a donor and says he already has some movement in them.

We’ve had starchitects. Now we’ve got space architects. Oliver Wainwright meets the people measuring up the red planet for inflatable homes and farms made of moondust concrete.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IpJySHGpVMI

Overview

This is the third article in a series of posts documenting how a team of six interns used IBM Watson to program robots to play poker.

Continue reading “Getting robots to listen: Using Watson’s Speech to Text service” »

“Future of Humanity Institute Research Fellow Jan Leike and MIRI Research Fellows Jessica Taylor and Benya Fallenstein have just presented new results at UAI 2016 that resolve a longstanding open problem in game theory: “A formal solution to the grain of truth problem.””

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