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Jun 20, 2016

A long way from everything: The search for a Grand Unified Theory

Posted by in category: particle physics

Nice.


Albert Einstein is famous for his theories on relativity, but what of his other grand hypothesis, the unified field theory that consumed the last 30 years of his life without resolution? So will a unified theory of everything ever be realized?

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Jun 20, 2016

New chip design makes parallel programs run many times faster and requires one-tenth the code

Posted by in categories: computing, robotics/AI

Computer chips have stopped getting faster. For the past 10 years, chips’ performance improvements have come from the addition of processing units known as cores.

In theory, a program on a 64- machine would be 64 times as fast as it would be on a single-core machine. But it rarely works out that way. Most computer programs are sequential, and splitting them up so that chunks of them can run in parallel causes all kinds of complications.

In the May/June issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ journal Micro, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will present a new chip design they call Swarm, which should make parallel programs not only much more efficient but easier to write, too.

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Jun 20, 2016

Money Behind First CRISPR Test? It’s from Internet Billionaire Sean Parker

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, economics, internet

A next wave of cancer treatments may combine immunotherapy and gene editing.

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Jun 20, 2016

Meet Scientific Politician Zoltan Istvan

Posted by in categories: geopolitics, transhumanism

This 1-min video centered on transhumanism aired across the country today on many Fox channels. It’s part of a new news show for millennials:


Presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan is putting science at the forefront of his politics.

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Jun 20, 2016

We Might Finally Solve the ‘Alien Megastructure’ Mystery

Posted by in category: alien life

Good news alien hunters! A Kickstarter to fund a year-long investigation into KIC 8462852—the star voted most likely to harbor an advanced alien civilization—just got funded. Alien megastructure or not, we may finally get to the bottom of this bewildering, flickering star.

This crowdfunding campaign was set up in May by Yale astronomer Tabby Boyajian, and it managed to meet its $100,000 goal in just 30 days. A $10,000 surge in the last 100 minutes of the campaign managed to put the project over the top. The next step is to figure out the logistics, but Boyajian, who’s been leading the research into KIC 8462852, says observations could start as early as later this summer.

The ultimate goal of the project will be to determine why this star’s light dims at such irregular intervals, and at times by as much as 20 percent. These huge dips in luminosity are way too large to be a passing planet, hence the suspicion the anomaly is being caused by swarms of comets, a distorted star, some unknown astronomical phenomenon—or an advanced alien civilization in the process of building a gigantic solar array around the star.

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Jun 20, 2016

OpenAI technical goals

Posted by in categories: governance, neuroscience, robotics/AI

OpenAI’s mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. We’re trying to build AI as part of a larger community, and we want to share our plans and capabilities along the way. We’re also working to solidify our organization’s governance structure and will share our thoughts on that later this year.

Our metric

Defining a metric for intelligence is tricky, but we need one to measure our progress and focus our research. We’re thus building a living metric which measures how well an agent can achieve its user’s intended goal in a wide range of environments.

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Jun 20, 2016

These Sunglasses Play Music Through Your Skull

Posted by in categories: futurism, media & arts

These sunglasses let you listen to music while still hearing the rest of the world.

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Jun 20, 2016

This Electric Racecar Goes Faster Than The World’s Fastest Car

Posted by in categories: futurism, transportation

This electric car can go from 0–60 in two seconds.

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Jun 20, 2016

Silver-Lined Bedding Fights Bacteria

Posted by in category: futurism

These sheets and pillowcases are lined with real silver, so they fight bacteria all on their own.

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Jun 20, 2016

This concept car changes itself to fit each driver’s preferences

Posted by in categories: futurism, transportation

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