Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 11649

His lab is dedicated to an idea called frugal innovation: “How do you do very high-level science or engineering with very little?” said Thuo, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Iowa State University and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory. “How can you solve a problem with the least amount of resources?”

That goal has Thuo and his research group using their materials expertise to study soft matter, single-molecule electronics and renewable energy production. A guiding principle is that, whenever possible, nature should do part of the work.

“Nature has a beautiful way of working for us,” he said. “Self-assembly and ambient oxidation are great tools in our designs.”

Read more

Now, that is a concept to consider. Could we see theme parks like Disney be completely operated by robots and leverage other AI technology as well as VR/ AR technology?

A Nagasaki amusement park is turning the fears of a robot-run world into a family friendly attraction. Huis Ten Bosch is set to feature more than 200 androids in its ‘robot kingdom’ to serve guests.

Read more

Barclays bots.

As part its efforts to become the most intelligent bank Barclays Africa, a subsidiary Absa, announced on Tuesday that it would pilot a chatbot that relies on artificial intelligence to simulate intelligent conversation through written or spoken text with customers online.

The pilot will be implemented within the coming few weeks, making it the first bank to do so in Africa.

The trial of the chatbots not only marks a transformation in the way the bank will engage with customers, but further underscores its efforts to become the most intelligent bank.

Read more

Nice

Some 42 years ago, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that not everything that comes in contact with a black hole succumbs to its unfathomable nothingness.

Tiny particles of light (photons) are sometimes ejected back out, robbing the black hole of an infinitesimal amount of energy, and this gradual loss of mass over time means every black hole eventually evaporates out of existence.

Known as Hawking radiation, these escaping particles help us make sense of one of the greatest enigmas in the known Universe, but after more than four decades, no one’s been able to actually prove they exist, and Hawking’s proposal remained firmly in hypothesis territory.

Continue reading “Physicists might soon be able to prove one of Stephen Hawking’s theories on black holes” | >

In quantum gravity, classical physics and quantum mechanics are at odds: scientists are still uncertain how to reconcile the quantum “granularity” of space-time at the Planck scale with the theory of special relativity. In their attempts to identify possible tests of the physics associated with this difficult union, the most commonly studied scenario is the one that implies violations of “Lorentz invariance”, the principle underlying special relativity. However, there may be another approach: to salvage special relativity and to reconcile it with granularity by introducing small-scale deviations from the principle of locality. A recent theoretical study just published in Physical Review Letters and led by the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste has analysed such a model demonstrating that it can be experimentally tested with great precision. The team is already collaborating on developing an experiment, which will take place at the LENS (European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy) in Florence, some members of which have also taken part in the theoretical study.

Our experience of space-time is that of a continuous object, without gaps or discontinuities, just as it is described by classical physics. For some models however, the texture of space-time is “granular” at tiny scales (below the so-called Planck scale, 10–33 cm), as if it were a variable mesh of solids and voids (or a complex foam). One of the great problems of physics today is to understand the passage from a continuous to a discrete description of spacetime: is there an abrupt change or is there gradual transition? Where does the change occur?

The separation between one world and the other creates problems for physicists: for example, how can we describe gravity – explained so well by – according to quantum mechanics? Quantum gravity is in fact a field of study in which no consolidated and shared theories exist as yet. There are, however, “scenarios”, which offer possible interpretations of quantum gravity subject to different constraints, and which await experimental confirmation or confutation.

Read more