Lifeboat Foundation

A new type of ferroelectric polymer that is exceptionally good at converting electrical energy into mechanical strain holds promise as a high-performance motion controller or “actuator” with great potential for applications in medical devices, advanced robotics, and precision positioning systems, according to a team of international researchers led by Penn State.

Mechanical strain, how a material changes shape when force is applied, is an important property for an actuator, which is any material that will change or deform when an external force such as electrical energy is applied. Traditionally, these actuator materials were rigid, but soft actuators such as ferrroelectric polymers display higher flexibility and environmental adaptability.

The research demonstrated the potential of ferroelectric polymer nanocomposites to overcome the limitations of traditional piezoelectric polymer composites, offering a promising avenue for the development of soft actuators with enhanced strain performance and mechanical energy density. Soft actuators are especially of interest to robotics researchers due to its strength, power and flexibility.

If you want to know what the best possible future could look like — and how we can make it happen — talk to someone involved in the solarpunk movement.

“If cyberpunk was ‘here is this future that we see coming and we don’t like it’, and steampunk is ‘here’s yesterday’s future that we wish we had,’ then might be ‘here’s a future that we can want and we might actually be able to get,’” Adam Flynn, an early member of the movement, explained in 2015.

This community is focused on not only imagining a future where we’ve overcome the problems inspiring today’s dystopian sci-fi (climate change, income inequality, descrimination, etc.), but also making that future a reality.

2018 Finally after a decade an infinite space hard exists with infinite data speeds.

Semiconductor microcavities can host polaritons formed by strong exciton-photon coupling, yet they may be plagued by scalability issues. Here, the authors demonstrate a sub-wavelength-thick, one-dimensional photonic crystal platform for strong coupling with atomically thin van der Waals crystals.

I believe that homelessness is often seen in America or other parts of the world as bad but with Finland they have found a housing first approach which has stopped nearly all homelessness there. I believe also regenerative medicine and lots of transhumanistic approaches to medicine would help end their aging and even repair their body if needed. Also if we research the brain we can finally discover and repair genes throughout the body essentially bringing them back near perfect and beyond. Along with ethical approaches towards a more cultural relativistic approach to all humans could show everyone how to coexist. It is still a problem of aging though which is still curable and in extreme cases will be eventually solved in the future. I think with a more comprehensive understanding of all transhumansistic medicine it would be possible to save all lives so no one is left behind.

OK, so the Finns are more generous and just shell out a lot more to help the homeless, right? Actually not. The Finns are simply smarter.

Instead of abandoning the homeless, they housed them. And that led to an insight: people tend to function better when they’re not living on the street or under a bridge. Who would have guessed?

Continue reading “How Finland managed to virtually end homelessness” »

Year 2016 😗😁

A new “atomic memory” device that encodes data atom by atom can store hundreds of times more data than current hard disks can, a new study finds.

“You would need just the area of a postage stamp to write out all books ever written,” said study senior author Sander Otte, a physicist at the Delft University of Technology’s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in the Netherlands.

Year 2022 😗😁

Data stored in spin states of ytterbium atoms can be transferred to surrounding atoms in a crystal matrix.

A study led by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys has found that in young women, certain genetic mutations are associated with treatment-resistant breast cancer. These mutations are not linked to treatment-resistant breast cancer in older women. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, could help improve precision medicine and suggest a brand-new way of classifying breast cancer.

“It’s well established that as you get older, you’re more likely to develop cancer. But we’re finding that this may not be true for all cancers depending on a person’s genetic makeup,” says senior author Svasti Haricharan, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “There may be completely different mechanisms driving cancer in younger and older people, which requires adjusting our view of aging and cancer.”

The research primarily focused on ER+/HER2-breast cancer, which is one of the most common forms of the disease. It is usually treated with hormonal therapies, but for some patients, these treatments don’t work. About 20% of tumors resist treatment from the very beginning, and up to 40% develop resistance over time.

Facebook’s AI guru and machine learning pioneer Yann Lecun is coming for the artificial intelligence chatbot craze — and it may put him at odds with his own employer.

As Fortune reports, Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann Lecun admitted during a talk in Paris this week that he’s not exactly a fan of the current spate of chatbots and the large language models (LLMs) they’re built on.

“A lot of people are imagining all kinds of catastrophe scenarios because of AI, and it’s because they have in mind these auto-regressive LLMs that kind of spew nonsense sometimes,” he told the Meta Innovation Press Day crowd. “They say it’s not safe. They are right. It’s not. But it’s also not the future.”

One tip that I always give to family members, friends, and passersby when asked, “How can I make my phone faster?” is straightforward yet typically hidden, and that’s adjusting the animation speed. The method of doing so is quick, simple, and absolutely free. And as a bonus, you’ll feel like the “guy behind the computer” from every action movie. Just follow the steps below.

A few taps and a swipe are all it takes to make your Android phone feel like new again.

Continue reading “Change this Android setting to instantly give your phone twice the speed” »