Lifeboat Foundation

With the help of the CHEOPS space telescope an international team of European astronomers managed to clearly identify the existence of four new exoplanets. The four mini-Neptunes are smaller and cooler, and more difficult to find than the so-called Hot Jupiter exoplanets which have been found in abundance. Two of the four resulting papers are led by researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Geneva who are also members of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS.

CHEOPS is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, under the leadership of the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva. Since its launch in December 2019, the extremely precise measurements of CHEOPS have contributed to several key discoveries in the field of exoplanets.

NCCR PlanetS members Dr. Solène Ulmer-Moll of the Universities of Bern and Geneva, and Dr. Hugh Osborn of the University of Bern, exploited the unique synergy of CHEOPS and the NASA satellite TESS, in order to detect a series of elusive exoplanets. The planets, called TOI 5,678 b and HIP 9,618 c respectively, are the size of Neptune or slightly smaller with 4.9 and 3.4 Earth radii.

Plants modified to grow in the dark could also provide fresh produce in extreme environments on Earth.

A common nutrient found in everyday foods might be the key to a long and healthy life, according to researchers from Columbia University.

The nutrient in question is taurine, a naturally occurring amino acid with a range of essential roles around the body.

Not only does the concentration of this nutrient in our bodies decrease as we age, but supplementation can increase lifespan by up to 12 percent in different species.

September 2021: In an interview with tech YouTuber iJustine, Cook said that he was AR’s number one fan and reiterated his hopes for it as a collaboration tool.

I am so excited about AR. I think AR is one of these very few profound technologies that we will look back on one day and went, how did we live our lives without it? And so right now you can experience it in thousands of ways using your iPad or your iPhone, but of course, those will get better and better over time.

Continue reading “Tim Cook has been telling us AR is the future for years” »

Research has found, while AI could lead to the creation of 69 million new jobs worldwide, it could also result in the loss of 83 million existing jobs.
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Alex Jenkin from the WA Data Science Innovation Hub says it’s more likely people will be replaced by someone who can use AI tools like ChatGPT, rather than artificial intelligence itself.

Continue reading “What industries will feel the most impact from artificial intelligence? | ABC News” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycugq5PAQM

“The Universe Came From a Black Hole” String Theory Founder Reveals James Webb Telescope’s New Image. Deep within dense star clusters, something extraordinary dwells: Stars. But these, are no ordinary stars, but colossal celestial beings, known as supermassive stars. And now, their existence has been unveiled by the piercing gaze of the James Webb Space Telescope.

According to the standard model of cosmology, after the universe came out of the big bang, it took between 500 million to 1 billion years for the first stars to form. That however, is changing.

Continue reading “‘It’s a Black hole!’ James Webb Telescope Discovers 45,000+ Galaxies at the Edge of the Universe!” »

In his science fiction classic Star Maker, he imagines a way to overcome fascism on a galactic scale.

Artificial intelligence has entered our daily lives. First, it was ChatGPT. Now, it’s AI-generated pizza and beer commercials. While we can’t trust AI to be perfect, it turns out that sometimes we can’t trust ourselves with AI either.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Assistant Professor Peter Koo has found that scientists using popular computational tools to interpret AI predictions are picking up too much “noise,” or extra information, when analyzing DNA. And he’s found a way to fix this. Now, with just a couple new lines of code, scientists can get more reliable explanations out of powerful AIs known as deep neural networks. That means they can continue chasing down genuine DNA features. Those features might just signal the next breakthrough in health and medicine. But scientists won’t see the signals if they’re drowned out by too much noise.

So, what causes the meddlesome noise? It’s a mysterious and invisible source like digital “dark matter.” Physicists and astronomers believe most of the universe is filled with dark matter, a material that exerts gravitational effects but that no one has yet seen. Similarly, Koo and his team discovered the data that AI is being trained on lacks critical information, leading to significant blind spots. Even worse, those blind spots get factored in when interpreting AI predictions of DNA function. The study is published in the journal Genome Biology.

The sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our extinction unless we evolve a new sex gene.

The good news is two branches of rodents have already lost their Y chromosome and have lived to tell the tale.

A recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows how the spiny rat has evolved a new male-determining gene.