Lifeboat Foundation

Human-computer interaction company Sightful is releasing its first product, Spacetop, a screen-less “augmented reality laptop” projecting tabs across a 100-inch virtual screen. The laptop — if you can call it that — is a hardware deck and full-size keyboard with a pair of tailored NReal glasses. The glasses project tabs directly in front of whatever the user is looking at while remaining invisible to anyone else.

Specs-wise, Spacetop is running a Snapdragon 865 paired with an Adreno 650 GPU, 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, putting it in the same class as some of the smartphones that are already capable of driving AR glasses. It’s not smartphone-sized, however, measuring 1.57-inches high, 10.47-inches wide and 8.8-inches deep, and it weighs in at 3.3 pounds, the same as plenty of laptops we could choose to mention here.

Sightful is clearly gunning for a crossover hit in the work-from-home-or-anywhere market. “Laptops are the centerpiece of our daily working lives, but the technology has not evolved with the modern, work from anywhere, privacy matters, ‘road warrior’ mentality. Meanwhile, augmented reality is full of potential and promise but is yet to find its daily use case,” said Tamir Berliner, Sightful co-founder who previously worked at both Leap Motion and Primesense. “We are at the perfect moment for a significant paradigm shift in a device we all know and love.”

Now there’s a mathematical model that could maximize the effectiveness of exercise.

OpenAI’s cofounders, including Sam Altman, said in a blog post that there needed to be a proactive approach to managing AI’s potential harms.

In two new studies, North Carolina State University researchers have designed and tested a series of textile fibers that can change shape and generate force like a muscle. In the first study, published in Actuators, the researchers focused on the materials’ influence on artificial muscles’ strength and contraction length. The findings could help researchers tailor the fibers for different applications.

In the second, proof-of-concept study published in Biomimetics, the researchers tested their fibers as scaffolds for live cells. Their findings suggest the fibers—known as “fiber robots”—could potentially be used to develop 3D models of living, moving systems in the human body.

“We found that our fiber robot is a very suitable scaffold for the cells, and we can alter the frequency and contraction ratio to create a more suitable environment for cells,” said Muh Amdadul Hoque, graduate student in textile engineering, chemistry and science at NC State. “These were proof-of concept studies; ultimately, our goal is to see if we can study these fibers as a scaffold for stem cells, or use them to develop artificial organs in future studies.”

United Airlines and California-based startup Archer Aviation have announced plans to use flying cars to ferry passengers between Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and a “vertiport” just minutes from downtown.

“I’m pleased that Chicago residents will be among the first in the nation to experience this innovative, convenient form of travel,” said Chicago Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot.

Continue reading “United Airlines plans to bring flying cars to Chicago” »

Using a high-speed “electron camera” at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and cutting-edge quantum simulations, scientists have directly imaged a photochemical “transition state,” a specific configuration of a molecule’s atoms determining the chemical outcome, during a ring-opening reaction in the molecule α-terpinene. This is the first time that scientists have precisely tracked molecular structure through a photochemical ring-opening reaction, triggered when light energy is absorbed by a substance’s molecules.

The results, published in Nature Communications, could further our understanding of similar reactions with vital roles in chemistry, such as the production of vitamin D in our bodies.

Transition states generally occur in chemical reactions which are triggered not by light but by heat. They are like a point of no return for molecules involved in a chemical reaction: As the molecules gain the energy needed to fuel the reaction, they rearrange themselves into a fleeting configuration before they complete their transformation into new molecules.

You’ve likely seen all the impressive tasks ChatGPT can accomplish, from drafting emails and resumes to writing code and even inventing a new language. But as we wait for AI to make us all obsolete, we might as well enjoy our remaining time in control of the chatbots. One way to do so is by experimenting with all of the fun tricks ChatGPT can perform.

As intelligent and powerful as ChatGPT is, you can also treat it as a toy. Here are some of the best ChatGPT tricks we’ve discovered so far that might not change your life, but will definitely keep you entertained during an especially slow day at work:

If you’re desperate to play a game with someone but can’t actually find a human to play with, ChatGPT is more than capable of standing in. There are a bunch of games that you can play with ChatGPT, including Tic-Tac-Toe, Hangman, and Mad Libs. Just ask ChatGPT to play any of those games, and it will generate the game board and explain the rules.

Neural radiance fields (NeRFs) are advanced machine learning techniques that can generate three-dimensional (3D) representations of objects or environments from two-dimensional (2D) images. As these techniques can model complex real-world environments realistically and in detail, they could greatly support robotics research.

Most existing datasets and platforms for training NeRFs, however, are designed to be used offline, as they require the completion of a pose optimization step that significantly delays the creation of photo realistic representations. This has so far prevented most roboticists from using these techniques to test their algorithms on physical robots in real-time.

Continue reading “A software package to ease the use of neural radiance fields in robotics research” »

Identifying new sources that produce electrons faster could help to advance the many imaging techniques that rely on electrons. In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters, a team of researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology demonstrated the scattering of subpicosecond electron bunches from an ultracold electron source.

“Our research group is working to develop the next generation of ultrafast electron sources to push imaging techniques such as ultrafast electron diffraction to the next level,” Tim de Raadt, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org.

“The idea of using laser-cooled ultracold gas clouds as an electron source to improve the state-of-the-art in brightness was first introduced in a paper published in 2005. Since then, research efforts have produced multiple versions of such a ultracold electron source, with the most recent one (used in this work) focusing on making the source compact, easy to align and operate, and being more stable, as described in another past paper that also studied the transverse electron beam properties.”