Lifeboat Foundation

NASA announced that its engineers have developed and tested the agency’s first full-scale rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE).

The agency said that the design could significantly change how future propulsion systems are built. The supersonic rocket engine uses detonation, with the design producing more power while using less fuel than today’s propulsion systems.

It has the potential to power both human landers and interplanetary vehicles to deep space destinations, like the moon or Mars.

An astronomer has captured “extraordinary” footage of an asteroid that made an “extremely close” approach to the Earth on Thursday.

The space rock, known as 2023 BU, zoomed over the southern tip of South America yesterday, while it was only around 2,200 miles above the surface of the Earth.

This is one of the closest approaches of an near-Earth object ever recorded. Data from NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies showed that the flyby of 2023 BU was the fourth-nearest of more than 35,000 past and future Earth close approaches in the 300-year period from 1900 to 2200.

𝐀 𝐝𝐫𝐮𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐄𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐬

𝘼𝙣 𝙀𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙐𝙣𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙮 𝙥𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚’𝙨 𝙈𝙤𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙧 𝙋𝙨𝙮𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙖𝙩𝙧𝙮 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙡𝙚𝙫𝙤𝙙𝙤𝙥𝙖, 𝙖 𝙙𝙧𝙪𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚𝙨 𝙙𝙤𝙥𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣, 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙚𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙞𝙣𝙛𝙡𝙖𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙣 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙧𝙚𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙘𝙞𝙧𝙘𝙪𝙞𝙩𝙧𝙮, 𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙮𝙢𝙥𝙩𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣.

Numerous labs across the world have shown that inflammation causes reduced motivation and anhedonia, a core symptom of depression, by affecting the brain’s reward pathways.

Continue reading “A drug that increases dopamine can reverse the effects of inflammation on the brain in depression, Emory study shows” »

I never thought I’d order live human kidney cells to my address, but that all changed when I found out about biohacker Jo Zayner’s at-home genetic engineering class.

You may know Jo Zayner, a “biohacker” who has been in the vanguard of scientific self-experimentation for years, from their role in Netflix’s 2019 docuseries Unnatural Selection. The series shows Zayner attempting to edit their DNA by injecting themselves with CRISPR, a gene-editing technology. The action inspired a firestorm of criticism.

Zayner is also known for a variety of other bold moves, such as claiming to create a DIY at-home COVID vaccine in 2020 and executing their own fecal microbiome transplant.

Elon Musk has killed the little hope some had for Tesla in offering a retrofit to the new Autopilot/Self-Driving hardware (HW4) to current Tesla owners.

Tesla is expected to announce a new Autopilot/Self-Driving hardware suite, which has been referred to as Hardware 4.0 (HW4), any day now.

There have been quite a few indications that some major changes are coming. For example, after famously removing radar sensors from its hardware suite, we learned in December that Tesla is planning to add one as soon as this month.

More than one-third of the Amazon rainforest has been degraded by humans, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Degradation is different from deforestation, the researchers note, as it represents long-term changes in forest conditions that damages its ecosystem and results in carbon emissions greater to those from deforestation.

New estimates are larger than what scientists previously believed.

Continue reading “Humans Have Degraded More Than A Third Of The Amazon Rainforest, Researchers Say” »

An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it.

Called MusicLM, Google’s certainly isn’t the first generative AI system for song. There have been other attempts, including Riffusion, an AI that composes music by visualizing it, as well as Dance Diffusion, Google’s own AudioML and OpenAI’s Jukebox. But owing to technical limitations and limited training data, none have been able to produce songs particularly complex in composition or high-fidelity.

MusicLM is perhaps the first that can.

Chrome is rolling out an update for Android users that lets them lock their incognito sessions with a password code or biometric info when they exit the app. The feature has been available for iOS users for some time, but now it’s being made available to folks using Chrome on Android.

Users can activate this feature by going to Chrome Settings Privacy & Security and turning on the “Lock incognito tabs when you close Chrome” toggle. So next time when a user exits Chrome, their incognito session will automatically be locked. To unlock the incognito tabs, you can use the biometric unlock on the phone such as a fingerprint unlock or lock code.

Consciousness is what we can know best and explain least. It is the inner subjective experience of what it feels like to see red or smell garlic or hear Beethoven. Consciousness has intrigued and baffled philosophers. To begin, we must define and describe consciousness. What to include in a complete definition and description of consciousness?

Free access to Closer to Truth’s library of 5,000 videos: http://bit.ly/376lkKN

Continue reading “Daniel C. Dennett — What is Consciousness?” »