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Feb 24, 2022

A hole in the ground could be the future of fusion power

Posted by in categories: futurism, nuclear energy

MIT’s startup Commonwealth has a new powerful magnet that could finally make fusion power a reality.

Feb 24, 2022

Meta announces plans to build an AI-powered ‘universal speech translator’

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Social media conglomerate Meta has announced a new research project to build a “universal speech translator” powered by artificial intelligence. Such a translation tool could be hugely beneficial and would help propel Meta’s platforms like Facebook and Instagram around the world.

Feb 24, 2022

Study shows that individual neurons could learn

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience

Humans have been trying to understand how the brain works and how it acquires information for centuries. While neuroscientists now have a pretty good understanding of how different parts of the brain work and what their function is, many questions remain unanswered; thus, a unified neuroscience theory is still lacking.

In recent years, computer scientists have been trying to create computational tools that artificially recreate the functions and processes of the human . New theories clarifying how the brain makes predictions could help to significantly enhance these tools so that they replicate neural functions in increasingly realistic ways.

Researchers at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience in Lethbridge, Canada have recently carried out a study investigating how individual learn and make predictions about the future. Their findings, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, suggest that the ability of single neurons to predict their future activity could offer a new learning mechanism.

Feb 24, 2022

Loop quantum gravity: time come in tiny chunks?

Posted by in category: quantum physics

Quantum mechanics tells us that the forces of nature come in discrete, tiny chunks. Gravity, the bending of space-time, is a force. So is space-time quantized as well?

Feb 24, 2022

Wearable Sensor Production Technique Replaces Photolithography

Posted by in categories: electronics, wearables

UC Berkeley engineers have come up a new technique for creating wearable sensor prototypes.


The geopolitical tension surrounding.

Feb 24, 2022

How Bitcoin, Other Cryptocurrencies Could Serve As Workaround For Russians Facing Global Sanctions

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies

The geopolitical tension surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is intensifying. In retaliation to Russia’s attack on the sovereign nation, Western nations have either imposed or are contemplating sanctions against the country.

Although cryptocurrencies have sunk deep into the red in reaction to the Ukrainian crisis, analysts see the space as a potential beneficiary.

What Happened: The sanctions may not produce the intended effect in Russia, where cryptocurrency ownership is relatively higher, according to Bloomberg. The country is also taking steps to legalize cryptos.

Feb 24, 2022

IoT-Enabled Mailbox Lets You Check Your Mail Without Leaving Your House

Posted by in categories: computing, internet, solar power, sustainability

Whether you live in an apartment downtown or in a detached house in the suburbs, if your mailbox is not built into your home you’ll have to go outside to see if anything’s there. But how do you prevent that dreadful feeling of disappointment when you find your mailbox empty? Well, we’re living in 2022, so today your mailbox is just another Thing to connect to the Internet of Things. And that’s exactly what [fhuable] did when he made a solar powered IoT mailbox.

The basic idea was to equip a mailbox with a camera and have it send over pictures of its contents. An ESP32-Cam module could do just that: with a 1,600 × 1,200 camera sensor, a 160 MHz CPU and an integrated WiFi adapter, [fhuable] just needed to write an Arduino sketch to have it take a picture every few hours and upload it to an FTP server.

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Feb 24, 2022

Touch Sensitive Brain Cells Controlled by Micromagnets

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, particle physics

Summary: A newly developed technique allows researchers to remotely active neurons with the aid of microscopic magnetic particles.

Source: UCL

Scientists at UCL have developed a new technique that uses microscopic magnetic particles to remotely activate brain cells; researchers say the discovery in rats could potentially lead to the development of a new class of non-invasive therapies for neurological disorders.

Feb 24, 2022

Kenya tests new solar panels to generate power and enhance food security

Posted by in categories: food, solar power, sustainability

Feb 24, 2022

While War In Ukraine Rages Below, Astronauts Cooperate Above

Posted by in categories: economics, space

Astronauts representing countries in direct armed conflict have never worked on the space station. Right now, the International Space Station crew consists of U.S. astronauts Raja Chari, Mark Vande Hei, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron; Matthias Maurer, a German from the European Space Agency; and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.

Economic sanctions may affect the space programs on Earth, Mastracchio says, but the space-station crews never saw the impact of anything. “The programs themselves still get along,” he says. “It was really just, we were friends before we went up to space, and you’re working up there relying on each other and you continue to do that.” Chamitoff says he wishes the world would take more notice of cooperative operations in space, which could be a better model for how to do things geopolitically. “The space station has been an amazing project that’s brought 15 countries together for 30 years,” he says. “When things like this happen and there’s these kind of tensions, you kind of wonder, ‘Does anybody notice that we’re working together and it’s going great?’”

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