Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, scientists were able to create ultrashort dark and bright light pulses that are linked together in tiny glass rings called microresonators. Each of the flashes consist of many different, precisely defined colors: a frequency comb. The combination of the pulses increases the color range of the emitted light from the microresonators. This new light source helps to make more precise sensors to trace for example lowest quantities of explosives at an airport or for distance sensors in autonomous cars to detect obstacles on a street.

It sounds like magic: Laser light of only one color produce a rainbow of many different colors. Scientists are able to produce this strange effect in microresonators, small disks made of glass. If they send a pulsed laser beam into these structures, ultrashort packets of light waves are running in its interior in circles. And start to send out light of different, evenly spaced frequencies like the teeth of a comb. The invention of the optical frequency comb was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2005.

Now, researcher from the Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) in Erlangen and the Imperial College London were able to produce for the first time an even stranger effect: By directing two Laser beams of slightly different infrared light at the outer rim of the microresonator they got two wave packets, called solitons: one bright and one dark, which run in circles. A dark pulse means having a constant light signal that goes dark for a very short time. Both dark and bright light pulses only last for 1/10¹³ th of a second.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has recognized Chad and Ben Johnson of Nebraska for designing a robot called “Grain Weevil” to lower maintenance and make grain bins safer.

Blood plasma, cellular reprogramming, endogenous.

You may have heard a lot of talk recently about cellular reprogramming, rejuvenation or even “rejuvenation programming”, but what does that all mean and what are the 3 main strategies that several researchers and companies (maybe Altos Labs) will be further investigating?

Continue reading “3 Rejuvenation Strategies For Aging” »

In January 1999, scientists observed mysterious motions within a solar flare.

Unlike typical flares that showed bright energy erupting outwards from the Sun, this solar flare also displayed a downward flow of motion, as if material was falling back towards the Sun. Described as “downward-moving dark voids,” astronomers wondered what exactly they were seeing.

Boom expects to break ground this year on a 400,000-sq-ft Overture production plant and begin manufacturing of the supersonic airliner in 2024.

A team of engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago has built a cost-effective artificial leaf that can capture carbon dioxide at 100 times better than current technologies.

This novel artificial leaf works in the real world, unlike other carbon capture systems that could only work with carbon dioxide from pressurized tanks. It captures carbon dioxide from more dilutes sources, like air and flue gas produced by coal-fired power plants, and releases it for use as fuel and other materials.

“Our artificial leaf system can be deployed outside the lab, where it has the potential to play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere thanks to its high rate of carbon capture, relatively low cost, and moderate energy, even when compared to the best lab-based systems,” said Meenesh Singh, assistant professor of chemical engineering in the UIC College of Engineering and corresponding author on the paper.

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Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil on Preparing For the Singularity” »

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Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil: Your Brain in the Cloud” »

This is a talk by Ray Kurzweil for course 6.S099: Artificial General Intelligence. For this entire recording, Ray did not use slides, so the video does not show any slides. This class is free and open to everyone. Our goal is to take an engineering approach to exploring possible paths toward building human-level intelligence for a better world.

INFO:
Course website: https://agi.mit.edu.
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Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil: Future of Intelligence | MIT 6.S099: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)” »