Lifeboat Foundation

This is a disturbing article on the utilization of drones by Turkey in attacks in Syria. What is unclear to me is whether the drones were piloted or whether they were autonomous. This is a critical distinction for me because drones that are piloted by humans are under human control and are legal. Autonomous drones are killer robots and are immoral.

“Regardless of an exact death toll and damage evaluation, there is a general understanding that the Idlib attacks were an example of effective air warfare, in which killer drones, rather than piloted jets, played a key role. “My understanding is that Turkey compensated for its inability to fly jets over Idlib by using drones, lots of drones,” says Aron Lund, a fellow with U.S.-based think tank The Century Foundation.”

Ban Killer Robots!

Continue reading “Ukraine takes note as Turkey opens new chapter in drone warfare” »

Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., issued a small-business innovation research (SBIR) solicitation (HR001120S0019-05) for the Wearable Laser Detection and Alert System.

DARPA researchers want to understand the feasibility of a wearable laser sensor that can detect laser irradiation rapidly during the day and at night and alert the wearer in real-time of lasing.

DARPA wants a wearable laser-detection system with low size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP) that would act as a stand-alone sensor to detect laser illumination over the 450-to-1600-nanometer visible to shortwave infrared region.

MYSTERY WIRE — Are psychic abilities real, and if so, can they be measured? Yes to both questions, says Dr. Dean Radin.

For decades, the Department of Defense sponsored secret studies of psychic phenomena in hopes of training an elite team of psychic soldiers. Officially, the program was canceled, but research into psychic abilities continues in the private sector, and one of the scientists on the cutting edge is featured this week on mysterywire.com.

Radin earned advanced degrees in both electrical engineering and psychology, worked for prestigious companies and labs, and has spent decades trying to measure psychic abilities.

The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), together with the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas and the University of Porto, has patented a magnetic cork that could remove polluting particles from water, among other uses.

The magnetic cork has been created through a process of co-precipitation of iron oxide through which magnetite is obtained. This mineral is absorbed as soon as it comes into contact with the surface of the cork. “The patent arises from the need to make graded adhesive joints. It occurred to me, when reading about the various techniques that are used for graded joints and about cork, that we could make the cork magnetic using the process that is currently used to obtain magnetite,” notes Juana Abenojar, researcher in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Chemical Engineering at the UC3M.

Continue reading “A magnetic cork for the removal of water pollution” »

Why House Cats Are God’s Perfect Little Killing Machines They may look cute and fluffy, and they don’t go far, but cats are deadly stalkers who rule concentrated areas of their neighborhoods.

Just like a virus hijacks your cells and forces them to churn out more copies of the virus, this vaccine is expected to automate the production of those particles, which B-cells and T-cells — the biological hunter-seekers of the immune system — can use to ready themselves to fight the real-deal coronavirus.

The main difference between this sort of DNA-based vaccine and a traditional one, Slavcev told Futurism, is that it relies on the person’s cells to create the mock virus instead of merely exposing them to an inert version of the real virus.

“Personal genetics only has to do with how the vaccine is presented,” Slavcev told Futurism, regarding the decision to develop a DNA-based vaccine. “There is some variation between individuals and populations, but in this case the DNA is just to improve immune response and make it mimic a viral infection as closely as possible to stimulate the most effective immune response.”

:ooooooo.

With psilocybin on the cusp of becoming a clinically validated and approved medicine, scientists are exploring new ways to produce the chemical without needing to grow magic mushrooms or relying on costly synthesis techniques. A team of Danish researchers has presented a novel method of producing the psychedelic chemical using common yeast.

“It’s infeasible and way too expensive to extract psilocybin from magic mushrooms and the best chemical synthesis methods require expensive and difficult-to-source starting substrates,” explains Nick Milne, an author on the new study published in the journal Metabolic Engineering. “Thus, there is a need to bring down the cost of production and to provide a more consistent supply chain.”

Continue reading “Scientists turn yeast into psychedelic psilocybin factories” »

A short production outlining Air Force experimentation on White Sands Missile Range with the use of high powered microwave and laser systems to shoot down small unmanned aircraft. Video filmed by John Hamilton.

Much of the work undertaken by artificial intelligence involves a training process known as machine learning, where AI gets better at a task such as recognising a cat or mapping a route the more it does it. Now that same technique is being use to create new AI systems, without any human intervention.

For years, engineers at Google have been working on a freakishly smart machine learning system known as the AutoML system (or automatic machine learning system), which is already capable of creating AI that outperforms anything we’ve made.

Now, researchers have tweaked it to incorporate concepts of Darwinian evolution and shown it can build AI programs that continue to improve upon themselves faster than they would if humans were doing the coding.