Lifeboat Foundation

“We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century,” says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected.

HB11 Energy is a spin-out company that originated at the University of New South Wales, and it announced today a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation.

Fusion, of course, is the long-awaited clean, safe theoretical solution to humanity’s energy needs. It’s how the Sun itself makes the vast amounts of energy that have powered life on our planet up until now. Where nuclear fission – the splitting of atoms to release energy – has proven incredibly powerful but insanely destructive when things go wrong, fusion promises reliable, safe, low cost, green energy generation with no chance of radioactive meltdown.

Using clever chemical wizardry, researchers have made human organs see-through. The dazzling 3D maps could one day lead to organs made in the lab.

Astronomers have observed an exoplanet orbiting a star in just over 18 hours – the shortest orbital period ever seen for a planet of its type.

This means that a single year for this hot Jupiter-like planet – a gas giant similar in size and composition to Jupiter in our own Solar System – passes in less than a day of Earth time.

Scientists believe the discovery may help solve the mystery of whether such planets are in the process of spiralling towards their suns to their destruction.

A ride to the Moon for under $10 million? That’s quite a price.

A Google AI tool that can recognise and label what’s in an image will no longer attach gender tags like “woman” or “man” to photos of people. Google’s Cloud Vision API is a service for developers that allows them to, among other things, attach labels to photos identifying the contents. The tool can detect faces, landmarks, brand logos, and even explicit content, and has a host of uses from retailers using visual search to researchers identifying animal species.

A deep-learning model identifies a powerful new drug that can kill many species of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

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The world’s species and natural ecosystems are in crisis. When nearly 200 countries gather in ten days’ time to thrash out a major plan to stem the precipitous decline, China is expected to take a prominent role. The high-stakes negotiations will set the stage for a major biodiversity summit in October, which the country will also host — marking the first time the nation will lead global talks on the environment.

A major United Nations summit could see China push for ambitious targets and spotlights the country’s own conservation efforts.

These limping AI models could be a medical breakthrough 😮

Via Seeker