Lifeboat Foundation

“I read more than my share of textbooks,” Gates says. “But it’s a pretty limited way to learn something. Even the best text can’t figure out which concepts you understand and which ones you need more help with.”

Software can be used to create a much more dynamic learning experience, he says.

Gates gives the example of learning algebra. “Instead of just reading a chapter on solving equations, you can look at the text online, watch a super-engaging video that shows you how it’s done, and play a game that reinforces the concepts,” he writes. “Then you solve a few problems online, and the software creates new quiz questions to zero in on the ideas you’re not quite getting.”

Continue reading “Bill Gates: Textbooks are ‘becoming obsolete’— here’s the best way to learn today” »

A study of 1000 teens in the UK by researchers at the University of Oxford and Cardiff University shows, once again, that video games do not make teens more aggressive. How many of these studies do we need before we accept the conclusions?

Mars One is done.

“The company that aimed to put humanity on the red planet has met an unfortunate, but wholly-expected end. Mars One Ventures, the for-profit arm of the Mars One mission was declared bankrupt back in January but wasn’t reported until a keen-eyed Redditor found the listing.”

Fancied being part of a reality TV show about colonizing Mars? Sorry.

Continue reading “Mars One is dead” »

Both “The Wandering Earth” and “Crazy Alien” are adapted from works by Liu Cixin, the writer who has led a renaissance in science fiction here, becoming the first Chinese winner of the Hugo Award for the genre in 2015.

His novels are sprawling epics and deeply researched. That makes them plausible fantasies about humanity’s encounters with a dangerous universe. Translating them into movies would challenge any filmmaker, as the director of “The Wandering Earth,” Guo Fan, acknowledged during a screening in Beijing last week.

Science-fiction movies have been slow to catch on in China, but led by “The Wandering Earth,” a wave of new blockbusters might change that.

Continue reading “China’s Film Industry Finally Joins the Space Race” »

The “CSI Effect” has been described as being an increased expectation from jurors that forensic evidence will be presented in court that is instantaneous and unequivocal because that is how it is often presented for dramatic effect in television programs and movies. Of course, in reality forensic science, while exact in some respects is just as susceptible to the vagaries of measurements and analyses as any other part of science. In reality, crime scene investigators often spend seemingly inordinate amounts of time gathering and assessing evidence and then present it as probabilities rather than the kind of definitive result expected of a court room filled with actors rather than real people.

Circa 2015

Researchers have used an infrared laser to cool water by about 2°C (36°F) — a major breakthrough in the field. As they are cooled by the laser, the nanocrystals developed by the University of Washington team emit a reddish-green ‘glow’ (shown) that can be seen by the naked eye.

‘Typically, when you go to the movies and see Star Wars laser blasters, they heat things up’, senior author and assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Washington Peter Pauzauskie explained.

Continue reading “Laser that COOLS water is invented for the first time” »

Meet the gamers who remind us that when everybody plays, we all win. https://xbx.lv/2WvDLoa #GamingForEveryone #SuperBowl #SBLIII

When playing against Death, play the long game, and play to win.

A new breed of algorithms has mastered Atari video games 10 times faster than state-of-the-art AI, with a breakthrough approach to problem solving.

Designing AI that can negotiate planning problems, especially those where rewards are not immediately obvious, is one of the most important research challenges in advancing the field.

A famous 2015 study showed Google DeepMind AI learnt to play Atari video games like Video Pinball to human level, but notoriously failed to learn a path to the first key in 1980s video game Montezuma’s Revenge due to the game’s complexity.

Continue reading “Atari master: New AI smashes Google DeepMind in video game challenge” »