Lifeboat Foundation

While there are different flavors of the UBI, the basic concept is that everyone just gets money for existing—this, in theory, would help keep the economy running smoothly even as people are working less.

“Sounds like a communist scheme” jokes Pethokoukis. But he explains how this is actually a very old idea that has its roots on the political right as a way to simplify the welfare state. It’s an idea that’s really taken off among the libertarian-leaning luminaries of the tech world in recent years.

“Silicon Valley has sort of latched on to this idea. They have the most aggressive timetable as far as when we will actually see all these jobs hemorrhage,” explains Pethokoukis.

Continue reading “A Universal Basic Income? Slow Your Roll, Silicon Valley” »

Antibiotic resistance continues to rise, and new drugs made to battle these increasingly formidable microbes could take more than a decade to develop. In an effort to stress the urgency of this rising resistance, the World Health Organization (WHO) created a list of the twelve deadliest superbugs with which we are currently dealing.

The list is broken into three categories based on the severity of the threat (medium, high, or critical) that a given superbug poses. The three critical bacteria, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacteriaceae, are all already resistant to multiple drugs. One of these (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) actually explodes when they die, making them even more deadly.

Pathogens that cause more common diseases like food poisoning or gonorrhea round out the rest of the list. Some big hitters include MRSA and salmonella.

Continue reading “These 12 Superbugs Could Wipe Out Humanity” »

In the future, your beer will be delivered by by robots that look like big beetles out to set up a golf course.

Virginia became the first state in the union on Wednesday to legally allow robots to use sidewalks and crosswalks just like us humans.

SEE ALSO: Bizarre Boston Dynamics robot moves like a world-class athlete.

Continue reading “Robots are about to make your beer runs” »

Inspired by origami, North Carolina State University researchers have found a way to remotely control the order in which a two-dimensional (2-D) sheet folds itself into a three-dimensional (3D) structure.

“A longstanding challenge in the field has been finding a way to control the sequence in which a 2-D sheet will fold itself into a 3D object,” says Michael Dickey, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-corresponding author of a paper describing the work. “And as anyone who has done origami — or folded their laundry—can tell you, the order in which you make the folds can be extremely important.”

Continue reading “Researchers remotely control sequence in which 2-D sheets fold into 3D structures” »

Ugly Lies The Bone, US writer Lindsey Ferrentino’s debut at London’s National Theatre, is more than just a survivor story. It’s a visually arresting meditation on virtual reality exposure therapy.

The therapy was first trialled in 1997 by Albert Carlin and Hunter Hoffman at the University of Washington Human Interface Lab in Seattle. The pair designed a virtual reality environment, Spiderworld, which enabled a phobic individual to safely encounter and interact with the object of their irrational fear – in this case, a 3D-rendered arachnid. After 12 sessions, the subject’s symptoms seemed to.

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Continue reading “Pixel-perfect play confronts the reality of immersive therapy” »

Washington State University researchers have developed a unique, 3D manufacturing method that for the first time rapidly creates and precisely controls a material’s architecture from the nanoscale to centimeters. The results closely mimic the intricate architecture of natural materials like wood and bone.

They report on their work in the journal Science Advances and have filed for a patent.

The work has many high-tech engineering applications.

Continue reading “Novel 3D manufacturing leads to highly complex, bio-like materials” »

Lasers are everywhere nowadays: Doctors use them to correct eyesight, cashiers to scan your groceries, and quantum scientist to control qubits in the future quantum computer. For most applications, the current bulky, energy-inefficient lasers are fine, but quantum scientist work at extremely low temperatures and on very small scales. For over 40 years, they have been searching for efficient and precise microwave lasers that will not disturb the very cold environment in which quantum technology works.

A team of researchers led by Leo Kouwenhoven at TU Delft has demonstrated an on-chip microwave laser based on a fundamental property of superconductivity, the ac Josephson effect. They embedded a small section of an interrupted superconductor, a Josephson junction, in a carefully engineered on-chip cavity. Such a device opens the door to many applications in which microwave radiation with minimal dissipation is key, for example in controlling qubits in a scalable quantum computer.

The scientists have published their work in Science on the 3rd of March.

SpaceX has shared scant details about its newly announced plan to send private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year.

The company hasn’t disclosed the space tourists’ identities or said how much they’ll pay for the chance to buzz the moon and go far beyond before returning to Earth. Nor did SpaceX say exactly what training the tourists will undergo or how they will occupy themselves during the week or so between lift-off from Kennedy Space Center’s near Cape Canaveral, Florida and their return to Earth.

Frozen organs could be brought back to life safely one day with the aid of nanotechnology, a new study finds. The development could help make donated organs available for virtually everyone who needs them in the future, the researchers say.

The number of donated organs that could be transplanted into patients could increase greatly if there were a way to freeze and reheat organs without damaging the cells within them.

In the new work, scientists developed a way to safely thaw frozen tissues with the aid of nanoparticles — particles only nanometers or billionths of a meter wide. (In comparison, the average human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.)

Continue reading “Big nanotechnology advance could spell end of deadly organ shortage” »