Lifeboat Foundation

Forget about evolution, climate change or vaccines – what makes people really lose their mind, apparently, is cats.

“We’ve had posts that have affected people’s lives in a very substantial way, including posts that went beyond the virtual world. People really got threats or disrespectful comments,” says Yomiran Nissan.

Continue reading “The Israelis bringing us big science in little soundbites” »

An artificial photosynthesis system that combines semiconducting nanoparticles with a non-photosynthetic bacterium could offer a promising new route for producing sustainable solar-driven hydrogen fuel.

Other artificial photosynthesis systems that integrate nanomaterials into living microbes have been developed before, which reduce carbon dioxide or produce hydrogen, for example. However, usually it is the microorganism itself that makes the product via a metabolic pathway, which is aided by a light-activated nanomaterial that supplies necessary electrons.

Now, the labs of Kara Bren and Todd Krauss at the University of Rochester, US, have turned this concept on its head. They have designed a new hybrid bio-nano system that combines a finely-tuned photocatalytic semiconducting nanoparticles to make hydrogen with a bacterium which, while it does not photosynthesise or make hydrogen itself, it provides the necessary electrons to the nanomaterial to synthesise hydrogen.

“Our study may be as good as it will ever get for finding neural signatures of near-death consciousness,” said the study’s senior author.

Discovery could help plug gaps in understanding of evolution after Cambrian explosion more than 500m years ago.

Aviation punches above its weight when it comes to greenhouse emissions — it is by far the highest emission form of transportation. Our modern mega planes may be the most efficient they’ve ever been, but in 2019, they still churned out over 915 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

To make matters worse, one of our best zero-emission alternatives — hydrogen — is far too heavy and bulky to build a usable airplane. Or at least that is what we thought.

The California startup HyPoint recently announced their plan to make a hydrogen-powered aircraft with nearly three times the range of a turboprop commuter jet.

Upon removal of ventilator support, two of the patients showed an increase in heart rate along with a surge of gamma wave activity, considered the fastest brain activity and associated with consciousness.

Furthermore, the activity was detected in the so-called hot zone of neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the junction between the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes in the back of the brain. This area has been correlated with dreaming, visual hallucinations in epilepsy, and altered states of consciousness in other brain studies.

In this video, the YouTube channel Dark Footage explains and demonstrates how the small-caliber guided bullet was developed and how accurate it is. As explained in the description box, this system combines a movable bullet with a guidance framework that can alter the bullet’s path after it has been fired. This guarantees the bullet reaches its target no matter what. Yes, this means both experienced and inexperienced shooters can hit a moving target using the technology.

New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that artificial intelligence (AI) systems can process signals in a way that is remarkably similar to how the brain interprets speech, a finding scientists say might help explain the black box of how AI systems operate.

Using a system of electrodes placed on participants’ heads, scientists with the Berkeley Speech and Computation Lab measured brain waves as participants listened to a single syllable— bah. They then compared that brain activity to the signals produced by an AI system trained to learn English.

“The shapes are remarkably similar,” said Gasper Begus, assistant professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley and lead author on the study published recently in the journal Scientific Reports. “That tells you similar things get encoded, that processing is similar.”

iSpace, a private space company based in Japan, lost contact with its Hakuto-R spacecraft as it attempted to become the first private mission to land on the moon this morning. “We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” iSpace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said during a livestream. “Our engineers will continue to investigate the situation, and we will update you with further information when we finish the investigation.”

Hakuto-R launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last December. It took a long but efficient route, looping way out past the moon before using several orbital adjustments and the gravity of the Earth, moon, and sun to enter lunar orbit last month. On April 13, after a few more final adjustments, it locked into a circular orbit 100 kilometers above the lunar surface.

Continue reading “ISpace Loses Contact With Lunar Lander During Historic Moon Landing Attempt” »