Lifeboat Foundation

But out of everything Meta announced, one particular demo blew my mind. Meta AI comes with its own image-generation tool called Imagine, which is available in beta to some WhatsApp and web users. The new Meta AI feature can do something OpenAI’s ChatGPT can’t: It creates images instantly with no waiting necessary.

This is the second time an AI product has blown my mind this week. Earlier, I showed you Microsoft’s VASA-1 tool, which generates talking video clips out of a portrait image and a voice recording. VASA-1 isn’t made for the public though, and we might never get access to this particular AI. Anyone could create misleading fakes with it, so Microsoft is only showing off a proof of concept.

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The tension between quantum mechanics and relativity has long been a central split in modern-day physics. Developing a theory of quantum gravity remains one of the great outstanding challenges of the discipline. And yet, no one has yet been able to do it. But as we collect more data, it shines more light on the potential solution, even if some of that data happens to show negative results.

That happened recently with a review of data collected at IceCube, a neutrino detector located in the Antarctic ice sheet, and compiled by researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington. They looked for signs that gravity could vary even a minuscule amount based on quantum mechanical fluctuations. And, to put it bluntly, they didn’t find any evidence of that happening.

Continue reading “Scientists Test for Quantum Gravity” »

Scientists use laser ablation technology to develop a deformable micro-supercapacitor. Professor Jin Kon Kim and Dr. Keon-Woo Kim from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), in collaboration with Dr. Chanwoo Yang and Researcher Seong Ju Park from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH), have achieved a significant breakthrough in developing a small-scale energy storage device capable of stretching, twisting, folding, and wrinkling. Their research has been published in the electronic engineering journal, npj Flexible Electronics.

The advent of wearable technology has brought with it a pressing need for energy storage solutions that can keep pace with the flexibility and stretchability of soft electronic devices.

Micro supercapacitors (MSCs) have emerged as a promising candidate for deformable energy storage, due to high-power density, rapid charging, and long cycle life.

Photo : siqi zhao & huirong yan.

Astrophysicists from the University of Potsdam have made a significant step toward solving the last puzzle in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence theory by observing the weak to strong transition in the space plasma turbulence surrounding Earth with newly developed multi-spacecraft analysis methods. Their pioneering discovery was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Turbulence is ubiquitous in nature. It exists everywhere, from our daily lives to the distant universe, while being labelled as “the last great unsolved problem of classical physics” by Richard Feynman.

Overturned that picture entirely. The Universe, on the largest of cosmic scales, wasn’t static and unchanging at all, but rather was dynamically expanding.

If that’s true, and the Universe is expanding, then what else is expanding along with it? Is our galaxy expanding? What about the Solar System, planet Earth, or even the atoms in our own body? That’s the topic of this week’s inquiry courtesy of Jim Robison, who asks:

“We are part of the expanding universe. Does that mean we are expanding with it? Is the distance between the Earth and the Sun expanding, or between San Francisco and New York? Is the distance between the atoms in my body expanding? Is that why I need a larger belt?”

OpenAI and Reddit reach deal that will give ChatGPT access to content on the social media platform.

Country folk tend to like the independence offered by their cars, so how do you get them to use public transit? The Monocab system may be the answer, as it utilizes individual on-demand pods that travel on existing abandoned railways.

It’s a bit of a vicious circle. Many people in rural areas prefer using their cars for getting to and from urban centers whenever they want, as opposed to waiting for the few buses or trains. This lack of interest in public transit results in even fewer buses and trains being offered, leading to even less uptake by the locals.

Continue reading “Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand” »

Despite being in its early release stages, GPT-4o is seemingly great at writing and detecting errors in code.

Sony has shown off its new surgical robot doing some super-precise work sewing up a tiny slit in a corn kernel. It’s the first machine of its kind that auto-switches between its different tools, and has successfully been tested in animal surgery.

It’s designed to help in the field of super-microsurgery, a highly specialized field in which surgeons operate on extremely small blood vessels and nerves, with diameters well under 1 mm (0.04 in). As you might imagine, this kind of thing requires incredibly steady hands, and specialists in this field often do their work whole looking through a microscope.

Continue reading “Watch: Sony’s new microsurgery robot stitches up a corn kernel” »