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Jul 27, 2017

Robot flying taxi takes its first autonomous flight

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Formerly known as the “Air Mule,” this is a flying taxi, or maybe a future unmanned ambulance.

Urban Aeronautics

Nine years ago, the Air Mule was an almost-believable concept: a flying robot taxi that could get people out of dangerous battlefields without endangering a pilot or crew. It was the exact sort of gizmo one expects from Popular Science: an amazing machine of the future, almost like a flying car, that seemed plausible but just out of reach.

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Jul 27, 2017

We Created AI, and Now They Are Teaching Us

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Google’s DeepMind AI is using elastic weight consolidation to get around the problem of catastrophic forgetting. These advances in artificial neural networks are helping us better understand our own brains.

The latest research from DeepMind is proving how inspired the idea to model neural networks of the human mind truly was. The strength of the association between the human brains and and their computational models is revealing weaknesses in our own minds and teaching us how to overcome them.

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Jul 27, 2017

Researchers shut down AI that invented its own language

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

An artificial intelligence system being developed at Facebook has created its own language. It developed a system of code words to make communication more efficient. The researchers shut the system down as it prompted concerns we could lose control of AI.

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Jul 27, 2017

Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites but scientists just found their descendants living in Lebanon

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

It is a command that led the leading atheist Richard Dawkins to claim that the God of the Old Testament was “a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser … a genocidal … megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully”.

For God had ordered the Israelites to slaughter the apparently sinful Canaanites, saying: “You shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them.” And, according to the Bible, they did just that.

However, a new genetic study has found that the Canaanites actually managed to survive this purge of their traditional homeland, passing on their DNA over the centuries to their numerous descendants in modern-day Lebanon.

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Jul 27, 2017

Floating City Project Wants To Make An ‘Unregulated’ Hub Of Scientific Research

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, economics, engineering, food, governance, law, nanotechnology, robotics/AI, sustainability

In the hopes of rising above the laws and regulations of terrestrial nations, a group of Silicon Valley millionaires has bold plans to build a floating city in Tahiti, French Polynesia. It sounds like the start of a sci-fi dystopia (in fact, this is the basic premise behind the video game Bioshock), but the brains behind the project say their techno-libertarian community could become a paradise for technological entrepreneurship and scientific innovation.

The Seasteading Institute was set up in 2008 by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel and software engineer, poker player, and political economic theorist Patri Friedman. Both ardent libertarians, their wide-eyed mission is to “establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.”

“Seasteading will create unique opportunities for aquaculture, vertical farming, and scientific and engineering research into ecology, wave energy, medicine, nanotechnology, computer science, marine structures, biofuels, etc,” their website reads.

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Jul 27, 2017

First Human Embryos Edited in the U.S., Scientists Say

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Reports suggest researchers have altered DNA and made few errors.

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Jul 27, 2017

Researchers can now Inject Nanobots Into Your Veins

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, robotics/AI

Since nanobots are no longer fiction, is it time to start answering body augmentation questions raised by sci-fi genres like Cyberpunk?

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Jul 27, 2017

A plane-size asteroid buzzes by Earth undetected

Posted by in category: asteroid/comet impacts

A big space rock slipped right by us last week and was only spotted as it left our cosmic neighborhood.

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Jul 27, 2017

US Navy’s mach 6 railgun set for first tests outside the lab

Posted by in categories: energy, military

At the 2017 Naval Future Force Science and Technology Expo in Washington DC, an ONR spokesman revealed that the weapon is ready for field demonstrations at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division’s new railgun Rep-Rate Test Site at Terminal Range, according to New Atlas.

Initial rep-rate fires (repetition rate of fires) of multi-shot salvos already have been successfully conducted at low muzzle energy, officials say.

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Jul 27, 2017

Breakthrough Lofts the Smallest Satellites Ever, not Interstellar Yet, but a Step Forward

Posted by in categories: innovation, satellites

Breakthrough Initiatives achieved a major milestone with the recent deployment of their Sprite satellites, the smallest satellites in history.

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