Scientists produce Star Trek-like deflector device for cancer-free interplanetary travel. Scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK are working on a Star Trek-like deflector shield to enable the transport of humans between planets and stars without subjecting them to lethal doses of cosmic radiation. This research comes at a vital time, as numerous groups, including NASA, look to send humans to Mars — but without adequate shielding from the Sun’s harsh cosmic rays, it could be a one-way trip full of vomiting, diarrhea, and more serious symptoms of radiation poisoning, such as death.
Other than time and money, one of the biggest barriers to sending humans to other planets is Solar radiation (from flares and coronal ejections) and galactic cosmic rays. The exact origin of GCRs is unknown, but it’s theorized that they originate in supernovae and the dense nuclei of other galaxies. In any case, both forms of radiation consist of high-energy protons that bombard every square inch of the Solar System, including Earth. XKCD’s radiation dose chart. Researchers discover a way to tease oxygen molecules from carbon dioxide. (Phys.org) —A small team of researchers with the University of California has found a way break apart carbon dioxide molecules and get carbon atoms and oxygen molecules instead of carbon monoxide and an oxygen atom.
In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes how they did it, and the implications of their findings. Arthur Suits and David Parker offer a perspective piece in the same journal issue that describes in more depth, minimum energy path (MEP) where reactants don't always follow the easiest path during chemical reactions and how it pertains to the work done by this group. Over the years, scientists have developed a theory about the development of life on planet Earth that's known as the "Great Oxidation Event," where plants developed and began taking in carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen.
In this new effort, the researchers believe they have found a way to achieve the same feat using a non-biological approach. Press release. Researcher shows that black holes do not exist. Black holes have long captured the public imagination and been the subject of popular culture, from Star Trek to Hollywood. They are the ultimate unknown – the blackest and most dense objects in the universe that do not even let light escape. And as if they weren't bizarre enough to begin with, now add this to the mix: they don't exist. By merging two seemingly conflicting theories, Laura Mersini-Houghton, a physics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill in the College of Arts and Sciences, has proven, mathematically, that black holes can never come into being in the first place.
The work not only forces scientists to reimagine the fabric of space-time, but also rethink the origins of the universe. "I'm still not over the shock," said Mersini-Houghton. For decades, black holes were thought to form when a massive star collapses under its own gravity to a single point in space – imagine the Earth being squished into a ball the size of a peanut – called a singularity. Astrophysicists duo propose Planck star as core of black holes. (Phys.org) —Two astrophysics, Carlo Rovelli and Francesca Vidotto, have uploaded a paper to the preprint server arXiv in which they suggest that a structure known as a Planck star exists at the center of black holes, rather than a singularity.
This would suggest, they note, that black holes at some point return all the information they have pulled in, to the universe. The current thinking regarding black holes is that they have two very simple parts, an event horizon and a singularity. Because a probe cannot be sent inside a black hole to see what is truly going on, researchers have to rely on theories. The singularity theory suffers from what has come to be known as the "information paradox"—black holes appear to destroy information, which would seem to violate the rules of general relativity, because they follow rules of quantum mechanics instead. Explore further: Black holes do not exist as we thought they did. What Science Says About Using Physical Force To Punish A Child. Following the news that Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson reportedly used a tree branch to hit his 4-year-old son (and the later accusation that he injured another 4-year-old son), the acceptability of physical punishment has been a topic of national conversations.
Some Internet commenters and even other athletes have defended Peterson -- many arguing, "I was spanked and I turned out OK! " Others admit they're in support of spanking, but recognize Peterson's behavior as abuse. A poll conducted by The Huffington Post and YouGov found that 81 percent of 1,000 adults polled believe spanking with a hand should be legal, and almost half think it's an effective form of punishment.
Indeed, whether the respondents' own parents used corporal punishment made a big difference in their views about the legality of spanking. Eighty-eight percent of those whose parents used corporal punishment, but only 69 percent of those whose parents did not, said spanking with the hand should be legal. Artificial sweeteners trigger changes that can lead to diabetes, weight gain. New research suggests that artificial sweeteners are messing with our gut bacteria and could be causing high blood sugar levels. Image: Melica/Shutterstock Artificial sweeteners are meant to help control our blood sugar and avoid weight gain - but recent studies have linked them to everything from Type 2 diabetes to heart disease. Still, scientists have struggled to work out exactly how they’re affecting us - our bodies can’t actually digest artificial sweeteners, which is why they’re calorie free, so what’s going on?
This new research in humans and mice, led by scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, suggests that artificial sweeteners may actually be messing with our gut bacteria and triggering gluten intolerance in the body - which is the first step towards metabolic syndrome and adult-onset diabetes. The research is published in Nature. A second study was even more interesting, and followed seven people who don’t normally eat artificial sweeteners for a week. Are We Approaching the End of Human History? | Perspectives. Global warming has had a particularly strong impact on the Arctic, yet the effects on the region’s ice have been anything but steady or predictable. Some glaciers are spitting out icebergs and draining the Greenland ice sheet at an alarming pace; others are barely moving; a few are growing thicker. (Photo: NASA/Jefferson Beck and Maria-José Viñas/Flickr CC 2.0) This post first appeared at In These Times.
It is not pleasant to contemplate the thoughts that must be passing through the mind of the Owl of Minerva as the dusk falls and she undertakes the task of interpreting the era of human civilization, which may now be approaching its inglorious end. “The likely end of the era of civilization is foreshadowed in a new draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the generally conservative monitor of what is happening to the physical world.” The land of the Tigris and Euphrates has been the scene of unspeakable horrors in recent years.
The George W. Sad species. Australian scientists are taking their printable solar cells to the market. Australian scientists are taking their printable solar cells to the market ScienceAlert Staff Wednesday, 10 September 2014 Australian scientists are close to putting their cheap, printable solar cells on the market, to be used on everything from iPad covers, laptop bags and smartphone skins, to rooftops and windows.
A group of Australian solar power experts known as the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium, which includes scientists from the CSIRO, the University of Melbourne and Monash University, have been working on printable solar cells over the past seven years. And they’re finally just about ready to hit the market. According to CSIRO's senior research scientist Fiona Scholes, they can now print their solar cells directly onto plastic, which means the cases you keep your laptop, phone and tablet in could soon both protect your devices and collect renewable energy to power them up.
Water Droplet Computing Needs No Electricity | Future Computing Technologies. Today's computers can short out if liquid enters their innards, but water droplets could form the basis for tomorrow's electricity-free computing devices. The idea of turning water droplets into digital bits — the basic unit of data transfer — came from experiments at Aalto University in Finland. When researchers observed water droplets bouncing off one another like billiard balls on a water-repellent surface, they realized they could guide the water droplets along water-repellent tracks.
"I was surprised that such rebounding collisions between two droplets were never reported before, as it indeed is an easily accessible phenomenon: I conducted some of the early experiments on water-repellent plant leaves from my mother's garden," said Henrikki Mertaniemi, an applied physics researcher at Aalto University, in a statement. The experiments showed how the water droplets could act as digital bits in memory devices or logic operations at the most basic level of computing.
Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults - The Cochrane Library - Jefferson. Background Different types of influenza vaccines are currently produced worldwide. Healthy adults are presently targeted mainly in North America. Objectives Identify, retrieve and assess all studies evaluating the effects of vaccines against influenza in healthy adults. Search methods We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library, 2010, issue 2), MEDLINE (January 1966 to June 2010) and EMBASE (1990 to June 2010).
Selection criteria Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-RCTs comparing influenza vaccines with placebo or no intervention in naturally-occurring influenza in healthy individuals aged 16 to 65 years. Data collection and analysis Two review authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. Main results We included 50 reports. Authors' conclusions Influenza vaccines have a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost. Vaccines to prevent influenza in healthy adults Contexte Objectifs 健康成人預防流感的疫苗 背景 目標 譯註. ‘Robo Brain’ will teach robots everything from the Internet. Robo Brain logo (credit: Saxena Lab) Robo Brain is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals, all being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format. The reason: to serve as helpers in our homes, offices and factories, robots will need to understand how the world works and how the humans around them behave.
Robotics researchers like Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at his Cornell University and his associates at Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab have been teaching them these things one at a time (which KurzweilAI has covered over the last two years in four articles). Robotic arm placing an object in a specific location (credit: Saxena Lab) For example, how to find your keys, pour a drink, put away dishes, and when not to interrupt two people having a conversation. Now it’s all being automated, cloudified, and crowdsourced.
Structured deep learning References: Why Government Researchers Think We May Be Living in a 2D Hologram. Operating with cutting-edge technology out of a trailer in rural Illinois, government researchers started today on a set of experiments that they say will help them determine whether or not you and me and everything that exists are living in a two-dimensional holographic universe. It sounds completely off-the-walls insane, but the incongruities between Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and some of Max Planck's discoveries about the nature of matter can only be explained if we're living in a Matrix-style holographic illusion, according to Craig Hogan, director of the Department of Energy's Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics. "For thousands of years, we have assumed that space is made of points and lines," he told me. "Maybe that is not right—it might be made of waves, the way that matter and energy are.
" reality has a limited amount of information, like a Netflix movie when Comcast is not giving you enough bandwidth. So things are a little blurry and jittery It's heady stuff. List of Nikola Tesla patents. Scientists have worked out the genetic ‘recipe’ that lets lizards regrow their tails. Cyborgs and sport: Between Disability and Enhancement. | Jose Luis Pérez Triviño. 2013•VOLUME LVII13of the accessories used by athletes, they already constitute a problem for purists .Where technology directlyaffects the human body, the doubts about its legitimacy have already become significant. This has been thechallenge to sport ethics in the case of Oscar Pistorius (Zettler, 2009; Marcellini, 2012). But it is probablethat in thenear future we will see sportspersons wanting to change their organic parts of the body for mechanical prosthesis .As Adelson says: “Next-gen research will shift from replacing the human leg toimproving it, just as pharmaceuticals have shifted from restoring to enhancing.
Why stop at a better hairlinewhen we can make a better thigh?” They could overcome the able-bodied and become super-abled. Cyborgs and sport There have been other difficult cases: Liz Hartel (postpolio), who won a silver medal in equestrian dressage at the1952 Olympics. Adelson, Eric “Let ‘em play”, ESPN Magazine ( Helion Energy. Helion Energy, Inc. [edit] Helion Energy, Inc. is an American company in Redmond, WA developing a fusion power technology called The Fusion Engine.[1] This company has a public website and several articles but does not appear to regularly release information on their technology or business development. They are working on the development of a 50 MW scale fusion power system which they hope to have working by 2019.[2][3] Company Organization[edit] Helion Energy is a spin off of a Redmond company, MSNW LLC,[4] which develops space propulsion and fusion energy related technologies.
Technology[edit] According to published documents, the Fusion Engine technology is based on the Inductive Plasmiod Accelerator (IPA) experiments[5][6] performed at MSNW LLC from 2005 through 2012. Fuel[edit] Helion uses a Deuterium fuel. The existing IPA experiments used Deuterium-Deuterium fusion which produces a 2.4 MeV neutron per reaction. Injection[edit] Compression[edit] Energy Generation[edit] Funding[edit]
ELIZA. Example of ELIZA in Emacs. ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like interaction. ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966. When the "patient" exceeded the very small knowledge base, DOCTOR might provide a generic response, for example, responding to "My head hurts" with "Why do you say your head hurts?
" Overview[edit] In 1966, interactive computing (via a teletype) was new. Given these common responses to ELIZA and similar programs, it's interesting to contrast the relative simplicity of ELIZA's programming logic in relation to the requirements for Turing's Test for Artificial Intelligence. Significant implementations[edit] Influence on games[edit] See also[edit]
Nanotech could make humans immortal by 2040, futurist says. 2028: The End of the World As We Know It? Siri’s Inventors Are Building a Radical New AI That Does Anything You Ask | Enterprise. Artificial Wombs and the “Individualistic Society” - will women still want pregnancy? - BrighterBrains.org. The black hole at the birth of the Universe -- ScienceDaily. Lake Erie Deathwatch.
If We Release a Small Fraction of Arctic Carbon, 'We're Fucked': Climatologist. Movie: Julian Melchiorri on the first synthetic biological leaf. Soft tissue found on T. Rex explained. Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive. Anomalous Thrust Production from an RF Test Device Measured on a Low-Thrust Torsion Pendulum. Upgrade Your Brain: Liquid Hard Drive Implants Could Increase Intellect. Power Beaming Challenge. Ion Propulsion. Academia. DeYoung 2010 personality neuroscience SPPC. Oracle machine. Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are… Conservative | Blog. Epidemiologic Determinants for Modeling Pneumonic Plague Outbreaks - Volume 10, Number 4—April 2004. Supermassive Black Hole Blasting Molecular Hydrogen Solves Outstanding Mystery. A graphene replacement made from plastic. Tokyo Scientists Create Touchable Hologram. SLAC Today. On the unification of mass and magnetism. India is building a massive, floating solar power plant.
Quantum "spooky action at a distance" travels at least 10,000 times faster than light. NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive. Novikov self-consistency principle. MicroCHIPS Product Pipeline. Switching cause and effect in quantum world? A causes B causes A. Postpositivism. Scientists Ready New Nanobots to Swim in Human Blood Stream. Brain white matter modelled with 3D printing. Bio-printing transplantable tissues, organs: Another step closer -- ScienceDaily. Which produces more CO2, volcanic or human activity? List of animals displaying homosexual behavior. Transgenerational epigenetics. Ancient worlds could be kept 'alive' by gravitational nudges. Planet Extinction - The Clathrate Time Bomb. The ERK Signal Transduction Pathway. Limb regeneration: do salamanders hold the key? Perovskite. Fluid Experiments Support Deterministic “Pilot-Wave” Quantum Theory.
Scientists Found a Genetic Switch to Reverse Aging in Neurons. Huge Magma Pocket Lurks Beneath Yellowstone Supervolcano. Survey finds 97% climate science papers agree warming is man-made | Dana Nuccitelli | Environment. Huge Medical Marijuana Study Reference List (700+) | Youngstown Cannabis News. How Vital Is a Planet's Magnetic Field? New Debate | Earth & Magnetic Field, Space Weather | Mars, Venus, Solar Wind. Transcranial magnetic stimulation. Swarm reveals Earth's changing magnetism. Introducing the Vacuum Transistor: A Device Made of Nothing. Human Genetic Engineering Pros And Cons. Pesticide exposure in pregnancy linked to autism risk in kids.
Here's Why You Should Be Excited About The James Webb Space Telescope. The Toxins of William B. Coley and the Treatment of Bone and Soft-Tissue Sarcomas. Scientists Have Simulated Time Travel With Photons. Sonoluminescence. Jet Propulsion Laboratory | News. Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs, New Research Finds -- ScienceDaily. Graphene Batteries Offer 5-Second iPhone Charging. 'Big G': Scientists Pin Down Elusive Gravitational Constant.
Quantum biology: Algae evolved to switch quantum coherence on and off. We’re in a war over climate change - Paul B. Farrell. 24_10. Cancer pill fights disease and gives lifelong protection. Cannabis and Cannabinoids. Lasers create table-top supernova. Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years. Smoking Marijuana Not Linked with Lung Damage. 'Eugene Goostman' Supercomputer Passes The Turing Test, Apocalypse May Ensue. Research Shows that Monsanto's Big Claims for GMO Food Are Probably Wrong. Big Bang Discovery Opens Doors to the "Multiverse" University Discovers Electricity can be Generated by Dragging Saltwater Over Graphene - The Rundown Live.
Are we screwing ourselves by transmitting radio signals into space? "Classified" photographs of the Moon - collectSPACE: Messages. Current Impact Risks. Reading People’s Minds: From fMRI to Multi-voxel Pattern Analysis | Bang! Science Magazine. Improved optical brain-scanning tech rivals fMRI and PET without the risks. A machine that trains you to feel affection. Are we screwing ourselves by transmitting radio signals into space? Controlling the Galaxy with Von Neumann Probes. How to Debunk Chemtrails.