Lifeboat Foundation

Abstract: Since the 17th century, science was intrigued by the nature of light. Isaac Newton was certain that it consists of a stream of particles. His contemporary Christiaan Huygens, however, argued that light is a wave. Modern quantum physics says that both were right. Light can be observed both as particles and as waves — depending which characteristic is measured in an experiment, it presents itself more as one or the other. This so-called wave-particle dualism is one of the foundational principles of quantum physics. This questions our common sense: can one and the same indeed be of two contradictory natures at the same time?

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute, with colleagues in China, have developed an eye lens restoration treatment that has been tested in monkeys and in a small human clinical trial. It produced much fewer surgical complications than the current standard-of-care and resulted in regenerated lenses with superior visual function in all 12 of the pediatric cataract patients who received the new surgery.

Congenital cataracts — lens clouding that occurs at birth or shortly thereafter — is a significant cause of blindness in children.

Continue reading “Scientists grow eye lens from patients’ own stem cells, restoring vision” »

It has a single rotor and uses four control surfaces.

Researchers in the US have proposed a new form of wind power: small, artificial, mechanical trees capable of producing energy from their vibrations. Working with the natural breeze, or small movements caused by other factors, the scientists hope that new forms of renewable energy can be developed in the future.

The idea is to create a device that can convert random forces – whether that’s from the footfall of pedestrians on a bridge, or a passing gust of wind – into electricity that can be used to power devices. And the researchers have found that tree-like structures made from electromechanical materials are perfect for the task.

“Buildings sway ever so slightly in the wind, bridges oscillate when we drive on them and car suspensions absorb bumps in the road,” said project leader Ryan Harne from Ohio State University. “In fact, there’s a massive amount of kinetic energy associated with those motions that is otherwise lost. We want to recover and recycle some of that energy.”

Continue reading “Tiny, artificial trees could form the next generation of windmills” »

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A supersonic passenger plane.

Continue reading “NASA announced that it is developing a supersonic jet intended” »

A master player of the game Go has won his first match against a Google computer program, after losing three in a row in a best-of-five competition.

Lee Se-dol, one of the world’s top players, said his win against AlphaGo was “invaluable”.

The Chinese board game is considered to be a much more complex challenge for a computer than chess, and AlphaGo’s wins were seen as a landmark moment for artificial intelligence.

Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: http://archive.org/details/computerchronicles

A team of programmers has built a self-generating cosmos, and even they don’t know what’s hiding in its vast reaches.

Every particle in the universe is accounted for. The precise shape and position of every blade of grass on every planet has been calculated. Every snowflake and every raindrop has been numbered. On the screen before us, mountains rise sharply and erode into gently rolling hills, before finally subsiding into desert. Millions of years pass in an instant.

Here, in a dim room half an hour south of London, a tribe of programmers sit bowed at their computers, creating a vast digital cosmos. Or rather, through the science of procedural generation, they are making a program that allows a universe to create itself.

Continue reading “Inside the Artificial Universe That Creates Itself” »