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Feb 3, 2018

Will America yield its position as the world’s leader in science and technology?

Posted by in categories: engineering, science

Finally, are we prepared to expand science and technology opportunities for all Americans? The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. To stay ahead, we’ll need to use all our assets. That means leveling the barriers for women in science and engineering, and closing the participation gap for underrepresented minorities. It also means expanding tech-driven prosperity beyond the two coasts. Pittsburgh’s success is a proof of principle, but we need to nurture at least a dozen new tech hubs across America, anchored by leading universities.


We need clear answers to six big questions.

To begin, do we care if China surpasses America as the leading spender on research and development? In 2000, China and the United States accounted for roughly 5 and 40 percent, respectively, of global R&D. In 2015, the figures were 21 and 29 percent. At this pace, the lines will cross before 2020. While the average quality of American science remains higher, that gap is closing too.

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Feb 2, 2018

The Case for Free Money

Posted by in categories: economics, government, robotics/AI

A major conservative publication, The Weekly Standard, has published a positive Cover story about Basic Income, as a way to reign in entitlements and deal with automation. My California libertarian governor campaign gets a brief mention in it. Over 100,000 print copies out this week.


At first blush, universal basic income sounds like something dreamed up on a California commune or in a late-night college bull session. The idea: Just give people money. Ask nothing in return. Impose no requirement to work or to look for work. And don’t just give taxpayer money to people living in poverty, give it to everybody—from gazillionaire to gig-worker—no questions asked.

Yet universal basic income is an idea that is having its moment. Enthusiasm for a government-guaranteed income for all seems to be percolating across the country. Groups backed by Silicon Valley luminaries are forming to devise political strategies. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign flirted with the idea.

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Feb 2, 2018

A successful SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch gives NASA new options

Posted by in category: space travel

The impact next week’s flight could have.

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Feb 2, 2018

Generalized Hardy’s paradox shows an even stronger conflict between quantum and classical physics

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

By building the most general framework for the n-particle Hardy’s paradox and Hardy’s inequality, the results of the new paper provide a stronger Hardy’s paradox, and can also detect more quantum entangled states. As the success probability for the three-qubit generalized Hardy’s paradox reaches 0.25, the researchers are very hopeful that it will be observed in future experiments. Credit: Jiang, et al. © 2018 American Physical Society In 1993, physicist Lucien Hardy proposed an experiment showing that there is a small probability (around 6–9%) of observing a particle and its antiparticle in…

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Feb 2, 2018

Airbus’ drone taxi takes to the skies for the first time

Posted by in category: drones

Airbus’ self-piloted taxi flies for the first time.

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Feb 2, 2018

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs has a plan to bring order to the mobility chaos in our cities

Posted by in category: transportation

Coord is a new cloud-based platform for on-demand transportation companies.

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Feb 2, 2018

Amazon’s idea for employee-tracking wearables raises concerns

Posted by in category: wearables

The company has patents for wristbands that track warehouse employees’ movements.

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Feb 2, 2018

Could Klotho Treat Dementia

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

Researcher Dr. Dena Dubal, from the University of California San Francisco, is considering a new approach to combat neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, using a protein known as klotho.

Aging is the foundation of age-related diseases

Instead of trying to understand each of these diseases and the complex mechanisms unique to both, she considered what all these conditions have in common; the answer, of course, is aging.

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Feb 2, 2018

Altered Carbon Premiere Viewing Party SF w Aubrey/Life Extension

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Viewing party of one of the most highly-anticipated science fiction stories onto the screen. Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon on Netflix. Introduction speech by Dr. Aubrey de Grey, famous proponent of innovative biotechnologies.

Watch the premiere alongside other fans and talk about what you would do if you could live another 100 years.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80097140

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Feb 2, 2018

Making a Crypto Utopia in Puerto Rico

Posted by in categories: cryptocurrencies, transportation

SAN JUAN, P.R. — They call what they are building Puertopia. But then someone told them, apparently in all seriousness, that it translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin. So they are changing the name: They will call it Sol.

Dozens of entrepreneurs, made newly wealthy by blockchain and cryptocurrencies, are heading en masse to Puerto Rico this winter. They are selling their homes and cars in California and establishing residency on the Caribbean island in hopes of avoiding what they see as onerous state and federal taxes on their growing fortunes, some of which now reach into the billions of dollars.

And these men — because they are almost exclusively men — have a plan for what to do with the wealth: They want to build a crypto utopia, a new city where the money is virtual and the contracts are all public, to show the rest of the world what a crypto future could look like. Blockchain, a digital ledger that forms the basis of virtual currencies, has the potential to reinvent society — and the Puertopians want to prove it.

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