Lifeboat Foundation

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Chinese-American physicist Tsung-Dao Lee, who in 1957 became the second-youngest scientist to receive a Nobel Prize, died Sunday at his home in San Francisco at age 97, according to a Chinese university and a research center.

Lee, whose work advanced the understanding of particle physics, was one of the great masters in the field, according to a joint obituary released Monday by the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Beijing-based China Center for Advanced Science and Technology.

Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 1962, was also a professor emeritus at Columbia University in New York.

A group of scientists has devised a plan to safeguard Earth’s species in a cryogenic biorepository on the moon.

Intended to save species in the event of a disaster on Earth, the plan makes use of craters that are permanently in shadow and therefore cold enough to allow cryogenic preservation of biological material without using electricity or liquid nitrogen, according to research from a group led by scientists at the Smithsonian, published last week.

The paper, published in the journal BioScience, draws on the successful cryopreservation of skin samples from a fish, and outlines a method for creating a biorepository that would keep samples of other species safe.

Singularity net Ben goerzel discusses artificial and general intelligence and cosmist intelligence.

Dr. Ben Goertzel discusses artificial general, non-human and cosmist intelligences with Ed Keller at The Overview Effect Lectures, which is a series positioned as a survey of some of the key operational themes critical to post planetary and universal design.

Continue reading “Dr. Ben Goertzel Discusses Artificial General, Non-Human & Cosmist Intelligences” »

Think and you’ll miss it: researchers at MIT claim to have successfully created analog synapses that are one million times faster than those in our human brains.

Just as digital processors need transistors, analog ones need programmable resistors. Once put into the right configuration, these resistors can be used to create a network of analog synapses and neurons, according to a press release.

These analog synapses aren’t just ultra-fast, they’re remarkably efficient, too. And that’s pretty important, because as digital neural networks grow more advanced and powerful, they require more and more energy, increasing their carbon footprint considerably.

Video of when SpaceX landed an orbital class rocket for the 200th time! Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: SpaceX | edited by Steve Spaleta Music: The Launch by Jon Bjork / courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Up to 60% of near-Earth objects could be dark comets, mysterious asteroids that orbit the sun in our solar system that likely contain or previously contained ice and could have been one route for delivering water to Earth, according to a University of Michigan study.

The findings suggest that asteroids in the asteroid belt, a region of the solar system roughly between Jupiter and Mars that contains much of the system’s rocky asteroids, have subsurface ice, something that has been suspected since the 1980s, according to Aster Taylor, a U-M graduate student in astronomy and lead author of the study.

The study also shows a potential pathway for delivering ice into the near-Earth solar system, according to Taylor. How Earth got its water is a longstanding question.

Researchers at the University of Cologne have achieved a significant breakthrough in quantum materials, potentially setting the stage for advancements in topological superconductivity and robust quantum computing / publication in Nature Physics.

A team of experimental physicists led by the University of Cologne have shown that it is possible to create superconducting effects in special materials known for their unique edge-only electrical properties. This discovery provides a new way to explore advanced quantum states that could be crucial for developing stable and efficient quantum computers. Their study, titled ‘Induced superconducting correlations in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator’, has been published in Nature Physics.

Superconductivity is a phenomenon where electricity flows without resistance in certain materials. The quantum anomalous Hall effect is another phenomenon that also causes zero resistance, but with a twist: it is confined to the edges rather than spreading throughout. Theory predicts that a combination of superconductivity and the quantum anomalous Hall effect will give rise to topologically-protected particles called Majorana fermions that will potentially revolutionize future technologies such as quantum computers. Such a combination can be achieved by inducing superconductivity in the edge of a quantum anomalous Hall insulator that is already resistance-free. The resultant chiral Majorana edge state, which is a special type of Majorana fermions, is a key to realizing ‘flying qubits’ (or quantum bits) that are topologically protected.

Researchers combined the drug harmine with a medication similar to Ozempic to boost the number and function of human insulin-producing cells transplanted into mice.

By Lauren J. Young

Dartmouth researchers have developed a self-powered pump that uses natural light and chemistry to target and remove specific water pollutants, according to a new report in the journal Science (“A molecular anion pump”).

As water enters the pump, a wavelength of light activates a synthetic molecular receptor designed to bond to negatively charged ions, or anions, a class of pollutants linked to metabolic disruptions in plants and animals. A second wavelength deactivates the receptors as water exits the pump and causes them to release the pollutants, trapping them in a non-reactive substrate until they can be safely discarded.

“This is a proof of concept that you can use a synthetic receptor to convert light energy into chemical potential for removing a contaminant from a waste source,” says the study’s senior author, Ivan Aprahamian, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth.