Lifeboat Foundation

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.

Researchers engineer atomically thin molybdenum ditelluride layers to create self-powered photodetectors, advancing low-energy infrared imaging technology.

Neuromorphic computers are devices that try to achieve reasoning capability by emulating a human brain. They are a different type of computer architecture that copies the physical characteristics and design principles of biological nervous systems. Although neuromorphic computations can be emulated, it’s very inefficient for classical computers to simulate. Typically new hardware is required.

The first neuromorphic computer at the scale of a full human brain is about to come online. It’s called DeepSouth, and will be finished in April 2024 at Western Sydney University. This computer should enable new research into how our brain actually functions, potentially leading to breakthroughs in how AI is created.

Continue reading “Will neuromorphic computers accelerate AGI development?” »

LINKS: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-buy-ai-chips-startup-sam-…i/https:/.…

The new groundbreaking Language Velocity Field (LVF) method is helping researchers trace dispersion patterns of languages, including Greek, across the world.

The spatial evolution of languages can help deepen our understanding of people diffusion and cultural spread. The language velocity field estimation is different from the frequently used phylogeographic approach which cannot fully explain the language evolution induced by the horizontal contact among languages, such as borrowing and areal diffusion.

Continue reading “New Study Sheds Light on Dispersion of Languages, Ancient DNA” »