Lifeboat Foundation

An app for Glass aimed at factory workers can understand spoken language and respond with oral responses. Next up: image recognition.

New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.”

Adding graphene to a gel makes a 3D-printable substance that dries to be strong and conductive and heals when wet.

The ranks of the ebolavirus genus have grown for the first time in a decade, with the identification of a new strain in free-tailed bats in Sierra Leone. It is not yet known if it is harmful to humans, but its discovery will assist scientists trying to better understand how the virus hides between outbreaks, and by extension help our efforts to better contain them.

Love is a burning thing and it makes a fiery ring. Black holes, however, do not.

New research disproves the so-called “firewall” theory, which suggests the ring of fire around a supernova would incinerate anything sucked into its gravitational pull.

Continue reading “Scientists Poke Holes in Supernova ‘Firewall’ Theory” »

With more than 5.6 million articles, Wikipedia is an invaluable resource, whether you’re throwing a term paper together at the last minute, or doing legal research on whether it can really be considered assault if your victim habitually made the “cows outstanding in their field” joke. We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 5,690,195-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This week’s entry: Vertical farming

What it’s about: Ah, the farmer’s life. The smell of the soil, the green of the leaves, the view from the 45th floor. Yes, like bathrooms before them, farms are moving into the future by moving indoors. Hydroponic farming has made vertical farms possible, in which floor after floor of a building is devoted to growing food. One such farm in Buffalo, New York contains 17 million plans, and a “windowless farm” in Kyoto produces 6 million heads of lettuce a year.

Continue reading “Tomato, ToMacco: Farmers are elevating their crops with vertical farming” »

A new interview on LEAF with biogerontologist Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães.

Today, we have an interview with Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães, the biogerontologist who created and runs senescence.info. In the unlikely event that his name is new to you, we had another interview with him last year, which you can check out here.

How do you think we age; are we programmed to die, do we wear out, or is the truth a mixture of both?

Continue reading “An Interview With Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães” »

When it comes to new materials, thin is most definitely in. Brazilian researchers have created a new two-dimensional material called hematene, which is made up of sheets of iron ore just three atoms thick. And as is often the case with 2D materials, hematene seems to have different properties to its regular form.

“The eyes are the window of the soul.” Cicero said that. But it’s a bunch of baloney.

Unless you’re a state-of-the-art set of machine-learning algorithms with the ability to demonstrate links between eye movements and four of the big five personality traits.

If that’s the case, then Cicero was spot on.

Continue reading “Artificial intelligence can predict your personality” »