Lifeboat Foundation

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Disney’s animatronics are coming a long way from drunken pirates waving flagons of ale or hippos that wiggle their ears. In the (relatively) near future, robotic versions of Iron Man or Buzz Lightyear could be performing autonomous acrobatics overhead in Disney theme parks, thanks to the newly-unveiled Stuntronics robot.

Animatronic characters have populated Disney parks for more than half a century, albeit often just looping a specific movement over and over. In recent years Disney Research has tried to make the robots more agile and interactive, developing versions that can grab objects more naturally, and even juggle and play catch with visitors.

Continue reading “Look, up in the sky! It’s Disney’s new autonomous acrobatic robot” »

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Happy Independence Day to all my American friends!

Chinese physicists realized a genuine entanglement of 18 quantum particles, beating their own world record set in 2016, while the team has set their next goal at 50-qubit entanglement.

The result of the study was published in the US journal Physical Review Letters on June 28. Chinese leading quantum physicist Pan Jianwei led the project. Together with his team, Pan earlier demonstrated quantum entanglement with 10 quantum bits, or “qubits,” in 2016, according to a report sent by Pan’s team to Global Times on Tuesday.

Quantum entanglement is a weird phenomenon which Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” where quantum particles are connected “even if they are at opposite ends of the universe,” an Australia-based Cosmos Magazine reported.

Continue reading “Chinese Physicists’ Quantum Achievement Signals Dawn of Supercomputer” »

This galactic collision might be more impactful than you think.

Charania told GeekWire that the first Blue Moon landing could take place even before 2023.

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, is laying out a plan to support the creation of permanent settlements on the moon, starting with a lunar landing mission within the next five years.

Continue reading “Blue Origin targets moon landing by 2023 as an early step toward lunar settlement” »

Bizarre fossils from China are revealing our species’ Asian origins and rewriting the story of human evolution.

By Kate Douglas

DECEMBER 1941. Japan has just entered the second world war. China, already fighting its neighbour, is in the firing line. At the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Hu Chengzhi carefully packs two wooden crates with the world’s most precious anthropological artefacts. Peking Man – in reality some 200 fossilised teeth and bones, including six skulls – is to be shipped to the US for safekeeping. This is the last anyone ever sees of him.

Continue reading “Asia’s mysterious role in the early origins of humanity” »

An exciting experimental drug developed by scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine has been found to stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease in live mice models. The new drug could be the first medication to specifically slow the progression of the devastating disease as opposed to current treatments that only target the symptoms.

Microglia are a kind of immune cell primarily found in the brain. One of the neurodegenerative processes that occurs in the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients is when the microglial cells send chemical signals to another kind of brain cell called astrocytes. This signal spurns those astrocytes into more aggressive behaviors, eating away at connections between neurons.

“The activated astrocytes we focused on go into a revolt against the brain,” explains Ted Dawson, one of the researchers on the project, “and this structural breakdown contributes to the dead zones of brain tissue found in those with Parkinson’s disease. The idea was that if we could find a way to calm those astrocytes, we might be able to slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease.”

Continue reading “Drug that stops progression of Parkinson’s disease heads for human trials” »