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Mar 23, 2018

Bioquark Inc. — Evolution of the New SuperHuman — Ira Pastor

Posted by in categories: alien life, bioengineering, business, cosmology, DNA, genetics, health, life extension, transhumanism

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Mar 23, 2018

The World’s Biggest Crypto Exchange Is Heading to Malta

Posted by in categories: cryptocurrencies, finance

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by traded value, is seeking a fresh start in the Mediterranean.

The company, founded last year in Hong Kong, is planning to open an office in Malta, said founder Zhao Changpeng in an interview from Hong Kong. Binance will soon start a “fiat-to-crypto exchange” on the European island nation, and is close to securing a deal with local banks that can provide access to deposits and withdrawals, he said, without providing a timeframe.

“We are very confident we can announce a banking partnership there soon,” Zhao said. “Malta is very progressive when it comes to crypto and fintech.”

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Mar 23, 2018

An all-seeing eye

Posted by in category: space

Astronomers spend their time gazing out into the Universe — and occasionally the Universe seems to peer right back! This image, a composite of data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a very rare cosmic sight: a pair of interacting galaxies that have taken on an ocular structure.

As the name suggests, some types of grazing encounters between galaxies create shapes that resemble the human eye. While galaxy collisions of this type are not uncommon, only a few galaxies with eye-like, or ocular, structures have been observed. The paucity of these features is likely due to their very ephemeral nature — ocular structures like these tend to only last for several tens of millions of years, which is merely the blink of an eye in a galactic lifetime.

These two galaxies are named IC 2163 (left) and NGC 2207 (right) — IC 2163 displays the ocular structure in this image. The duo lies approximately 114 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Canis Major (The Greater Dog).

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Mar 23, 2018

Scientists develop tiny tooth-mounted sensors that can track what you eat

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health, wearables

Monitoring in real time what happens in and around our bodies can be invaluable in the context of health care or clinical studies, but not so easy to do. That could soon change thanks to new, miniaturized sensors developed by researchers at the Tufts University School of Engineering that, when mounted directly on a tooth and communicating wirelessly with a mobile device, can transmit information on glucose, salt and alcohol intake. In research to be published soon in the journal Advanced Materials, researchers note that future adaptations of these sensors could enable the detection and recording of a wide range of nutrients, chemicals and physiological states.

Previous wearable devices for monitoring dietary intake suffered from limitations such as requiring the use of a mouth guard, bulky wiring, or necessitating frequent replacement as the rapidly degraded. Tufts engineers sought a more adoptable technology and developed a sensor with a mere 2mm x 2mm footprint that can flexibly conform and bond to the irregular surface of a tooth. In a similar fashion to the way a toll is collected on a highway, the sensors transmit their data wirelessly in response to an incoming radiofrequency signal.

The sensors are made up of three sandwiched layers: a central “bioresponsive” layer that absorbs the nutrient or other chemicals to be detected, and outer layers consisting of two square-shaped gold rings. Together, the three layers act like a tiny antenna, collecting and transmitting waves in the radiofrequency spectrum. As an incoming wave hits the sensor, some of it is cancelled out and the rest transmitted back, just like a patch of blue paint absorbs redder wavelengths and reflects the blue back to our eyes.

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Mar 23, 2018

The trillion dollar company: is this Britain’s Apple?

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Artificial intelligence, Fintech and HealthTech offer areas where UK can lead the world — will Britain develop the world’s first trillion dollar company?

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Mar 23, 2018

Niti Aayog Chalking Out Much Needed Policy on AI for India

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

India’s artificial intelligence journey could get a big boost this year.

The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog is reportedly going to release a first-ever national policy on AI directly rivalling whatever’s going on in China on the subject. The policy will chalk out the scope of AI via research and how the technology will be adopted in the years to come.

According to an Economic Times report, NITI Aayog will form the policy with short, medium and long term goals in mind, spread up to 2030.

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Mar 23, 2018

More Sinkholes Could Form as Texas is ‘Punctured Like a Pin Cushion’

Posted by in category: futurism

There are two large sinkholes in West Texas, both near the town of Wink. These sinkholes are growing and are thought to be the result of destabilized ground caused by oil production in the area. A new study shows that Wink is not the only part of West Texas that suffers from shaky terrain.

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Mar 23, 2018

The space race: NZ’s push into a $320 billion market

Posted by in categories: business, entertainment, media & arts, space travel

Space has suddenly become big in New Zealand, but Rocket Lab is just one example of what is starting to look like exponential growth in commercial activity. Business consultant and self-confessed space junkie Kevin Jenkins looks into how things are shaping up.

One space narrative is about disappointment. The 1950s and 1960s were about possibilities, and landing on the Moon seemed to prove that the science fiction of the 20th century really was just history written before it happened. But the promise of space seemed to peter out. The Apollo moon programme came to look more like a peak or end-point, rather than the trial run for Mars some in the space programme had hoped it would be.

After Apollo, “space” seemed to shift back to being more of a popular culture theme. For example, the famous song, album and movie Space is the Place is by one of my favourite jazz weirdos, Sun Ra, who was adamant he came from Saturn. Space became a dominant meme in pop and rock music too, as well as a mainstay in novels and films.

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Mar 23, 2018

Ballet of interacting galaxies

Posted by in category: space

The pair of galaxies NGC 1531/2, engaged in a spirited waltz, is located about 70 million light-years away towards the southern constellation Eridanus (The River). The deformed foreground spiral galaxy laced with dust lanes NGC 1532 is so close to its companion — the background galaxy with a bright core just above the centre of NGC 1532 — that it gets distorted: one of its spiral arms is warped and plumes of dust and gas are visible above its disc. The cosmic dance leads to another dramatic effect: a whole new generation of massive stars were born in NGC 1532 because of the interaction. They are visible as the purple objects in the spiral arms.

This exquisite image was made using the 1.5-metre Danish telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory, Chile. It is based on data obtained through three different filters: B, V and R. The field of view is 12 × 12 arcmin.

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Mar 23, 2018

A Tour of Earth’s Spaceports

Posted by in category: space travel

Will the wagers of a few entrepreneurs yield a golden age in space exploration?

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