Lifeboat Foundation

The opportunity for intellectual freedom is what drew Anna Ijjas to the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science. As an associate research scholar, Ijjas studies basic questions about the universe’s origin and future. “PCTS provided an environment that encouraged me to question established paradigms and pursue unexplored possibilities,” said Ijjas, who is Princeton’s John A. Wheeler Postdoctoral Fellow in cosmology and astroparticle physics. “Independence and creativity are real values at the center.”

Those values were on display at a conference in May to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the center, which trains early-career researchers and provides a place where theoretical scientists — defined as those who use mathematics to study the natural world — can tackle the biggest questions in science, from the search for dark matter to global climate simulations to theories of quantum gravity.

“The range of topics presented at the PCTS@ten conference demonstrates that we’ve reached the goal we set 10 years ago, which is to develop a new breed of theorists with a much broader view of science than they would normally get from typical postdoctoral training,” said Paul Steinhardt, Princeton’s Albert Einstein Professor in Science and the center’s director since 2007.

Continue reading “A decade of deep thinking: Princeton Center for Theoretical Science celebrates 10 years” »

Technology, meet your future beyond AI & Quantum.

While scientists study the possibilities of storing data in DNA, the web magazine Engadget reports that another group of researchers are looking into the possibility of utilizing living cells for next-generation computing.

The latest studies have developed a method of integrating both analog and digital computing into gene-based circuits. This allowed researchers to convert analog chemical reactions into binary output, or the ones and zeros that regular computers understand.

Continue reading “The future of computing may lie in living cells” »

A black hole may carry “soft hair,” low-energy quantum excitations that release information when the black hole evaporates.

Four decades ago, Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes could destroy information—a conclusion that is incompatible with standard laws of quantum physics. This idea started a controversy known as the “black hole information problem” that even now has not been resolved. A new study by Hawking himself and Malcom Perry, both at the University of Cambridge, and by Andrew Strominger at Harvard University shows that some of the assumptions that led to the information problem might be wrong [1]. Their results do not completely solve the problem, but point to a promising research direction that might lead to its long-awaited solution.

According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, stationary black holes are completely determined by just three observable parameters: their mass, charge, and angular momentum. Almost none of the information about what fell into the black hole is visible from the outside. Physicist John Wheeler described this idea by saying that “black holes have no hair.”

New calculations by Dr. Hawking and other researchers suggest that essential properties of whatever falls into these cosmic pits may survive.

Oregon Health & Science University is currently seeking volunteers for human testing of its “promising” HIV vaccine. If that’s not enough, the Oregon university’s approach to its ground-breaking HIV vaccine is reportedly being used to develop vaccines for other diseases and infections, including tuberculosis. While many believe the TB is virtually eradicated, it actually kills almost 2 million people every year.

As Oregon Live reports, the Oregon university’s novel HIV vaccine could equate a huge step forward in the fight against HIV, as well as give the Oregon school the confidence and research it needs to pursue vaccinations against other deadly infections. In addition to being a stepping stone toward the prevention of HIV and TB, the current vaccine trials could open the door for vaccines that would prevent malaria and hepatitis C, among others.

“HIV is the poster child because it affects so many people, but there are many other conditions that are also extremely challenging to prevent or cure.”

Continue reading “HIV: Oregon University Seeking Volunteers For HIV Vaccine Human Trials” »

Elon Musk is confident that SpaceX will be able to send people to Mars in 2024, with arrival in 2025. This is in line with his long-term vision of colonizing the Red Planet, as he strongly believes it is the next step in ensuring the survival of human civilization.

After saying that the chances of us not being a computer simulation is just one in billions, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, went on to say that SpaceX will be sending people to Mars by 2024, with arrival planned for 2025.

When asked about what he thinks the government on Mars will be, he playfully joked: “Well I think I was just declared king of Mars a moment ago.”

Continue reading “SpaceX Is Heading to Mars in 2018 and Sending Humans in 2025” »

Trailer for The Space Between Us, starring Asa Butterfield and Britt Robertson.

In this interplanetary adventure, a space shuttle embarks on the first mission to colonize Mars, only to discover after takeoff that one of the astronauts is pregnant. Shortly after landing, she dies from complications while giving birth to the first human born on the red planet – never revealing who the father is. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Gardner Elliot – an inquisitive, highly intelligent boy who reaches the age of 16 having only met 14 people in his very unconventional upbringing. While searching for clues about his father, and the home planet he’s never known, Gardner begins an online friendship with a street smart girl in Colorado named Tulsa. When he finally gets a chance to go to Earth, he’s eager to experience all of the wonders he could only read about on Mars – from the most simple to the extraordinary. But once his explorations begin, scientists discover that Gardner’s organs can’t withstand Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s not all that easy to call KnuEdge a startup. Created a decade ago by Daniel Goldin, the former head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, KnuEdge is only now coming out of stealth mode. It has already raised $100 million in funding to build a “neural chip” that Goldin says will make data centers more efficient in a hyperscale age.

Goldin, who founded the San Diego, California-based company with the former chief technology officer of NASA, said he believes the company’s brain-like chip will be far more cost and power efficient than current chips based on the computer design popularized by computer architect John von Neumann. In von Neumann machines, memory and processor are separated and linked via a data pathway known as a bus. Over the years, von Neumann machines have gotten faster by sending more and more data at higher speeds across the bus as processor and memory interact. But the speed of a computer is often limited by the capacity of that bus, leading to what some computer scientists to call the “von Neumann bottleneck.” IBM has seen the same problem, and it has a research team working on brain-like data center chips. Both efforts are part of an attempt to deal with the explosion of data driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Goldin’s company is doing something similar to IBM, but only on the surface. Its approach is much different, and it has been secretly funded by unknown angel investors. And Goldin said in an interview with VentureBeat that the company has already generated $20 million in revenue and is actively engaged in hyperscale computing companies and Fortune 500 companies in the aerospace, banking, health care, hospitality, and insurance industries. The mission is a fundamental transformation of the computing world, Goldin said.

Continue reading “Former NASA chief unveils $100 million neural chip maker KnuEdge” »

A Russian developer here has created an open source computer vision platform, in collaboration with Facebook and Google, that acts as a teaching machine and enables them “see”.

VisionLabs, a solutions developer in the field of computer vision, data analysis and robotics, and a Skolkovo IT Cluster resident have developed this as a global open-source computer vision project with the support of Facebook and Google, an official said.

VisionLabs integrated two popular libraries for developers — OpenCV and Torch. The joint project with Facebook and Google was launched last year. “The two IT giants became interested in the in-depth study of neural networks and artificial intelligence and hence extended their support,” the official told IANS.

Continue reading “Russian developer collaborates with FB, Google to help ‘machines see’” »