Lifeboat Foundation

The mystery behind a strangely dimming star could soon be solved.

Astronomers around the world are keeping a close eye on the star KIC 8462852, which has dimmed dramatically numerous times over the past few years, dropping in brightness by up to 22 percent. These big dips have spurred speculation that the star may be surrounded by some type of alien megastructure — a hypothesis that will be put to the test if and when KIC 8462852 dims again.

“As long as one of those events occurs again, we should be able to catch it in the act, and then we’ll definitely be able to figure out what we’re seeing,” said Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

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People don’t understand how big of a deal this is.

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Post-Human is a scifi proof-of-concept short based on the bestselling series of novels by me, David Simpson. Amazingly, filmed over just three hours by a crew of three, the short depicts the opening of Post-Human, drawing back the curtain on the Post-Human world and letting viewers see the world and characters they’ve only been able to imagine previously. You’ll get a taste of a world where everyone is immortal, have onboard mental “mind’s eye” computers, nanotechnology can make your every dream a reality, and thanks to the magnetic targeted fusion implants every post-human has, everyone can fly (and yep, there’s flying in this short!) But there’s a dark side to this brave new world, including the fact that every post-human is monitored from the inside out, and the one artificial superintelligence running the show might be about to make its first big mistake. wink

The entire crew was only three people, including me, and I was behind the camera at all times. The talent is Madison Smith as James Keats, and Bridget Graham as his wife, Katherine. As a result of the expense of the spectacular location, the entire short had to be filmed in three hours, so we had to be lean and fast. What a rush! (Pun intended).

Continue reading “Post-Human” »

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There are some very inexpensive ways of testing human effects of spinning motions and artificial gravity in space. We could probably do our first tethre based experiments, and our first short arm centrifuge experiments in space as well, within a year or two of deciding that this is a priority project.

But as for building such a module — it would be expensive to do the module — depending how it works. But not impossibly so. They actually had an idea to do this, the Nautilus X ISS demo, costed as between $83 million and $143 million at the time (2011) and requiring three years to develop, so if they had started then, it would be in space by now:

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UC San Diego is establishing a robotics institute aimed at developing machines that can interpret such things as facial expressions and walking styles and size up people’s thoughts, actions and feelings.

The See-Think-Do technology is largely meant to anticipate and fulfill people’s everyday needs, especially for the growing number of older Americans who want to remain in their own homes instead of moving into an assisted-living facility or nursing home.

Engineers also envision creating robots so good at sizing up people, places and situations that they could help evacuate crowds from dangerous areas and pick through the rubble of an earthquake in search of survivors.

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Forty-eight scientists from 50 institutions in the U.S. have formed the Unified Microbiome Initiative Consortium (UMIC). The scientists envision a coordinated effort spanning national cross-institutional and cross-governmental agency support with the goal of driving forward cutting-edge microbiome research, enabling breakthrough advances in medicine, ecosystem management, sustainable energy, and production of commodities. Their proposal was published online in the journal Science on Oct. 28.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyBL_MddTiY

Video streaming by http://www.AllthingsScience.com Oxycyte: Artificial Blood better than the real blood!

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