THE US ARMY IS EQUIPPING SOLDIERS WITH POCKET-SIZED RECON DRONES

{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

05-02-2019 om 22:18 geschreven door peter  

3D Printing 2.0

The replicator might have groundbreaking implications, but it does have some inherent limitations as well: the objects it produces are small, and require special synthetic resin to produce.

But it’s an exciting new technology — and one that could lead to a “Star Trek” future.

READ MORE: 

• Forget everything you know about 3D printing — the ‘replicator’ is here [Nature]

More on 3D printing: 

• We Can Now Easily 3D Print With Metal

{  https://futurism.com/the-byte }

02-02-2019 om 00:58 geschreven door peter  

GOOD EGGS

{ https://futurism.com/ }

29-01-2019 om 00:13 geschreven door peter  

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23-01-2019 om 01:00 geschreven door peter  

KILLER ROBOT SHIPS

{ https://futurism.com/ }

17-01-2019 om 15:27 geschreven door peter  

One of the latest projects to come out of DARPA and the Pentagon’s emerging technologies unit sounds like something straight out of a long-lost Michael Crichton manuscript. According to a call for proposals issued last week, DARPA wants to explore methods of creating “conscious” robots and technologies using insect brains. Don’t these guys watch or read science fiction? Maybe they’re reading and watching too much science fiction.

The project is being called “Microscale Bio-mimetic Robust Artificial Intelligence Networks”, or μBRAIN (pronounced “microBRAIN”). According to its synopsis, the project seeks to combine the latest in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies with the incredible feats of physiology and cognition performed by insects, some of the smallest members of the animal kingdom:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is issuing an Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) opportunity inviting submissions of innovative basic research concepts exploring new computational frameworks and strategies drawn from the impressive computational capabilities of very small flying insects for whom evolutionary pressures have forced scale/size/energy reduction without loss of performance.

The proposal states that while AI systems are advancing exponentially, the amount of hardware and software required to create and maintain these systems makes most modern AI systems too large and unwieldy for many uses in the field. A computer smarter than the whole human race combined is great, but if you have to house it in super-cooled hangar in the desert, how could it possibly wreak havoc on other nations’ electrical grid or spy on the CEOs of Chinese telecom firms?

That’s where tiny insects come in. Or maybe tiny cyborg insects reporting back to their shadowy black budget handlers. According to a document in the Pentagon’s proposal, studying the tiny-but-advanced brains of insects could open up new possibilities in form factor and function for AI systems, opening up new avenues for solving problems in tiny packages:

Nature has forced on these small insects drastic miniaturization and energy efficiency, some having only a few hundred neurons in a compact form-factor, while maintaining basic functionality. Furthermore, these organisms are possibly able to display increased subjectivity of experience, which extends simple look-up table responses to potentially AI-relevant problem solving.

Of course, the science fiction fan in me makes me wonder what would happen if we start transplanting insect brains or neural networks into advanced machines. What happens if one gets loose and trained an army of insects to do its bidding? Didn’t these Pentagon spooks see the latest iteration of the Planet of the Apes franchise? 

Of course, they’re not talking about taking a honeybee’s brain, dropping it into a tiny drone, opening the window, and pointing it in the direction of an Iranian nuclear facility. Studying neural networks is one thing, creating advanced insect cyborg spies is another. Still, as mathematician Ian Malcom notes, nature finds a way, even when we try to tamper with it – maybe especiallywhen we try to tamper with it. If DARPA and the Pentagon are involved, there are military or intelligence applications here, meaning the stakes are high if something goes awry. Like all things AI, though, we won’t know the end result until it’s too late.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

16-01-2019 om 18:35 geschreven door peter  

Devin Coldewey

Light is the fastest thing in the universe, so trying to catch it on the move is necessarily something of a challenge. We’ve had some success, but a new rig built by Caltech scientists pulls down a mind-boggling 10 trillion frames per second, meaning it can capture light as it travels along — and they have plans to make it a hundred times faster.

Understanding how light moves is fundamental to many fields, so it isn’t just idle curiosity driving the efforts of Jinyang Liang and his colleagues — not that there’d be anything wrong with that either. But there are potential applications in physics, engineering, and medicine that depend heavily on the behavior of light at scales so small, and so short, that they are at the very limit of what can be measured.

You may have heard about billion- and trillion-FPS cameras in the past, but those were likely “streak cameras” that do a bit of cheating to achieve those numbers.

A light pulse as captured by the T-CUP system.

If a pulse of light can be replicated perfectly, then you could send one every millisecond but offset the camera’s capture time by an even smaller fraction, like a handful of femtoseconds (a billion times shorter). You’d capture one pulse when it was here, the next one when it was a little further, the next one when it was even further, and so on. The end result is a movie that’s indistinguishable in many ways from if you’d captured that first pulse at high speed.

This is highly effective — but you can’t always count on being able to produce a pulse of light a million times the exact same way. Perhaps you need to see what happens when it passes through a carefully engineered laser-etched lens that will be altered by the first pulse that strikes it. In cases like that, you need to capture that first pulse in real time — which means recording images not just with femtosecond precision, but only femtoseconds apart.

Simple, right?

That’s what the T-CUP method does. It combines a streak camera with a second static camera and a data collection method used in tomography.

“We knew that by using only a femtosecond streak camera, the image quality would be limited. So to improve this, we added another camera that acquires a static image. Combined with the image acquired by the femtosecond streak camera, we can use what is called a Radon transformation to obtain high-quality images while recording ten trillion frames per second,” explained co-author of the study Lihong Wang. That clears things right up!

At any rate the method allows for images — well, technically spatiotemporal datacubes —  to be captured just 100 femtoseconds apart. That’s ten trillion per second, or it would be if they wanted to run it for that long, but there’s no storage array fast enough to write ten trillion datacubes per second to. So they can only keep it running for a handful of frames in a row for now — 25 during the experiment you see visualized here.

Those 25 frames show a femtosecond-long laser pulse passing through a beam splitter — note how at this scale the time it takes for the light to pass through the lens itself is nontrivial. You have to take this stuff into account!

This level of precision in real time is unprecedented, but the team isn’t done yet.

“We already see possibilities for increasing the speed to up to one quadrillion (10¹⁵) frames per second!” enthused Liang in the press release. Capturing the behavior of light at that scale and with this level of fidelity is leagues beyond what we were capable of just a few years ago and may open up entire new fields or lines of inquiry in physics and exotic materials.

• Liang et al.’s paper appeared today in the journal Light.

{ https://techcrunch.com/ }

12-01-2019 om 16:29 geschreven door peter  

‘Fotonenchip’ rekent ultrasnel

{ https://www.eoswetenschap.eu/ }

27-12-2018 om 01:36 geschreven door peter  

The Terrafugia Transition could end the long wait for flying cars

The car-plane hybrid goes on sale in 2019, but experts say air taxis might steal its thunder.

It might not the most elegant-looking thing on the road or in the sky, but an automobile-airplane hybrid that’s being called the world's first practical flying car is almost ready to spread its wings.

The two-passenger Transition will go on sale in the U.S. next year at an estimated price of $400,000, according to Terrafugia, the Woburn, Massachusetts-based firm that makes it.

The Transition has four wheels, folding wings and a rear-mounted “pusher” propeller. Powered by a four-cylinder hybrid-electric engine, it can fly 100 miles an hour at altitudes of up to 9,000 feet, with a flying range of 400 miles. There are controls for both flying and driving: for the roads, conventional brake and accelerator pedals and a steering wheel; for flying, the usual yoke and rudder pedals.

The vehicle converts from driving to flying mode in less than a minute, according to Terrafugia. But don’t expect it to get you out of a traffic jam. Though it’s the first vehicle certified to drive on U.S. roads and fly in U.S. skies, it can take off and land only at airfields — and you’ll need a pilot's license.

Related

TECHNOLOGY

Air Taxis Are About to Take Off. This One Just Did

Many flying car prototypes have been built in recent decades, but none has proven practical enough to become a full-fledged production vehicle. The Transition is designed mainly for light aircraft owners who don’t want to get stuck when bad weather makes flying impossible, or who want to avoid airfield parking fees and fuel costs, according to Terrafugia. The vehicle runs on ordinary premium gasoline and can be kept in a garage at home.

But the company, now owned by Chinese car maker Geely, also hopes the Transition will attract people who are new to private aviation. “We would like people who never thought of becoming a pilot before to consider it because, hey, it’s a flying car,” Carl Dietrich, Terrafugia’s founder, told Smithsonian Air and Space magazine.

Terrafugia was founded in 2006 with a plan for a “flying SUV” that earned Dietrich a prestigious technology prize. But with recent advances in autonomous passenger drones — electrically powered “air taxis” that take off and land vertically without a runway — experts say vehicles like the Transition are likely to be a niche product.

“The world changed while they were working on that vehicle,” says Richard Anderson, an aerospace engineering professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Investors worldwide are pouring billions of dollars into the development of air taxis, with manufacturers like Airbus and Germany’s Volocopter claiming to be well on the way to bringing the vehicles to market. “The business case is absolutely crystal clear, and the technology is here,” Anderson said.

Terrafugia said it is developing its own vertical-takeoff-and-landing passenger vehicle, dubbed the TF-2, that could take to the skies as a piloted aircraft in 2023. That’s likely to be several years before the first self-piloted air taxis get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Anderson said.

“These vehicles are things that were never seen before, so there's a learning process,” Anderson said of the FAA. “Even if they are willing to embrace the technology, they have to understand it before they're going to let it fly over our heads in a city.”

WANT MORE STORIES ABOUT CARS?

• Nissan's 'B2V' system lets you drive a car with brain waves
• This smart race car is driving into the future
• This self-driving car could deliver groceries to your doorstep

{ https://www.nbcnews.com/mach }

26-12-2018 om 23:22 geschreven door peter  

Real life 'shrink ray' can reduce 3D structures to one thousandth of their original size - and could be used to make the next generation of miniature robots

• The 'shrink ray' can reduce 3D structures to one thousandth of their original size
• Scientists can put all kinds of materials in the polymer before they shrink it
• This could include a variety of materials such as metals, quantum dots or DNA 
• These tiny structures could be be used in many fields, including in robotics 

By PHOEBE WESTON FOR MAILONLINE

MIT researchers have created a real life 'shrink ray' that can reduce 3D structures to one thousandth of their original size.

Scientists can put all kinds of useful materials in the polymer before they shrink it, including metals, quantum dots, and DNA.

The process - called implosion fabrication - is essentially the opposite of expansion microscopy, which is widely used by scientists to create 3D visualisations of microscopic cells.

Instead of making things bigger, scientists attach special molecules which block negative charges between molecules so they no longer repel which makes them contract.

Experts say that making such tiny structures could be useful in many fields, including in medicine and for creating nanoscale robotics. 

MIT researchers have created a real life 'shrink ray' that can reduce 3D structures (pictured) to one thousandth of their original size

'It's a way of putting nearly any kind of material into a 3-D pattern with nanoscale precision,' said Edward Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.

Using the new technique, researchers can create any shape and structure they want, according to the paper published in Science.

The method can create lots of different shapes, including tiny hollow spheres to microscopic chains. 

The researchers shrank hollow linked cubes and an Alice in Wonderland etching using the method. 

Scientists say the technique uses equipment that many biology and materials science labs already have, making it widely accessible for researchers who want to try it.

Currently scientists are able to directly print 3D nanonscale objects.

However, this is only possible with specialised materials like polymers and plastics which have limited applications.

After attaching useful materials to the polymer 'scaffold', they shrink it, generating structures one thousandth the volume of the original. The researchers shrank hollow linked cubes (pictured) using this method

Researchers shrank an Alice in Wonderland etching using the method.  Scientists say the technique uses equipment that many biology and materials science labs already have, making it widely accessible for researchers who want to try it

To overcome this, researchers decided to adapt a technique that was developed a few years ago for high-resolution imaging of brain tissue.

This technique, known as expansion microscopy, involves embedding tissue into a hydrogel and then expanding it.

Hundreds of research groups in biology and medicine are now using expansion microscopy as it enables 3D visualisation of cells and tissues with ordinary hardware.

The new technique involves reversing the process. 

By doing this, scientists could create large-scale objects embedded in expanded hydrogels and then shrink them to the nanoscale.

They call this approach 'implosion fabrication.'

Just like they did in expansion microscopy, the researchers used a very absorbent material made of polyacrylate. This is a plastic commonly found in nappies.

Scientists can put all kinds of useful materials in the polymer before they shrink it such as metals, quantum dots and DNA. Pictured is the machine used to shrink objects 

The polyacrylate forms the scaffold over which other materials can be attached.

It is then bathed in a solution that contains molecules of fluorescein, which attach to the scaffold when they are activated by laser light.

Then, they use two-photon microscopy to target points deep within the structure.

They attach fluorescein molecules to these specific locations within the gel.

These acts as anchors that bind to other types of molecules that are in the structure.

'You attach the anchors where you want with light, and later you can attach whatever you want to the anchors,' Dr Boyden said.

'It could be a quantum dot, it could be a piece of DNA, it could be a gold nanoparticle.'

Researchers think these nanobjects could be used to create better lenses for cell phone cameras, microscopes (stock image), or endoscopes

Once the desired molecules are attached in the right locations, the researchers shrink the entire structure by adding an acid.

The acid blocks the negative charges in the polyacrylate gel so that they no longer repel each other, causing the gel to contract.

Using this technique, researchers can shrink the objects 10-fold in each dimension (for an overall 1,000-fold reduction in volume).

This ability to shrink not only allows for increased resolution, but also makes it possible to assemble materials in a low-density scaffold.

This means it can be easily modified and later the material becomes a dense solid when it is shrunk. 

Researchers think these nanobjects could be used to create better lenses for cell phone cameras, microscopes, or endoscopes. 

Farther in the future, researchers say that this approach could be used to build nanoscale electronics or robots.

WILL GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE SPECIES TO SHRINK?

A study conducted by the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada found that over the last century, the beetles in the region have shrunk.

By looking at eight species of beetle and measuring the animals from past and present they found that some beetles were adapting to a reduced body size.

The data also showed that the larger beetles were shrinking, but the smaller ones were not. 

Around 50 million years ago the Earth warmed by three degrees Celsius (5.4°F) and as a result, animal species at the time shrunk by 14 per cent. 

Another warming event around 55 million years ago - called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) - warmed the earth by up to eight degrees Celsius (14.4°F).

In this instance, animal species of the time shrunk by up to a third. 

Woolly mammoths were a victim of warming climate, shrinking habitat and increased hunting from a growing early-human population which drove them to extinction - along with many large animals

Shrinking in body size is seen from several global warming events.

With the global temperatures set to continue to rise, it is expected the average size of most animals will decrease. 

As well as global warming, the world has seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of large animals. 

So called 'megafauna' are large animals that go extinct. With long life-spans and relatively small population numbers, they are less able to adapt to rapid change as smaller animals that reproduce more often. 

Often hunted for trophies or for food, large animals like the mastadon, mammoths and the western black rhino, which was declared extinct in 2011, have been hunted to extinction. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

15-12-2018 om 17:50 geschreven door peter  

Scientists are able to shrink objects

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

15-12-2018 om 17:36 geschreven door peter  

DeepMind is on the forefront of artificial intelligence (A.I.). The computer system it developed, known as AlphaZero, amazed (and terrified) the world in 2017 when it was able to defeat human chess masters at their own game, despite only learning it four hours previous to the matches. That machine has been tested numerous times by even more chess grandmasters, and now people are seeing it do something not yet seen within machines – it is improvising.

Not only was AlphaZero a master at chess, it has also taught itself games such as shogi, commonly called Japanese chess, and Go. In each attempt, AlphaZero was able to beat the previous world champions of the games, who were all human. On DeepMind’s website, developers say they are “thrilled” to see the program developing improvisation and intuition skills, which are not previously known to be in machines.

In a paper published in Science Magazine, it is stated the machine’s ability to master the complicated game of Go and defeat the world champion showed it had use of “deep convolutional neural networks” because it developed a massive knowledge of the game simply by playing it repeatedly to the point the writers of the paper said it has “superhuman performance” in the game.

Computers have been beating humans at chess since 1997, but the addition of shogi, which is far more complicated than chess, and Go, which relies on practice and intuition, shows AlphaZero is able to not only defeat humans at their own games, but ultimately learn how to do it in better and more efficient ways.

When pitted against another chess computer, Stockfish, AlphaZero won 155 of 1,000 matches, with six losses and the rest being draws. Unlike most chess-playing A.I.’s, however, AlphaZero does not prefer to save its pieces, instead opting to sacrifice them for the greater good.

This ability comes from what developers describe as a “neural network with millions of different tunable parameters, each learning its own rules of what is good in chess.” With all of these variables, the machine, much like a human, can look at a situation and know what the best thing to do is.

AlphaZero began with a blank slate mind, developing strategies and tactics based only on the basic rules of the games it plays. It developed its human-like ability to play games based on its experiences.

While many prominent thinkers such as Elon Musk have warned against A.I., citing the possibility such mechanical minds could ultimately lead to human extinction, DeepMind researchers believe studying the way this machine learns how to play games can lead to real issues, such as why proteins become misfolded in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That protein folding conundrum is ultimately the goal of A.I.’s such as AlphaZero built by DeepMind.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-12-2018 om 16:01 geschreven door peter  

Brian Merchant

Artificial intelligence is already beginning to spiral out of our control, a new report from top researchers warns. Not so much in a Skynet kind of sense, but more in a ‘technology companies and governments are already using AI in ways that amp up surveillance and further marginalize vulnerable populations’ kind of way.

On Thursday, the AI Now Institute, which is affiliated with New York University and is home to top AI researchers with Google and Microsoft, released a report detailing, essentially, the state of AI in 2018, and the raft of disconcerting trends unfolding in the field. What we broadly define as AI—machine learning, automated systems, etc.—is currently being developed faster than our regulatory system is prepared to handle, the report says. And it threatens to consolidate power in the tech companies and oppressive governments that deploy AI while rendering just about everyone else more vulnerable to its biases, capacities for surveillance, and myriad dysfunctions.

The report contains 10 recommendations for policymakers, all of which seem sound, as well as a diagnosis of the most potentially destructive trends. “Governments need to regulate AI,” the first recommendation exhorts, “by expanding the powers of sector-specific agencies to oversee, audit, and monitor these technologies by domain.” One massive Department of AI or such that attempts to regulate the field writ large won’t cut it, researchers warn—the report suggests regulators follow examples like the one set by the Federal Aviation Administration and tackle AI as it manifests field by field.

But it also conveys a succinct assessment of the key problem areas in AI as they stand in 2018. As detailed by AI Now, they are:

1. The accountability gap between those who build the AI systems (and profit off of them) and those who stand to be impacted by the systems (you and me) is growing. Don’t like the idea of being subjected to artificially intelligent systems that harvest your personal data or determine various outcomes for you? Too bad! The report finds that the recourse most public citizens have to address the very artificially intelligent systems that may impact them is shrinking, not growing.
2. AI is being used to amplify surveillance, often in horrifying ways. If you think the surveillance capacities of facial recognition technology are disturbing, wait till you see its even less scrupulous cousin, affect recognition. The Intercept’s Sam Biddle has a good write-up of the report’s treatment of affect recognition, which is basically modernized phrenology, practiced in real time.
3. The government is embracing autonomous decision software in the name of cost-savings, but these systems are often a disaster for the disadvantaged. From systems that purport to streamline benefits application processes online to those that claim to be able to determine who’s eligible for housing, so-called ADS systems are capable of uploading bias and erroneously rejecting applicants on baseless grounds. As Virginia Eubanks details in her book Automating Inequality, the people these systems fail are those who are least able to muster the time and resources necessary to address them.
4. AI testing “in the wild” is rampant already. “Silicon Valley is known for its ‘move fast and break things’ mentality,” the report notes, and that is leading to companies testing AI systems in the public sector—or releasing them into the consumer space outright—without substantial oversight. The recent track record of Facebook—the original move fast, break thingser and AI evangelist—alone is example enough of why this strategy can prove disastrous.
5. Technological fixes to biased or problematic AI systems are proving inadequate. Google made waves when it announced it was tackling the ethics of machine learning, but efforts like these are already proving too narrow and technically oriented. Engineers tend to think they can fix engineering problems with, well, more engineering. But what is really required, the report argues, is a much deeper understanding of the history and social contexts of the datasets AI systems are trained on.

The full report is well worth reading, both for a tour of the myriad ways AI entered the public sphere—and collided with the public interest—in 2018, and for a detailed recipe for how our institutions might stay on top of this ever-complicating situation.

---

• This story is part of Automaton, an ongoing investigation into the impacts of AI and automation on the human landscape. For tips, feedback, or other ideas about living with the robots, I can be reached at bmerchant@gizmodo.com.

{ https://gizmodo.com/ }

11-12-2018 om 00:18 geschreven door peter  

MIT designs and builds a plant-robot plantborg that can move towards light

BY ALEXANDRU MICU 

An MIT Media Lab team build a plant-cyborg. Its name is Elowan, and it can move around.

Image credits Harpreet Sareen, Elbert Tiao // MIT Media Labs.

For most people, the word ‘cyborg’ doesn’t bring images of plants to mind — but it does at MIT’s Media Lab. Researchers in Harpreet Sareen’s lab at MIT have combined a plant with electronics to allow it to move. The cyborg — Elowan — relies on the plant’s sensory abilities to detect light and an electric motor to follow it.

Our photosynthesizing overlords

Plants are actually really good at detecting light. Sunflowers are a great example: you can actually see them move to follow the sun on its heavenly trek. Prior research has shown that plants accomplish this through the use of several natural sensors and response systems — among others, they keep track of humidity, temperature levels, and the amount of water in the soil.

However, plant’s aren’t very good at moving to a different place even if their ‘sensor and response systems’ tell them conditions aren’t very great. The MIT team wanted to fix that. They planned to give one plant more autonomy by fitting its pot with wheels, an electric motor, and assorted electrical sensors.

The way the cyborg works is relatively simple. The sensors pick up on the electrical signals generated by the plant and generate commands for the motor and wheels based on them. The result is, in effect, a plant that can move closer to light sources. The researchers proved this by placing the cyborg between two table lamps and then turning them on or off. The plant moved itself, with no prodding, toward the light that was turned on.

While undeniably funny, the research is practical, too. Elowan could be modified in such a way as to allow it to move solar panels on a house’s roof to maximize their light exposure. Alternatively, additional sensors and controlling units would allow a similar cyborg to maintain optimal temperature and humidity levels in, say, an office. With this in mind, the team plans to continue their research, including more species of plants to draw on their unique evolutionary adaptations.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

07-12-2018 om 22:58 geschreven door peter  

While we all tacitly agree not to think about the many secret Island of Doctor Moreau-style genetic research labs hidden throughout the world creating horrible genetic hybrids and superhumans as we speak, last week’s very public announcement of the successful births of two twins whose genes were altered using CRISPR/Cas-9 shocked the world due to its brazenness. According to a video posted to YouTube, a Chinese researcher named He Jiankui claims to have modified the genomes of twin baby girls in order to make them completely resistant to HIV.

What could go wrong?

Within hours, the scientific community and journalists around the world began to criticize the experiment as reckless and dangerous, even going so far as to call He the “Chinese Frankenstein.” Harvard and MIT’s David Liu, one of the inventors of CRISPR techniques, called the experiment “an appalling example of what not to do about a promising technology that has great potential to benefit society,” adding he hopes “it never happens again.” Who knew tampering with the genetic makeup of living human beings would be so controversial? Aside from, you know, everyone. Aside from the criticism, the story of He Jiankui and the genetically modified twins has taken a turn for the strange this week when the researcher seems to have gone mysteriously missing. Where could He be?

Probably making Christmas lights in a Chinese prison.

There are conflicting reports about He’s whereabouts and Chinese news outlets are predictably tight-lipped about the matter. When asked about the geneticist, a spokeswoman for the Southern University of Science and Technology where He was an employee gave a rather enigmatic statement:

Right now nobody’s information is accurate, only the official channels are. We cannot answer any questions regarding the matter right now, but if we have any information, we will update it through our official channels.

Of course, their official channels have not been updated. In the meantime, He’s laboratory has been shut down by Chinese authorities who stated that “clinical procedures of gene-editing on human embryos for reproduction purposes are explicitly banned in China.” Is He merely in hiding to avoid all of the negative press and criticism from the entire scientific community, or has he been disappeared in classically Chinese fashion for causing the Middle Kingdom to lose face? Until – or if – this “Chinese Frankenstein” resurfaces, this one will remain a mystery.

Ah, who are we kidding? He’s organs have already been harvested in the back of a mobile execution van. Such is the price of scientific “progress.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

05-12-2018 om 18:35 geschreven door peter  

While businesses in the U.S. struggle to decide the future of autonomous cars and how (or if) the public will receive and use them (attacking driverless vehicles is not a good sign; autonomous cars in fatal accidents is even worse), China announced it is building an entire autonomous, robots-only city … under the ocean … as a port and laboratory for unmanned submarines … and it’s named after Hades, the mythological king of the underworld. Are you worried yet?

“It is as challenging as building a colony on another planet for robotic residents with artificial intelligence. The technology can change the world.”

Or take it over? South China Morning Post quotes an unnamed scientist who has a rosy view of the Hadal zone project – a robotic Atlantis in the deepest trench of the South China Sea. It’s pictured as an underwater space station with multiple platforms and docks for subsea drones. It’s projected to cost Chinese taxpayers just 1.1 billion yuan (US$160 million), with much of the funding going to developing materials that can withstand the pressure at that depth … not to mention the volcanoes.

If you’re going to build the world’s first and deepest autonomous Atlantis, you might as well pick the worst place and most dangerous place imaginable – the Manila Trench in the South China Sea where, at a depth of 5,400 meters, the southeastern part of Eurasian plate meets the Pacific plate and create sizeable underwater volcanoes and earthquakes that could affect large parts of the surface with quakes and tsunamis. Throw in the fact that the South China Sea is a politically volatile area causing disturbances between the governments and militaries of China and the Philippines, and you have to wonder what other reasons may have prompted China to pick this area … and why it will be unmanned.

“China and the Philippines should sit down and discuss it. A tsunami [warning] is a big selling point. Data collected by the station would benefit all countries in the region. It could save many lives.”

Professor Yan Pin, a researcher at the Key Laboratory of Ocean and Marginal Sea Geology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou, pushes the ideas that this will primarily be an earthquake and tsunami warning station and the data it collects will be shared with the Philippines and other countries. China’s President Xi Jinping, in a speech designed to inspire the engineers working on the project, called it a “march into the ocean to accelerate the build-up of maritime power.” Dr Du Qinghai, an associate researcher at the Hadal Science and Technology Research Centre at Shanghai Ocean University who is not involved with the project, is blunter.

“No other country has done this before. The project will make China stronger, more advanced. It will boost the material sciences, stimulate innovation and make Chinese manufacturing more competitive. It will make China a world leader in some critical areas.”

China is building an autonomous Atlantis. Its drive for technical superiority and willingness to spend money on may feel threatening but it is also impressive. Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying to get excited about automatic parallel parking and Americans are going to movies about Aquaman.

Are you worried yet?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

02-12-2018 om 15:51 geschreven door peter  

‘Crispr-tweeling’ roept heftige reacties op

{ https://www.eoswetenschap.eu/ }

29-11-2018 om 17:57 geschreven door peter  

Here it is: the moment historians will look back upon as the dawn of Homo sapiens superior and the moment when us natural-borns get knocked down a peg on the social hierarchy. For decades, science fiction writers have foretold a future in which genetically-superior humans made possible by gene modification techniques will rise above us lowly normies with their enhanced intelligence and physiology, greater resistance to diseases, and stunning good looks of course. The prospect of editing the human genome has remained taboo, though, for longstanding ethical and moral reasons. Naturally, human-rights-optional China has ignored these and blazed ahead and given the world its first two genetically-modified superbabies whether we want them or not. It begins.

Evolution is just too slow.

This isn’t the first time Chinese scientists have tested CRISPR on humans. As early as 2015, Chinese researchers were already altering the genomes of human embryos in laboratories – embryos which were never gestated. Now, geneticists Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen have taken these techniques one step further by modifying the genomes of two embryos which were implanted into a human womb via in vitro fertilization. Those embryos are now two happy and healthy baby girls, Lulu and Nana. Scientists led by He Jiankui altered the girls’ genomes so that they will be immune to HIV – in theory. In statements made this week, He assures that the only changes made to the girls’ genomes were to the “doorway” which would allow HIV to potentially infect the girls. Who knows what unforeseen consequences might arise from the editing process, though?

The research has not yet been submitted for peer review and publication, so many scientists remain skeptical of the Chinese team’s claims. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley who helped develop CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, warns that this trial is a “break from the cautious and transparent approach of the global scientific community’s application of CRISPR-Cas9 for human germline editing” adding that she and other scientists around the world are still “struggling to figure out what was done and also whether the process was done properly. We just don’t know yet.”

What will the future bring us now that we have the potential to alter the human genome as we see fit?

Many nations experimented with eugenics and other controlled breeding programs throughout the 20th century, but the advances made by CRISPR and other recent technologies let scientists remove all uncertainty from the equation (in theory) and edit the human genome on a gene-by-gene basis, opening the doors for all sorts of modifications with unknown long-term consequences.

While removing the chance for these girls to contract HIV can’t possibly be seen as a bad thing, this trial is the first to go over the apex and start sliding down the slipperiest of slopes. What’s next? Removing all cancer genes? Sure. Eradicating mental illnesses through removing their gene markers? Go right ahead. Creating an army of genetic Übermensch (more like 超人) capable of crushing genetically inferior opposing forces?

I, for one, welcome our new genetic overlords.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-11-2018 om 00:15 geschreven door peter  

Chinese scientists created the world’s first gene-edited babies

BY TIBI PUIU 

A group of Chinese researchers recruited couples in order to create the first gene-edited babies — a pair of twin girls born earlier this month. The controversial initiative aims to make babies resistant to certain diseases and pathogens, such as HIV infections.

The news was first reported by MIT Technology Review, which obtained official medical documents (1 and 2) filed by researchers at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen.

According to the documents, the Chinese researchers want to use the gene-editing tool CRISPR to modify human embryos and then transfer them into women’s uteruses. They plan to edit the CCR5 gene in such a way as to potentially make the offspring resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera. Using the

The team led by He Jiankui previously carried out tests on fetuses as late as 24 weeks, or six months, into the pregnancy. Their first tests on human embryos in a dish were carried in 2015, causing an ethical debate among the scientific community.

Although gene editing on humans is prohibited in most countries (China has banned cloning but not human embryo gene editing specifically), He and colleagues seem nevertheless bent on experimenting with gene editing and human cells. The major concern is that any edits will be passed on to offspring, thus making their way into the gene pool. As such, potentially troublesome mutations could become relatively widespread. On the other hand, even if the gene editing process is flawless, any beneficial gene edits — such as enhanced resistance to disease and even intelligence — could result in unfair advantages and may open the door for eugenic practices.

Jiankui He.

Credit: SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.

It’s all uncharted territory, and the long-term consequences of gene editing on humans can be unpredictable, which is why the scientific community advises caution. In stark contrast to this cautionary approach, He claimed that his team has “a strong responsibility that it’s not just to make a first, but also make it an example.”

He says that the aim of the trial is not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but rather to bestow traits that few people naturally have. Specifically, the ability to resist an infection with HIV, which some individuals from Western European populations have due to a rare CCR5 genetic mutation. This gene forms a protein doorway that allows HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, to enter a cell; the mutation alters this doorway, physically blocking the virus from entering the cell.

According to the Associated Press, the Chinese researchers have altered embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments, with one pregnancy being carried to term thus far. All the men involved in the trial had HIV, while the women did not. This claim, however, is unverified, and the work has yet to be published in any journal.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

The gene editing occurred during the lab dish fertilization (IVF) stage. The researchers first separated sperm from semen, the fluid which may contain HIV. A single sperm cell was joined with a single egg to form an embryo, which was subjected to gene editing via CRISPR. Once the embryos were 3 to 5 days old, some cells were removed and checked for editing. Overall, the Chinese researchers edited 16 of 22 embryos, out of which 11 embryos were used in six implant attempts, resulting in a single twin pregnancy. The couples could choose whether to use edited or unedited embryos for their pregnancy attempts.

Tests suggest that one twin had both copies of the altered gene and the other twin had just one altered copy. There was no evidence that suggests harm to other genes, according to He. People with only one copy of the CCR5 gene can still get HIV. Further pregnancies are on hold until the twin pregnancy is deemed safe.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

26-11-2018 om 20:15 geschreven door peter  

Killer Robots? They Are Reality. Should We Be Concerned?

As I write this my robot vacuum cleaner hums away downstairs quietly doing its thing, sometimes rumbling over the air vent in such a way that I can hear it upstairs in my office. It has a name – Sharknado.

The robot vacuum is great. I was initially skeptical. How could it do a decent job ? It’s a rolling disk with brushes. How could it do anything close to the job of a conventional vacuum? But after 2 sessions with the thing I was convinced. As I marveled at the nice fresh family room courtesy of our new gadget I became a believer.

It was yesterday that I heard my wife yell to the kids that they needed to pick their headphones up off the floor “so the robot could clean” their rooms. The sentence gave me pause.

It won’t be long before yards are cut, kids are driven to school, dogs are walked, beds are made, and meals are cooked by robots on a large scale. The trajectory seems clear. The robots are coming.

In a more narrow sense we need to be aware of the fact that robots represent a leap in warfare, and that the leap is happening right now. If robot slaves can go to war and do the bidding of governments (and other entities with resources), governments are going to use them. Imagine a Golden Horde of automated soldiers sweeping into a city to raise it. Consider how one would counter such an assault. (Likely with other robots.) Consider what it means to have these machines wandering the landscape. Machines that with time may prove more robust than relatively fragile humans. We’d better make sure we do some real hard thinking before we end up with a Terminator-like situation. No joke and God forbid.

(From The Daily Beast)

The introduction of automatons into factory jobs has lead to the displacement of hundreds of workers, and has forced surviving workers to work harder, longer, and more intricate jobs. Christoph Walter, a robotics engineer in Freiburg, Germany, doesn’t see automated labor as an issue, though. When interviewed in the documentary, he explains, “We don’t want to replace a worker [with a robot]. We want to support workers.”

• Click here for the article.
• http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/

Source: 

• https://www.ac2news.com/2018/11/killer-robots-they-are-reality-should-we-be-concerned/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

25-11-2018 om 16:30 geschreven door peter