Science & TechnologyS


Robot

Russian millionaire hopes to upload his personality into a robot to stave off death

Kate Palmer
The Telegraph
Sun, 13 Mar 2016 15:42 UTC
Dmitry Itskov
Dmitry Itskov says his group of scientists and robot-makers can make immortality a reality within three decades.
Money can buy you immortality, according to the Russian internet multi-millionaire who is ploughing a fortune into a project to create a human that never dies.

Web entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov is behind the "2045 Initiative", an ambitious experiment to bring about immortality within the next 30 years by creating a robot capable of storing human personalities.

The group of neuroscientists, robot builders and consciousness researchers say they can create an android that is capable of uploading someone's personality.

Mr Itskov, who has made a reported £1bn from his Moscow-based news publishing company, is the project's financial backer.
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Rocket

ExoMars: Successful launch of joint Russia-Europe rocket to seek signs of life on the Red Planet


RT
Mon, 14 Mar 2016 11:06 UTC
ExoMars
© Reuters The Proton-M rocket, carrying the ExoMars 2016 spacecraft to Mars, blasts off from the launchpad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, March 14, 2016
A rocket has blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying a pair of spacecraft which hope to find if there really is life on Mars. The probes will travel almost 500 million km, meaning scientists will have to wait a while to get their first readings. Mission control at the space center in Kazakhstan gave the ExoMars operation the all clear, saying, "The rocket has started successfully," after lift-off at 09:31 GMT, Roscosmos stated. The first three separation stages all went according to plan, before the Breeze-M booster stage took over to give extra thrust. This was also successfully completed, according to information on the European Space Agency (ESA) website and Igor Komarov from Roscosmos.

Russia's space agency and the ESA are embarking on the mission to Mars to try and get a better understanding of the Red Planet and, of course, searching for signs of life. However, it is going to take the spacecraft seven months to get there. There are not one, but two probes, which will be looking to find things of interest on the fourth planet from the sun: the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and a small module called Schiaparelli. When the Proton rocket eventually reaches Mars in October, the TGO will orbit the planet using its sensors to pick up information that could show scientists that life once existed. Meanwhile the Schiaparelli module will actually land on the planet itself and take readings.

Comment: ExoMars is a unique example of the Russian-European cooperation in deep-space exploration:
Of special interest are the abundance and distribution of methane: its presence implies an active, current source, and TGO will help to determine whether it stems from a geological or biological source.
See also:

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Satellite

Real-life 'Death Star' continues to destroy alien worlds


Space.com
Fri, 11 Mar 2016 02:06 UTC
asteroid disintegration
© Mark A. GarlickIn this artist's conception, a Ceres-like asteroid is slowly disintegrating as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have spotted telltales signs of such an object using data from the Kepler K2 mission.
The real-life "Death Star" that astronomers recently caught in the act of destroying a planet is continuing to disintegrate nearby orbiting objects, researchers say.

This finding could shed light on how dead stars rip apart their planetary systems — a phenomenon that could happen in Earth's solar system billions of years from now, scientists added.

Recently, astronomers detected a dead star tearing apart a planetesimal — a small planetary body, such as a dwarf planet, large asteroid or moon. The dead star is a white dwarfknown as WD 1145+017, which lies about 570 light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
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Magnet

Tiny bar magnets in computer chips offer computing with one million times less energy


Sputnik
Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:52 UTC
Magnetic microscope image of three nanomagnetic computer bits
© Jeongmin Hong, Jeffrey BokorMagnetic microscope image of three nanomagnetic computer bits.
Scientists at the University of Berkeley have found that the amount of energy used per operation by computer components can be reduced to as little as one-millionth what it is now, if the transistors in modern computers are replaced with new magnetic chips.

"We wanted to know how small we could shrink the amount of energy needed for computing," explained Jeffrey Bokor, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of Berkeley and senior author of a paper about the breakthrough published in the journal Science Advances on Friday. "The biggest challenge in designing computers and, in fact, all our electronics today is reducing their energy consumption."
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Galaxy

Astronomers discover 'BOSS Great Wall': Billion-light-year-sized galaxy structure composed of superclusters


RT
Sat, 12 Mar 2016 17:47 UTC
astronomy BOSS great wall
© Science Photo Library/CorbisAn illustration of galaxy superclusters and cosmic voids, similar to the structure of the BOSS Great Wall
The massive galaxy wall discovered by a Canary Islands-based research team is a billion light years big. It is estimated to contain at least 10,000 times the mass of our Milky Way, so it should be no surprise it's part of a project called 'BOSS.'

Galaxies form clusters - groups of relatively neighboring galaxies - much the same way as our planets form the solar system and star systems form galaxies. If a group of clusters is big enough, astronomers christen it a 'supercluster.' What comes next, you might ask? Well, the answer is Great Walls, such as the BOSS Great Wall (BGW) discovered by Heidi Lietzen and her team at the Canary Islands' Institute of Astrophysics.

"We found two walls of galaxies ... that are larger in volume and diameter than any previously known superclusters. Together they form the system of the BOSS Great Wall, which is more extended than any other known structure," their research in Astronomy and Astrophysics reads.
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Rainbow

What's the point of being invisible if you're blind?

Eric Grundhauser
Atlas Obscura
Fri, 11 Mar 2016 19:56 UTC
Invisible man
© WarnerVOD/YoutubeIs the Invisible Man blind?
Invisibility is one of those science fiction superpowers, along with flight or super speed, that most everyone has at least dreamt of having. In our current age, with the emerging science of metamaterials, invisibility seems closer than ever to becoming a reality. But there is still one problem: if a person achieved true, perfect invisibility, they would probably be blind.

When it comes to invisibility and cloaking, it's all about light, and metamaterials look like our best way to mess with it. Metamaterials are specially designed materials that have been created to produce a specific effect that wouldn't naturally occur. More specifically, Dr. Stephane Larouche, an Assistant Research Professor at Duke University's Meta Group explained, "Metamaterials are structured materials to which it's possible to assign effective properties." To create these futuristic materials, researchers are taking small pieces of metal or plastic and shaping them at almost unimaginably small scales, in order to create a specific response.
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Comet 2

Comet Siding Spring plunged the magnetic field around Mars into chaos

Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Thu, 10 Mar 2016 13:51 UTC
Comet Siding Spring
© NASA/JPL-CaltechThis artist's impression depicts Comet Siding Spring narrowly miss Mars in 2014.
When Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) swung past the Red Planet in October 2014, it was an unprecedented opportunity for an armada of Mars robots to have a ringside seat of the interplanetary spectacle. But as dazzling as the flyby was, the real drama wasn't seen by the cameras of Mars orbiters or rovers; it was detected by a magnetometer. And that magnetometer, located 100 miles above the Martian surface, detected chaos.

"Comet Siding Spring plunged the magnetic field around Mars into chaos," said Jared Espley, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and science team member of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, in a NASA press release. "We think the encounter blew away part of Mars' upper atmosphere, much like a strong solar storm would."

Although Mars' magnetic field is weak and patchy (unlike Earth's strong, global magnetosphere), MAVEN's sensitive magnetometer detected a huge upheaval in orbit as Siding Spring's own magnetism rattled the planet's magnetic field.

The comet's nucleus may only be a third of a mile wide, but the atmosphere surrounding the nucleus (known as the coma) was as wide as 600,000 miles when it encountered Mars. (The coma is formed through solar heating — the ices contained within a comet's nucleus sublimate into space, pumping the coma with gas.) Through interactions with the solar wind, comets also generate their own magnetic fields that loop their way through the coma. So when Siding Spring buzzed Mars, coming as close as 87,000 miles, the cometary magnetism punched Mars' weak magnetic field, sending it into violent turmoil for several hours.
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Info

Study: Birds found to speak in PHRASES and use grammar

Russ Swan
Daily Mail
Tue, 08 Mar 2016 19:59 UTC
Japanese great tits (pictured) are well known for being highly vocal birds and produce a range of calls, but scientists have discovered they can structure these into phrases that convey distinct messages.
Japanese great tits (pictured) are well known for being highly vocal birds and produce a range of calls, but scientists have discovered they can structure these into phrases that convey distinct messages.
Birds not only use a variety of calls to communicate different messages, but some can also combine these calls in a specific way to form 'phrases' to convey more complex information.

Japanese great tits, also known as Parus minor, have been found to combine calls together to produce messages that convey different meanings.

Scientists say this is the first example of the use of syntax by non-human animals to be discovered.

Great tits are well known for having a diverse vocal repertoire, with some species producing more than 40 different songs and calls.

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Black Magic

European honeybees being poisoned with up to 57 different pesticides


Phys.org
Thu, 10 Mar 2016 17:12 UTC
honeybees
© Dr Bill Hughes
European honeybees are being poisoned with up to 57 different pesticides, according to new research published in the Journal of Chromatography A. A new method for detecting a whole range of pesticides in bees could help unravel the mystery behind the widespread decline of honeybees in recent years, and help develop an approach to saving them.

Honeybees are under threat globally: in the US, dramatic declines in bee populations due to a condition called colony collapse disorder (CCD) continues to put crops at risk an farmers out of business. Several studies have shown a link between pesticide use and bee deaths and the European Union has banned the use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

But it's not as simple as banning one pesticide that's killing bees; the relationship between pesticide use and bee death is complex and scientists are still trying to figure out exactly what's happening. In the new study, researchers from the National Veterinary Research Institute in Poland have developed a method for analyzing 200 pesticides at the same time, to figure out what's really putting honeybees at risk.
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Bulb

Bacteria found to have a collective memory

Josh Richardson
Prevent Disease
Thu, 10 Mar 2016 17:14 UTC
bacteria
Collective motion can be observed in biological systems over a wide range of length scales, from large animals to bacteria because collective systems always work better for adaptation than those which are singular. Individual bacterial cells have short memories. But groups of bacteria can develop a collective memory that can increase their tolerance to stress. This has been demonstrated experimentally for the first time in a study by Eawag and ETH Zurich scientists published in PNAS.

A central question in the study of biological collective motion is how the traits of individuals give rise to the emergent behavior at population level. This question is relevant to the dynamics of general self-propelled particle systems, biological self-organization, and active fluids. Bacteria provide a tractable system to address this question, because bacteria are simple and their behavior is relatively easy to control.
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