Just thinking...
// March 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // News and Science
An interesting article on why macroevolution doesn’t work.
A major problem for evolutionists is how could partially-evolved plant and animal species survive over, supposedly, millions of years if their vital organs and tissues were still in the process of evolving?
// March 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // News and Science
The heavens declare the glory of God:
// November 19th, 2008 // No Comments » // News and Science
Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System report that a daily single oral dose of an “investigational drug, MK-677, increased muscle mass in the arms and legs of healthy older adults without serious side effects, suggesting that it may prove safe and effective in reducing age-related frailty.
// September 14th, 2007 // No Comments » // News and Science
An excellent article in Reason Magazine on the psychosocial implications of artificial intelligence. Here’s a particularly interesting part (emphasis mine).
Hall suggested that instead of fixed moral rules (which a super smart AI with access to its own source code could change later anyway) progenitors should try to inculcate something like a conscience into the AIs they foster. A conscience allows humans to extend and apply moral rules flexibly in new and different contexts. One rule of thumb that Hall would like to see implemented in AIs is: “Ideas should compete; bodies should cooperate.” He also suggested that AIs (robots) should be open source. Hall said that his friend economist Robin Hanson pointed out to him that we already live with superhuman psychopaths—modern corporations—and we’re not all dead. Part of what reins in corporations is transparency, e.g., the requirement that outsiders audit their books. Indeed, governments are also superhuman psychopaths, and generally the less transparent a government the more likely it is to commit atrocities. So the idea here is that more AI source code is inspected, the more likely we are to trust them. Finally, Hall also suggested that AIs also be instilled with the Boy Scout Law.
// August 17th, 2007 // No Comments » // News and Science
The University of St Andrews team has created an ‘incredible levitation effects’ by reversing the “Casimir force” which normally causes objects to stick together, so that it repels instead of attracts.
The force is due to neither electrical charge or gravity, but rather the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together.
Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attract.
This potentially opens the way for near-frictionless nanotechnology.
Read the full story.
// August 17th, 2007 // No Comments » // News and Science
‘We have broken speed of light’ – Telegraph:
A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light – an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons – energetic packets of light – traveled “instantaneously” between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.
Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.
The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunneling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.
// January 11th, 2007 // No Comments » // News and Science
Dermatologists have spent years searching for a way to help people tan without the associated health risks. Now, a lab in Boston has created mice that may hold the secret to safe tanning. The mice were coated with an experimental skin lotion which seems to protect them from developing skin cancer. If the cream works on humans, it would be the first true tan, available in a tube.
Coming from the root of a “traditional Hindu plant,” it gave the mice a pretty deep tan. I’ll keep an eye on this one.
// August 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // News and Science
Nanotech researchers are reporting a big breakthrough. From USA Today, “Nanotube sheets” could apparently be the next “plastic.”
Is this akin to Scotty’s fictionally-famous “transparent aluminum?”
This is truly a breakthrough. I always wondered what life was like before plastics. I think we’re standing at a threshold here.
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