Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: computing

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New Aubrey interview.

Today we explore human longevity and life extension efforts focused on adding healthy years to a person’s lifespan, and even reversing the aging process.

My guest is Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a leading voice in the field and the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation which is doing pioneering work on significantly extending healthy, active lifespans. Aubrey is a biomedical gerontologist with a degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Biology. He is author of the book “Ending Aging” and Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal “Rejuvenation Research”.

We explore such concepts the “pro aging trance”, “longevity escape velocity” and “comprehensive damage repair” that can sustain a human body.

Podcast version at: https://is.gd/MM_on_iTunes

More on Aubrey and the SENS Research Foundation: https://www.sens.org
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MIND & MACHINE features interviews by August Bradley with leaders in transformational technologies. More at: https://www.MindAndMachine.io

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Superconducting quantum microwave circuits can function as qubits, the building blocks of a future quantum computer. A critical component of these circuits, the Josephson junction, is typically made using aluminium oxide. Researchers in the Quantum Nanoscience department at the Delft University of Technology have now successfully incorporated a graphene Josephson junction into a superconducting microwave circuit. Their work provides new insight into the interaction of superconductivity and graphene and its possibilities as a material for quantum technologies.

The essential building block of a computer is the quantum bit, or . Unlike regular bits, which can either be one or zero, qubits can be one, zero or a superposition of both these states. This last possibility, that bits can be in a superposition of two states at the same time, allows quantum computers to work in ways not possible with classical computers. The implications are profound: Quantum computers will be able to solve problems that will take a regular computer longer than the age of the universe to solve.

There are many ways to create qubits. One of the tried and tested methods is by using superconducting microwave . These circuits can be engineered in such a way that they behave as harmonic oscillators “If we put a charge on one side, it will go through the inductor and oscillate back and forth,” said Professor Gary Steele. “We make our qubits out of the different states of this charge bouncing back and forth.”

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Current brain-computer interface (BCI) research helps people who have lost the ability to affect their environment in ways many of us take for granted. Future BCIs may go beyond motor function, perhaps aiding with memory recall, decision-making, and other cognitive functions.

Have you ever studied a foreign language and wished you could upload the vocabulary lists directly into your brain so that you could retain them? Would you like to do mental math with the speed and accuracy of a calculator? Do you want a literal photographic memory? Well, these dreams are still the stuff of science fiction, but the brave new world of brain-computer interfaces, or BCI, is well on its way to making technological miracles of this sort a reality.

The story of BCI begins with the discovery of electrical signals emitted by the brain. In 1924, German scientist Hans Berger recorded the first electroencephalogram, or EEG, by placing electrodes under a person’s scalp. Although his research was at first met with derision, a whole new way to study the brain was born from his work. It is now well accepted that the human brain emits electric signals at a variety of frequencies currently known as brainwaves.

BCI researchers attempt to harness these signals to create some desired effect in the world outside the brain. In other words, BCI seeks to make things happen based on a thought in a person’s head. Actually, humans do this all the time when they decide to do anything. A person thinks, “I’m thirsty; I need a drink,” and then the brain sends a litany of instructions to the extremities that allows the person to pour a glass of water, lift it to their mouth, swallow the water, and so on. Most of us go through our days executing these kinds of actions, which require complex interaction between the body and brain, without giving them a second thought.

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Optical frequency combs can enable ultrafast processes in physics, biology, and chemistry, as well as improve communication and navigation, medical testing, and security. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2005 was awarded to the developers of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique, and microresonator combs have become an intense focus of research over the past decade.

A major challenge has been how to make such comb sources smaller and more robust and portable. In the past 10 years, major advances have been made in the use of monolithic, chip-based microresonators to produce such combs. While the microresonators generating the are tiny—smaller than a human hair—they have always relied on external lasers that are often much larger, expensive, and power-hungry.

Researchers at Columbia Engineering announced today in Nature that they have built a Kerr frequency comb generator that, for the first time, integrates the together with the , significantly shrinking the system’s size and power requirements. They designed the laser so that half of the laser cavity is based on a semiconductor waveguide section with high optical gain, while the other half is based on waveguides, made of , a very low-loss material. Their results showed that they no longer need to connect separate devices in the lab using fiber—they can now integrate it all on photonic chips that are compact and energy efficient.

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For the first time, an international team of researchers has used a quantum computer to create artificial life—a simulation of living organisms that scientists can use to understand life at the level of whole populations all the way down to cellular interactions.

With the quantum computer, individual living organisms represented at a microscopic level with superconducting qubits were made to “mate,” interact with their environment, and “die” to model some of the major factors that influence evolution.

The new research, published in Scientific Reports on Thursday, is a breakthrough that may eventually help answer the question of whether the origin of life can be explained by quantum mechanics, a theory of physics that describes the universe in terms of the interactions between subatomic particles.

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There, engineers are doing something strange. They’re freezing computer chips to 460 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, colder than deep space, to simulate the quantum structure of the universe.

At such extreme temperatures these remarkable chips, called qubits, enable scientists to peer into the complex, uncertain interaction of particles at the atomic level — an unseen world in which seemingly contradictory results can exist simultaneously, a place where simply observing an interaction can change it. Or wreck it altogether.

“Quantum — it’s something weird,” said Mike Mayberry, Intel’s chief technology officer and general manager of Intel Labs.

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