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As you relax and let your mind drift aimlessly, you might remember a pleasant vacation, an angry confrontation in traffic or maybe the loss of a loved one.

And now a team of researchers at Duke University say they can see those various emotional states flickering across the human brain.

“It’s getting to be a bit like mind-reading,” said Kevin LaBar, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. “Earlier studies have shown that functional MRI can identify whether a person is thinking about a face or a house. Our study is the first to show that specific emotions like fear and anger can be decoded from these scans as well.”

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Elon Musk has recently hinted that he may be working on a “neural lace,” a mesh of electronics that will allow AI and the brain to work together. This could help human brains keep up with future enhancements in AI.

There’s no doubt that Elon Musk is one busy individual. When not playing on the Tesla factory floor, he may be bringing electric roofs to electric vehicles, or dreaming up the Hyperloop, or toying with the future of AI.

If not any of those, he is apparently busy protecting us from being treated like house pets after the Singularity. To that end, the billionaire polymath has revealed he may be working on something called a “neural lace.”

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A Spanish publishing house has finally been given permission to make exact copies of the Voynich Manuscript — a 15th century book written in a mysterious coded language that no one has cracked.

For centuries, scientists have been trying to decipher the text. Some of the world’s best cryptographers have dedicated their lives to solving the puzzle — but no one’s even gotten close. Now, with almost 900 copies about to go into circulation, we might finally get some answers.

“The Voynich Manuscript has led some of the smartest people down rabbit holes for centuries,” Bill Sherman from the Folger Shakespeare Library told The Washington Post in 2014, when he was about to open an exhibit on the text.

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Self printed, self healing houses now possible.

Disrupted Commentary.

We’ve been writing about the positive disruption potentially caused by 3D printing since we started this blog in 2014. The key to making it commercial viable has been materials science developments and such is the rate of advance 3D printing is now being used to print car parts. Now we’re moving into materials science that allows self healing buildings – from 3dprint; “Magic is a recurring thing in the 3D printing industry. It’s quite challenging—and exhilarating all at once—the first time you put one of the machines into action for yourself, watching a project go from start to finish. To see that you can decide on something you want, and then have it appear in front of you is startling, euphoria-inducing, and downright addicting. Add to that the sheer simplicity of how it all works, and the brain is further boggled. But none of this compares to the true magic of this technology—all emanating from human minds.

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Cannot wait for this material so that I can finally enjoy my run in the park near my US home in August.


WASHINGTON — Engineers have created clothing for a warming world — a fabric that allows your body heat to escape far better than other materials do.

It hasn’t been worn or tested by humans, so outside experts caution this is far from a sure thing, but a team at Stanford University engineered a fabric using nano technology that not only allows moisture to leave the body better, but helps infrared radiation escape better. As a result, they say in Thursday’s journal Science, the body should feel around 4.8 degrees (2.7 degrees Celsius) cooler than cotton and 3.8 degrees (2.1 degrees Celsius) chillier than commercially available synthetics.

This is designed for a warmer world — not just because climate change is making temperatures hotter, but because it takes a lot of energy to heat and cool people’s offices and homes, said study lead author Yi Cui, a professor of materials and engineering.

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The imminent arrival of the self-driving car will change how people move around city streets, but they could do so much more.

The Tridika is a conceptual driverless electric vehicle I created to change how we use cars in our ever-growing cities, where space is expensive and limited. Inspired by Thyssenkrupp’s Willy Wonka-esque Multi elevator, the Tridika works like a self-driving car you can literally park next to your apartment and use as an additional room.

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Did anyone from Lifeboat attend today’s HAARP’s open house in Alaska today?


HAARP, aka the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, lives out a quiet existence in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. But for one reason or another, this ionospheric research facility has become the favorite scratching post for conspiracy theorists – attracting accusations of being a weather-altering superweapon, the force behind chemtrails, and even a mind-control device.

The new management of HAARP – The University of Alaska Fairbanks – aren’t too happy with these claims. So this Saturday, they’re opening its doors and inviting the public to come visit the facility for free. The open house will include facility tours, a mobile planetarium, a permafrost exhibit, science talks, and a barbecue.

“We hope that people will be able to see the actual science of it,” a spokesperson from the University of Alaska, who run HAARP, told Alaska Dispatch News. “We hope to show people that it is not capable of mind control and not capable of weather control and all the other things it’s been accused of.”

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