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Category: education – Page 128

Humans have taken spiders into space more than once to study the importance of gravity to their web-building. What originally began as a somewhat unsuccessful PR experiment for high school students has yielded the surprising insight that light plays a larger role in arachnid orientation than previously thought.

The spider experiment by the US space agency NASA is a lesson in the frustrating failures and happy accidents that sometimes lead to unexpected research findings. The question was relatively simple: on Earth, spiders build asymmetrical webs with the center displaced towards the upper edge. When resting, spiders sit with their head downwards because they can move towards freshly caught prey faster in the direction of gravity.

But what do arachnids do in zero gravity? In 2008, NASA wanted to inspire middle schools in the US with this experiment. But even though the question was simple, the planning and execution of the experiment in space was extremely challenging. This led to a number of mishaps.

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In 2016, combined venture investments in VR, AR, and mixed reality (MR) exceeded $1.25 billion. In 2019, that number increased more than 3X to $4.1 billion. And today, major players are bringing new, second-generation VR headsets to market that have the power to revolutionize the VR industry, as well as countless others. Already, VR headset sales volumes are expected to reach 30 million per year by 2022. For example, Facebook’s new Oculus Quest 2 headset has outsold its predecessor by 5X in the initial weeks of the product launch. With the FAANG tech giants pouring billions into improving VR hardware, the VR space is massively heating up. In this blog, we will dive into a brief history of VR, recent investment surges, and the future of this revolutionary technology.

“Virtual reality is not a media experience,” explains Bailenson. “When it’s done well, it’s an actual experience. In general our findings show that VR causes more behavior changes, causes more engagement, causes more influence than other types of traditional media.”

Nor is empathy the only emotion VR appears capable of training. In research conducted at USC, psychologist Skip Rizzo has had considerable success using virtual reality to treat PTSD in soldiers. Other scientists have extended this to the full range of anxiety disorders.

VR, especially when combined with AI, has the potential to facilitate a top shelf traditional education, plus all the empathy and emotional skills that traditional education has long been lacking.

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While Jupiter and Saturn have been stealing the headlines lately, this week on “The Cosmic Controversy Podcast,” I’m pleased to welcome planetary astronomer Heidi Hammel to talk about the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. They remain the largely forgotten gatekeepers to our outer solar system.

Renowned planetary astronomer Heidi Hammel and I chat about our solar system’s mysterious ice giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. There’s only been one flyby of these giant planets by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft back in the late 1980s. Hammel, who was part of the Voyager 2 science team, explains what that mission taught us about these objects and why we need to go back.

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Nice lecture with both technical info and analogy.

Latest study from David Sinclair’s lab have used cellular reprogramming to restore vision in aged mice & more! Suggests reversing aging *may* be possible.

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TIMESTAMPS;
Intro — 00:00
Aging is loss of information — 00:45
Correction device & epigenetics — 02:49
Yamanaka factors & OSKM — 04:45
Study results from Sinclair lab — 07:25
Aging reversed? — 10:29
Working model — 12:00
Cellular reprogramming in humans? — 12:36.

REFERENCES;

Continue reading “Reversing aging through cellular reprogramming!?” | >

This week, I had some amazing discussions with Navajo Nation Math Circle leaders — Dave Auckly and Henry Fowler. The idea of starting a math circle on Navajo land was initially brought up by a wonderful math educator and mathematician raised in Kazakhstan, Tatiana Shubin. Here is a small tribute to their efforts:

Project activities were launched in the Fall of 2012. A team of distinguished mathematicians from all over the US, as well as local teachers and community members, work together to run the outreach. Navajo Nation Math Circles present math in the context of Navajo culture, helping students develop their identity as true Navajo mathematicians. “We want to find kids who would not have discovered their talents without our project, to help them realize that they can change the world,” says Fowler. Having introduced Navajo children to the joy of mathematics, the project also yielded a book, Inspiring Mathematics: Lessons from the Navajo Nation Math Circles, which contain lesson plans, puzzles and activities, and other insights for parents and teachers to embrace.

An extension of Navajo Nation Math Circles is an annual two-week Baa Hózhó summer math camp at Navajo Technical University. “Baa Hózhó” means “balance and harmony,” tying together the ideas of mathematical equilibrium with the way of life embraced by Navajo people. The summer camp is widely popular with parents and children; the older students come back as counselors, making everyone feel like one big family. It is preceded by an annual student-run math festival in local schools across the Navajo Nation, where students share their passion for mathematics with families and friends.

Fowler’s ultimate goal is to create a Mathematical Research institute on Navajo land, where local and international researchers could exchange math ideas and study the best ways of teaching mathematics to Indigenous people, enriching worldwide mathematical sciences. Hopefully, the great strides in the Navajo Nation math education will encourage leading high-tech companies to support the rise of a new generation of diverse, talented and passionate Native American STEM professionals.

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As we sit here in 2020, in the middle of a major viral pandemic, we can’t forget the fact that a century after the first antibiotics were created, drug resistant bacterial infections have become a major threat around the globe, exactly at the same time that the antibiotic pipelines of pharma companies have either dried up, or they have gotten out of the business.

In the U.S. alone, Centers For Disease Control (CDC) estimates that antibiotic resistance causes more than 2 million infections, several million hospital stay days, and over 35, 000 deaths per year. Worldwide, such infections cause 750, 000 deaths every year. And a recent United Nations (UN) report concluded that by 2050, “super bugs” could kill 10 million people globally every year, if no action is taken to combat the problem.

A solution to this emerging threat lies in the area of bacteriophage therapy (or “phage” for short), which is a type of virus that infects, replicates within, and are very good at killing bacteria.

Interestingly, phages have been used for over 90 years as an alternative to antibiotics in the former Soviet Union and Central Europe as well as in France. They are seen as a possible therapy against multi-drug-resistant strains of many bacteria and have been shown to interfere not just with bacteria life cycles, but also with biofilm production and quorum sensing involved bacterial colonization processes.

Dr. Robert Schooley, MD, is a Professor of Medicine, in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, at UC San Diego, the Co-Director of their Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH), as well as Interim Faculty Director, Global Education and Senior Director, International Initiatives.

Dr. Schooley is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and infectious disease fellowships at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Continue reading “Dr. Robert Schooley MD — Harnessing Phage Therapies In The Fight Against Drug Resistant “Super-Bugs”” | >

Voicebots, humanoids and other tools capture memories for future generations.

What happens after we die—digitally, that is? In this documentary, WSJ’s Joanna Stern explores how technology can tell our stories for generations to come.

Old photos, letters and tapes. Tech has long allowed us to preserve memories of people long after they have died. But with new tools there are now interactive solutions, including memorialized online accounts, voice bots and even humanoid robots. WSJ’s Joanna Stern journeys across the world to test some of those for a young woman who is living on borrowed time. Photo illustration: Adele Morgan/The Wall Street Journal.

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#WSJ #Tech #Documentary

Continue reading “How Tech Can Bring Our Loved Ones to Life After They Die | WSJ” | >

In this important conversation on health, David Gornoski sits down with Jim O’Neill, CEO of the SENS Research Foundation and former managing director of Thiel Capital. How do we effectively fight viruses such as COVID-19? O’Neill brings attention to the urgency of strengthening our immune systems. Why should we look into anti-aging? Anti-aging research, O’Neill says, looks into the possibility of targeting senescent cells where many diseases take hold. How soon can we see the results of this research? Given our societal norms, is overcoming death through scientific means something that we should look into? How does Christian teaching relate to the idea of overcoming death in time and space?

Visit SENS Research Foundation here:

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Follow Jim O’Neill on Twitter here:
https://twitter.com/regardthefrost/

Visit A Neighbor’s Choice website at https://www.aneighborschoice.com/

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I just read an incredible post about Transhumanism by Francesco Neo Amati, CM of Transhumanism: The Future of Humanity.

What an excellent representation of how pragmatic and collaborative our community can be. People like Francesco Neo Amati are the reason why I call myself a Transhumanist…

“Community Announcement:

The following will address the purpose of our community as outlined in the Pinned Post and to dispel common misconceptions of Transhumanism by clarifying what it is and what it isn’t.

I have no desire in being a ‘leader’ in the Transhumanism community. I merely hope to be and remain a credible educator/resource, passionate advocate, and a voice of reason for the movement.

ICYDK:

I’m the founder and CM of our community. I started it in 2014 after being interested in Transhumanism since 2010, which complemented my passion for the philosophy of Self-Actualization/Transcendence (i.e. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Bruce Lee’s Self-Actualization, Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, Plato’s Realm of Forms, Aristotle’s Metaphysics on Being/Becoming, Emerson’s Transcendentalism, etc.).

Continue reading “Stephen Langevin” | >

The history of the Universe thus far has certainly been eventful, marked by the primordial forging of the light elements, the birth of the first stars and their violent deaths, and the improbable origin of life on Earth. But will the excitement continue, or are we headed toward the ultimate mundanity of equilibrium in a so-called heat death? In The Janus Point, Julian Barbour takes on this and other fundamental questions, offering the reader a new perspective—illustrated with lucid examples and poetically constructed prose—on how the Universe started (or more precisely, how it did not start) and where it may be headed. This book is an engaging read, which both taught me something new about meat-and-potatoes physics and reminded me why asking fundamental questions can be so fun.

Barbour argues that there is no beginning of time. The Big Bang, he maintains, was just a very special configuration of the Universe’s fundamental building blocks, a shape he calls the Janus point. As we move away from this point, the shape changes, marking the passage of time. The “future,” he argues, lies in both directions, hence the reference to Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings and transitions.

Barbour illustrates his main points with a deceptively simple model known as the three-body problem, wherein three masses are subject to mutual gravitational attraction. In this context, the Janus point occurs when all three masses momentarily occupy the same point, in what is called a total collision. The special shape at the Janus point, explains Barbour, is an equilateral triangle, which is his model’s version of the Big Bang. I found this imagery helpful when trying to understand the more abstract, and necessarily less technical, application of this concept to general relativity.

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