Lifeboat Foundation

The buzz in the wireless industry is all about space, or what is referred to as non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). The wireless 3GPP Release 17 specification includes two new standards for satellite communications from smartphones, mobile electronics, and IoT devices directly to satellites. While satellites have always been part of the wireless communications infrastructure, they have traditionally provided backhaul network communications, not direct communications to mobile devices other than clunky satellite phones and emergency equipment. Direct satellite communications with individual mobile devices will help overcome gaps in terrestrial cellular networks, providing a truly global infrastructure that can be leveraged by a variety of industries, and bridge the digital divide by bringing wireless communications to rural areas that often lack the infrastructure even with the rollout of 5G cellular networks.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project or 3GPP is a global standards body consisting of a wide variety of wireless ecosystem members, such as intellectual property (IP) providers, semiconductor companies, networking companies, device OEMs, and wireless operators. Since 1998 and 2G cellular technology, members of the 3GPP have worked together to develop standards for new wireless technologies continuously. While the industry is now well past 3G and new generations of cellular technology are still introduced approximately every 10 years, new releases of the 3GPP standards are released approximately every two years within a generation in an on-going effort to increase the efficient use of a limited natural resource – radio spectrum. The standards also encourage the freeing up of additional spectrum, the development of new radio access networks (RANs), new encryption technology, higher network performance, aggregation of spectrum from different carriers and wireless technologies, support for additional use cases, and new network configurations. In other words, the 3GPP group is tasked with improving wireless technology with each generation and providing a global network that can be accessed from anywhere and by any device. With the inclusion of satellite networks, or non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), a global network will finally be possible.

The latest 3GPP standard that was finalized in 2023 is Release 17, the 3^rd Release within the 5G cellular generation. Among other enhancements and additions, Release 17 includes two new standards for satellite networks, IoT-NTN and New Radio NTN or NR-NTN. The IoT-NTN standard defines narrow band using a 200KHz channel for two-way messaging and other low-bandwidth consumer and embedded/IoT applications, such as location tracking, asset tracking, and sensor monitoring. The data rates for IoT-NTN are similar to the data rates that were experienced in 2G. It will provide basic data connectivity.

I attended Celesta Capital’s TechSurge Summit on February 13, 2023 at the Computer History Museum. In this piece I will talk about interview with Nic Brathwaite Founder and Managing Partner of Celesta Capital as well as Sriram Viswanathan (Founding General Manager of Celesta and heavily involved in venture investments in India), and a panel discussion by John Hennessy (Chairman of Alphabet).

In a companion article I will talk about my interview with John Hennessy, Chairman of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Vint Cerf, also with Google, during the TechSurge Summit.

He also said that the current cost of inference is too high and that Chat GBT is too often busy. He thought that there were opportunities to build AI systems trained and focused on particular uses, which would lead to smaller models and they would be more practical. He thought we are 1–2 years away from useful products, particularly in business intelligence. He also said that the use of AI allows us to program with data rather than lots of lines of code. Google was hesitant to produce something like Chat GBT, they didn’t want the system to say wrong or toxic things. He said that the tech industry needs to be more careful to encourage a civil society and that many tools, such as the Internet, were not anticipated to be used to do evil things.

Continue reading “AI, An Amplifier Of Human Intelligence” »

Snapchat is the latest company to get in on the AI frenzy. The company announced today that it’s launching “My AI,” a new chatbot running the latest version of OpenAI’s GPT technology that it has customized for its users. My AI is now available as an experimental feature for Snapchat+, the social network’s $3.99 a month subscription service.

The new chatbot will be pinned to the top of the Chat tab. My AI can do things like help answer a trivia question or write a haiku. My AI was trained to have a unique voice and personality that plays into its values about “friendship, learning and fun.” It has also been trained to adhere to the app’s trust and safety guidelines.

“My AI can recommend birthday gift ideas for your BFF, plan a hiking trip for a long weekend, suggest a recipe for dinner, or even write a haiku about cheese for your cheddar-obsessed pal,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Make My AI your own by giving it a name and customizing the wallpaper for your Chat.”

For the longest time, social media companies have rallied on the fact that their service is “free” to use. All these companies banked on showing ads and getting some user data in return to let them use social networks without any charge. Now with declining revenues and tough global economic conditions, social networks are resorting to offering subscriptions in one way or another. These paid plans can get unlock features ranging from vanity checkmarks to exclusive stickers to increase in reach and more.

Twitter Blue.

Twitter first introduced its paid subscription in June 2021 in Canada and Australia later expanding it to the US and New Zealand.

My 11th Ambient music video release for YT. An unofficial Soundtrack to the Sci Fi movie ‘2010: The Year we Make Contact’ (starring Roy Scheider & Helen Mirren). The movie was based on the Arthur C. Clarke novel, which was the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I went alot more in depth with the visuals on this one, recreating shots from the original movie, but with an extra dash of VFX that weren’t easy to pull off on a PC in 1986.

In upcoming video releases I will be doing a deep dive into the ambient multiverse, exploring various styles from Space Ambient to Dark Ambient to Cyberpunk to Sleep music to White Noise. My focus on this channel is to create relaxing cinematic ambient background music for chilling, focus, work and meditation. With the occasional eerie dark ambient tracks. The theme for my video backdrops is a rich fusion of derelict imagery, planets and moons.

Continue reading “MY GOD IT’S FULL OF STARS — A Space Ambient Odyssey — Sci Fi Soundtrack — 4K” »

Baltimore, Md. (January 11, 2022) – In a breakthrough that holds significant promise for early diagnosis and better treatment of psychiatric illness, researchers have for the first time used neurons derived from human stem cells to predict the cardinal features of a psychiatric illness, such as psychosis and cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia.

A study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by scientists at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development/Maltz Research Laboratories (LIBD) shows that the clinical symptoms of individuals with schizophrenia can be predicted by the activity of neurons derived from the patients’ own stem cells.

This connection — between the physiology of cells and symptoms like delusions, hallucinations and altered cognition— has never been made before. That is, no other study has demonstrated a robust association between neuronal models derived from a patient’s stem cells and clinically relevant features of the psychiatric disorder in the same person.

Scientists have discovered how to reverse time inside a quantum system. From a teenager taking a stylish Delorean 88 miles per hour to two-hearted alien creatures flying a blue police box, our fiction has been filled with fun stories about time travel. However, it looks like time travel is now no longer a matter of science fiction but science fact.

Engineers from UNSW Sydney have developed a miniature and flexible soft robotic arm which could be used to 3D print biomaterial directly onto organs inside a person’s body.

3D bioprinting is a process whereby biomedical parts are fabricated from so-called bioink to construct natural tissue-like structures.

Continue reading “3D bioprinting inside the human body could be possible thanks to new soft robot” »

Researchers have discovered that channeling ions into defined pathways in perovskite materials improves the stability and operational performance of perovskite solar cells. The finding paves the way for a new generation of lighter, more flexible, and more efficient solar cell technologies suitable for practical use.

Perovskite materials, which are defined by their crystalline structure, are better at absorbing light than silicon is. That means that perovskite solar cells can be thinner and lighter than silicon solar cells without sacrificing the cell’s ability to convert light into electricity.

“That opens the door to a host of new technologies, such as flexible, lightweight solar cells, or layered solar cells (known as tandems) that can be far more efficient than the solar harvesting technology used today in so-called solar farms,” says Aram Amassian, corresponding author of a paper on the discovery. “There’s interest in integrating perovskite materials into silicon solar cell technologies, which would improve their efficiency from 25% to 40% while also making use of existing infrastructure.” Amassian is a professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University.