Lifeboat Foundation

Cancer is the poster child of age-related diseases, and a recent study sheds light on why the risk of cancer rises dramatically as we age.

Abstract

For many cancer types, incidence rises rapidly with age as an apparent power law, supporting the idea that cancer is caused by a gradual accumulation of genetic mutations. Similarly, the incidence of many infectious diseases strongly increases with age. Here, combining data from immunology and epidemiology, we show that many of these dramatic age-related increases in incidence can be modeled based on immune system decline, rather than mutation accumulation. In humans, the thymus atrophies from infancy, resulting in an exponential decline in T cell production with a half-life of ∼16 years, which we use as the basis for a minimal mathematical model of disease incidence. Our model outperforms the power law model with the same number of fitting parameters in describing cancer incidence data across a wide spectrum of different cancers, and provides excellent fits to infectious disease data.

Continue reading “Dr. Sam Palmer – Thymic Involution and Cancer Risk” »

IBM researchers provide mathematical proof to Shor’s Algorithm.

If you replace classical bits with qubits, though, you go back to only needing one per spin in the system, because all the quantum stuff comes along for free. You don&s;t need extra bits to track the superposition, because the qubits themselves can be in superposition states. And you don&s;t need extra bits to track the entanglement, because the qubits themselves can be entangled with other qubits. A not-too-big quantum computer— again, 50–100 qubits— can efficiently solve problems that are simply impossible for a classical computer.

These sorts of problems pop up in useful contexts, such as the study of magnetic materials, whose magnetic nature comes from adding together the quantum spins of lots of particles, or some types of superconductors. As a general matter, any time you&s;re trying to find the state of a large quantum system, the computational overhead needed to do it will be much less if you can map it onto a system of qubits than if you&s;re stuck using a classical computer.

So, there&s;s your view-from-30,000-feet look at what quantum computing is, and what it&s;s good for. A quantum computer is a device that exploits wave nature, superposition, and entanglement to do calculations involving collective mathematical properties or the simulation of quantum systems more efficiently than you can do with any classical computer. That&s;s why these are interesting systems to study, and why heavy hitters like Google, Microsoft, and IBM are starting to invest heavily in the field.

Continue reading “What Is A Quantum Computer? The 30,000 Foot Overview” »

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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.

Continue reading “Brain Meets Machine: The Art and Science of Brain-Computer Interfaces” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YtQ-N_t84

When listening to world science festival’s latest episode on youtube, Pondering the Imponderables: The Biggest Questions of Cosmology, I found myself to be most in line with George F.R. Ellis’ line of thinking overall.

Big Bang cosmology, chemical and biological evolutionary theory, and associated sciences have been extraordinarily successful in revealing and enabling us to understand the development of the.

Continue reading “On the Nature of Causality in Complex Systems, George F.R. Ellis” »

By translating a key human physical dynamic skill — maintaining whole-body balance — into a mathematical equation, the team was able to use the numerical formula to program their robot Mercury, which was built and tested over the course of six years. They calculated the margin of error necessary for the average person to lose one’s balance and fall when walking to be a simple figure — 2 centimeters.

“Essentially, we have developed a technique to teach autonomous robots how to maintain balance even when they are hit unexpectedly, or a force is applied without warning,” Sentis said. “This is a particularly valuable skill we as humans frequently use when navigating through large crowds.”

Sentis said their technique has been successful in dynamically balancing both bipeds without ankle control and full humanoid robots.

Physicists face the same hard problem as neuroscientists do: the problem of bridging objective description and subjective experience. Physics has encountered consciousness. Quantum theory says an object remains in a superposition of possibilities until observed. We can consider a quantum state as being about our knowledge rather than a direct description of physical reality. The physics of information just may be that bridging of quantum-to-digital reality of subjective experience. We are now at the historic juncture when quantum computing could reveal quantum information processing underpinnings of subjectivity. Quantum mechanics is a spectacularly successful theory of fundamental physics that allows us to make probabilistic predictions derived from its mathematical formalism, but the theory doesn’t tell us precisely how these probabilities should be interpreted in regards to phenomenology, i.e. our experiential reality. There are basically three main interpretive camps within quantum mechanics from which stem at least a dozen further interpretations.

By Alex Vikoulov.

Continue reading “The Physics of Information: Quantum Potentiality to Classical Actuality of Your Experiential Reality” »

In a world increasingly driven by industries that rely on advanced technical learning and innovation, fluency in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) becomes more vital every day. Yet our education system isn’t keeping up. Five years ago, a Business-Higher Education Forum study found that 80% of high school students either lacked interest or proficiency in STEM subjects. Meanwhile, a college and career readiness organization known as ACT reported last year that the number of students pursuing STEM careers is growing at less than 1% annually.

The Amgen Foundation is doing something about it. As the principal philanthropic arm of Amgen, the largest independent biotechnology company, the Amgen Foundation has been committed to inspiring the next generation of scientists and innovators by making immersive science education a focus of its social investments for almost 30 years. While Amgen has reached millions of patients around the world with biotechnology medicines to combat serious illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and migraines, the Amgen Foundation has reached more than 4 million students globally—and it is poised to launch a new program called LabXchange with the potential to reach millions more.

“As a scientist, it’s clear to me that the most effective way to learn science is by doing it,” says David Reese, executive vice president of Research and Development at Amgen and member of the Amgen Foundation board of directors. “It’s time to transform the science learning experience. We need to move from information acquisition to application and exploration, from students as passive listeners to active participants in the learning process, from teachers as knowledge transmitters to facilitators and coaches.”

Continue reading “Philanthropy Assignment: Inspire Tomorrow’s Leaders With Science” »