Lifeboat Foundation

“There is good reason for optimism about progress on reducing inequity,” he writes. He published the essay from Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum is taking place this week.

Gates points out that since the turn of the century, “Maternal deaths have almost halved; child mortality and malaria deaths have halved; extreme poverty has more than halved.” Plus, thanks to the Global Fund, a project supported by the Gates Foundation, 17 million lives have been saved from malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis.

Progress like that is encouraging him to believe that in a mere 14-ish more years, poverty can be wiped out. That’s the cornerstone of the Global Goals plan, which was been signed by the United Nations’ 193 countries agreed in September.

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CRISPR/Cas9 has been touted as an almost magical technology in the news—and rightly so. The technique allows scientists to alter the DNA of living cells and, it’s hoped, achieve a longstanding goal of science to treat disease at the genetic level.

That’s a really big deal.

Continue reading “CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing Is a Huge Deal, But It’s Just the Tip of the Iceberg” »

The US Military’s experimental research division DARPA have confirmed that they’re to begin work on the world’s first human computer interface. This would effectively allow soldier ‘cyborgs’ to connect directly to computers and ‘talk’ to them.

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The universe might have started with a bang, but once the echoes faded it took quite some while until the symphony began. Between the creation of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the formation of the first stars, 100 million years passed in darkness. This “dark age” has so far been entirely hidden from observation, but this situation is soon to change.

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Although some journalists, etc. love writing these stories; I do believe that we must realize that folks like Gates, Musk, etc. have access to a lot of leaders in industry and government. So my advice for what it’s worth to you the reader is: We all must step back & look at the bigger picture; especially when you have folks involved who have access to people, conversations, and things that many of us will never have access to. We do owe this to ourselves, our people, our company, to our customers as well when we look at our own corporate & business future state.

Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking will share this year’s Luddite Award – an annual tribute to the worst anti-technology idea of the year – for stirring what the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called “fear and hysteria in 2015 by raising alarms that artificial intelligence could spell doom for humanity.”

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Doctors rewired Johnny Matheny’s nerves to work directly with his new prosthetic arm, which works exactly like a real arm.

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Ultrasonic waves form microscopic glass fibers into a pattern of lines, collectively creating a reinforcing microstructure that gives the printed component increased strength. (credit: Tom Llewellyn-Jones, Bruce Drinkwater and Richard Trask)

University of Bristol engineers have developed a new type of 3-D printing that can print strong composite materials.

Continue reading “How to modify a 3D printer to print high-performance products” »

While the possibility of teleporting entire objects from one place to another like they do in the movies is way beyond our current — and near-future — capabilities, the same can’t be said for the memory of our existence.

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“[A]rtist Simon Beck (previously) trudges across sand or through knee-high snow to create massive geometric drawings left behind in his footprints. From sandy expanses on the shore of New Zealand to frigid outlooks in the Swiss Alps, any pristine surface that stretches for hundreds of meters can work as a suitable canvas for Beck’s designs.”

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