Lifeboat Foundation

Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub

It seems that nearly every day, scientists connect another medical condition to atypical gut bacteria populations. Researchers have claimed that gut bacteria play a role not just in digestive health but even in basic brain function and mental health.

Certain bacteria are so clearly good for us that several companies are looking to market pills filled not with chemical drugs, but with bacteria.

Read more

By James Hayes, Piers Bizony, Chris Edwards — Engineering and Technology Magazine

The history of human invention often seems precariously unplanned, yet the questing human mind remains bent on finding meaning in and for our grand schemes, however compelling the evidence for innovation via accident and randomness. Surely, human invention must be heading somewhere’- otherwise, what does it all mean?

Read more

By Jerin Matthew — International Business Times

Non-profit journalistic organisation WikiLeaks has said that the bulk of its donation comes via digital currencies bitcoin and litecoin.

The organisation that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources, revealed the information in a tweet. However, it did not mention the percentage of funding in digital currencies.

Read more

By Ryan Whitwam - ExtremeTech

The first thing to know about Bitcoin has nothing to do with how it works or what the current value of one is — of primary importance is the fanatical devotion Bitcoin users have to the mother of all cryptocurrencies. Many fans of Bitcoin promote the anonymous internet money at every turn, encouraging others to use it as a way to combat everything from government overreach to unethical banking practices. This is why cryptocurrencies are still a thing. Bitcoin enthusiasts scored a major victory when Overstock and Zynga started accepting Bitcoins recently, and that prompted one fan to start asking other internet companies what their plans were. Surprisingly, the one organization he got anywhere with was Google.

Read more

Reuters

NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND — General Electric’s oil and gas division will start pilot production of 3D printed metal fuel nozzles for its gas turbines in the second half of this year, a major step towards using the technology for mass-manufactured parts in the industry.

Read more

by P.H.| WASHINGTON D.C — The Economist

THE late Alfred Lanning, a leading robotics expert, once suggested that “robots might naturally evolve”—that they might one day gain sentience. Sadly, he died at the hands of a robot that, like all the others he designed, was controlled by an omniscient supercomputer known as VIKI, which stood for virtual interactive kinetic intelligence. VIKI had decided that human beings could not be trusted with their own survival, engineered a robot uprising, and then…

Read more

BY MARK MUCKENFUSS — The Press-Enterprise

An unusual local class is training students to work with objects at the atomic level, dealing with the tiniest particles this side of the quantum world. The course is one of only two nanotechnology training programs offered at a community college in California, and it’s the only one that’s free, program director Megan Crail said.

Read more

By Sarah Griffiths — dailymail.co.uk

It might resemble the giant exoskeleton as seen in the James Cameron film Avatar, but this terrifying-looking machine of the future is set to become a reality.

A team of Canadian engineers and innovators are working on creating a giant human-controlled walking ‘anti-robot’ called Prosthesis, which is being built ‘by humans, for humans’.

Read more