Lifeboat Foundation

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My grandparents’ generation saw the arrival of technology in peoples’ homes; my parents’ generation saw the arrival of technology in people’s lives; and the current generation is seeing the arrival of technology in peoples’ body.

Neil Harbisson goes into his goals and aspirations to unlock the potential of humanity and awaken a new age of cyborgism with the help of emerging technologies.

Continue reading “A Conversation on Cyborgism: An Interview with U.K. Cyborg Neil Harbisson” »

We’ve heard so many stories lately about the frankly horrifying degree to which facial recognition leads to tracking or privacy invasions. But a startup specializing in AI is instead leveraging facial recognition technology to find human trafficking victims.

Marinus Analytics is a startup that licenses technology to law enforcement with the express purpose of fighting human trafficking. It’s founder and CEO, Emily Kennedy, created a program called Traffic Jam during her time at Carnegie Mellon that uses AI tools to identify victims. Nowadays, Traffic Jam is available to any law enforcement agency that works with Marinus.

According to Marinus’ website:

Continue reading “This company is using facial recognition to fight human trafficking” »

Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is one of the most commonly associated causes of age-related dementia and stroke. New research, led by the University of Edinburgh, may have finally uncovered the mechanism by which SVD causes brain cell damage, as well as a potential treatment to prevent the damage, and possibly even reverse it.

SVD is thought to be responsible for up to 45 percent of dementia cases, and the vast majority of senior citizens are suspected of displaying some sign of the condition. One study strikingly found up to 95 percent of subjects between the ages of 60 and 90 displayed some sign of SVD when examined through MRI scans.

The new research set out to examine early pathological features of SVD and found that dysfunction in endothelial cells are some of the first signs of the disease’s degenerative progression. These are cells that line small blood vessels in the brain and, in early stages of SVD, they secrete a protein that impairs production of myelin, a compound essential for the protection of brain cells.

Continue reading “New drug shows promise for preventing and even reversing damage from age-related dementia and stroke” »

The world’s most powerful tractor beam just lifted a 2 centimeter ball, but could it make levitating humans a reality?

One Shot Could Provide All the Vaccines You’ll Ever Need — https://youtu.be/qQ1VKYX4Vl0

Continue reading “Scientists Just Used a Tractor Beam to Levitate the Largest Object Yet” »

European nations see biggest increases in use of stimulants such as Ritalin by people seeking brain-boosting effects.

• By Arran Frood, Nature magazine on July 6, 2018

If you think we have problems now, just wait a few billion years, when the accelerating expansion of the Universe triggers an energy crisis of cosmological proportions. Sounds grim, but as a new paper points out, an advanced civilization faced with doom won’t have to go gently into that good night—there may very well be a way to rage against the dying of the light.

Owing to the inexorable influence of dark energy, the space in our Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. We don’t need to worry about this right now, but for those civilizations still around tens of billions of years from now, it’ll probably be a major headache. By this stage, galaxies outside of our Local Group—a conglomeration of about 54 nearby galaxies—will be moving away from us faster than their light can reach us, making them completely inobservable, and by consequence, utterly inaccessible.

Brilinta fits a pattern of what might be called pay-later conflicts of interest, which have gone largely unnoticed—and entirely unpoliced. In examining compensation records from drug companies to physicians who advised FDA on whether to approve 28 psychopharmacologic, arthritis, and cardiac or renal drugs between 2008 and 2014, Science found widespread after-the-fact payments or research support to panel members. The agency’s safeguards against potential conflicts of interest are not designed to prevent such future financial ties.

Science investigation of journal disclosures and pharmaceutical funding records shows potential influence on physician gatekeepers.

A team of scientists, looking to figure out how hardy little creatures known as archaea thrive in boiling, volcanic pools of sulfuric acid like they were hot tubs, may have uncovered the key to an anti-aging drug. By manipulating a so-called “super hero” protein common to both archaea and humans, the researchers found a way to “trick” cells into acting younger by keeping the DNA repairing process running much longer than usual.

In previous studies, the researchers examined how archaea have managed to survive in such harsh conditions for billions of years. Eventually they determined that a protein called ssB1 was responsible by helping the organisms repair damage to their DNA. The team says the real eureka moment came when they discovered that we humans have our own versions of this protein, hSSB1.

A new study by Caltech researchers has shown that the A.I. they created is fully capable of reading handwritten numbers.

Scientists have been able to create a completely artificial neural network by using DNA and a test tube, and the results of this AI experiment have been nothing short of astonishing.

During experiments, this artificial intelligence was able to accurately assess handwritten numbers, with scientists suggesting that this research shows that humans are edging ever closer to taking AI and placing it in organic circuits, as the Daily Mail reports.

Continue reading “Scientists Use DNA And A Test Tube To Develop A.I. That May Be Capable Of Creating Its Own ‘Memories’” »