Lifeboat Foundation

Nascent planet seen carving a path through the disc of gas and dust surrounding the very young star PDS70.

Nicola Davis

China’s anti-air and water pollution plan has 2020 targets:

* ‘good-air days’ reach over 80 percent annually * Over 70% of the surface water to be drinkable * around 70 percent of the country’s offshore area water should be of good quality.

Currently about 60% of China’s water is not safe for human contact.

Continue reading “Scale of China’s dirty and deadly air and water problems means both nuclear and renewables are needed” »

Scientists have been able to move atoms around for 30 years, but moving molecules has proven much more difficult.

Why on Earth would you ever want to be less than completely healthy?

Recently, Reason of Fight Aging! pointed out psychological research revealing a certain conservatism in terms of what people consider to be the “ideal” levels of happiness, intelligence, longevity, and even health.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that significant numbers of people in the studies weren’t too keen on the idea of living much longer than the average (around 90 years), and even under the assumption of eternal youth, their preference didn’t go past 120 on average; after all, LEAF wouldn’t be in business if the idea of healthy life extension wasn’t so inexplicably frowned upon. What’s really flabbergasting, though, is that even health—health!—is apparently something you can have too much of; on a scale from 0 (“completely unhealthy”) to 100 (“completely healthy”), the average preference gravitated somewhere between 80 and 90. These results provide us with an occasion for reflection.

Continue reading “Too healthy for your own good?” »

A new interview I did is out at the 2b AHEAD Future Congress event I spoke at in Germany (audio and written): https://www.future.consulting/…/full-interview-with-zoltan…/ #transhumanist

2b AHEAD: So we would like to start an interview with Zoltan Istvan, the presidential candidate for the transhumanist party and leading a figure in the transhumanist movement. Also the best-selling author of “The Transhumanist Wager.” Welcome, glad that you could make it. I hope you’ve been enjoying…

Tim Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it.

The flash was about ten times brighter than a normal supernova.

Two telescopes that are part of the ATLAS project in Hawaii have discovered an unnaturally bright explosion in the sky.

The discovery, made in mid-June, was published in Astronomer’s Telegram, where the object was assigned the name AT2018cow or “The Cow” for short.

Continue reading “This mysterious space object is baffling astronomers all over the world” »

Fascinating findings: “1. Neurofeedback yields significant reductions in parent ratings of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive symptoms. 2. These reductions persist for up to 2–12 months after neurofeedback ends. 3. Although medication has a larger initial effect, symptom reductions resulting from neurofeedback and medication may be comparable over a more extended time period.”

In neurofeedback treatment for ADHD, individuals learn to alter their typical pattern of brainwave activity, i.e., EEG activity, to one that is consistent with a focused and attentive state.

This is done by collecting EEG data from individuals as they focus on stimuli presented on a computer screen. Their ability to control the stimuli, e.g., keeping the smile on a smiley face keeping a video playing, depends on their maintaining an EEG state that reflects focused attention.

Continue reading “Meta-analysis finds sustained benefits of neurofeedback for kids with ADHD” »

Monsanto’s agricultural biotechnology research and development operations that are going to Bayer are the largest in the world and include making genetically modified seeds for such crops as corn, soybeans and cotton. Corn represented almost 60 percent of Monsanto’s total seed and genomics business last year.

German conglomerate Bayer on Thursday closed its $63 billion merger with St. Louis-based agribusiness giant Monsanto and plans to drop the U.S. company’s name.