Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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That statement, now signed by twice as many concerned citizens, warned about the risk of human extinction from AI, which was perhaps a bit of an overreach, because … well, extinction? Come on! That’s just a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

What they should have warned about was jobs — the redundancy and destitution of most of humanity, unless there’s some kind of universal income funded by taxes on robots.

What no-one talks about, as the AI revolution unfolds in stock market hype and scientific gung-ho, is what they’re all really trying to do.

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Ibogaine—a psychoactive plant derivative—has attracted attention for its anti-addictive and anti-depressant properties. But ibogaine is a finite resource, extracted from plants native to Africa like the iboga shrub (Tabernanthe iboga) and the small-fruited voacanga tree (Voacanga africana). Further, its use can lead to irregular heartbeats, introducing safety risks and an overall need to better understand how its molecular structure leads to its biological effects.

In a study appearing in Nature Chemistry, researchers at the University of California, Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics (IPN) report the successful of ibogaine, ibogaine analogs and related compounds from pyridine—a relatively inexpensive and widely available chemical.

The team’s strategy enabled the synthesis of four naturally occurring ibogaine-related alkaloids as well as several non-natural analogs. Overall yields ranged from 6% to 29% after only six or seven steps, a marked increase in efficiency from previous synthetic efforts to produce similar compounds.

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Engineering researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have achieved breakthroughs in multi-material 3D printing through the power of capillary action. The LLNL team printed lattice structures with a series of custom-designed unit cells to selectively absorb fluid materials and precisely direct them into patterns – making it possible to fabricate complex structures with unprintable materials or materials with vastly different properties.

According to the researchers, the technique, featured in Advanced Materials Technologies, would help engineers design and optimize structures for properties like extreme strength-to-weight ratios, large surface areas, or precision deformation.

“By decoupling some of the printing and patterning techniques, you could achieve some complex multi-material structures, and you wouldn’t always have to be able to print the material,” said Hawi Gemeda, Materials Engineering Division (MED) staff engineer at LLNL and the paper’s lead author.

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Imagine a world where the act of observation itself holds the key to solving our most complex problems, a world where the very fabric of reality becomes a canvas for computation. This is the tantalizing promise of Observational Computation (OC), a radical new paradigm poised to redefine the very nature of computation and our understanding of the universe itself.

Forget silicon chips and algorithms etched in code; OC harnesses the enigmatic dance of quantum mechanics and the observer effect, where the observer and the observed are inextricably intertwined. Instead of relying on traditional processing power, OC seeks to translate computational problems into carefully crafted observer-environment systems. Picture a quantum stage where potential solutions exist in a hazy superposition, like ghostly apparitions waiting for the spotlight of observation to solidify them into reality.

By meticulously designing these “observational experiments,” we can manipulate quantum systems, nudging them towards desired outcomes. This elegant approach offers tantalizing advantages over our current computational methods. Imagine harnessing the inherent parallelism of quantum superposition for exponentially faster processing, or tapping into the natural energy flows of the universe for unprecedented energy efficiency.

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A complex molecular machine, the spliceosome, ensures that the genetic information from the genome, after being transcribed into mRNA precursors, is correctly assembled into mature mRNA. Splicing is a basic requirement for producing proteins that fulfill an organism’s vital functions. Faulty functioning of a spliceosome can lead to a variety of serious diseases.

Researchers at the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center (BZH) have succeeded for the first time in depicting a faulty “blocked” at high resolution and reconstructing how it is recognized and eliminated in the cell. The research was published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

The of all living organisms is contained in DNA, with the majority of genes in higher organisms being structured in a mosaic-like manner. So the cells are able to “read” the instructions for building proteins stored in these genetic mosaic particles, they are first copied into precursors of mRNA, or messenger RNA. The spliceosome then converts them into mature, functional mRNA.

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LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, works by measuring the time it takes for a laser pulse to travel to an object and back. This time-of-flight measurement reveals the distance, and by scanning across an area, a 3D image is created.

This new tech utilizes a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD), an ultrasensitive detector developed by the MIT and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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A research team has developed a revolutionary two-dimensional polyaniline (2DPANI) crystal that overcomes major conductivity limitations in polymers. Its unique multilayered structure allows metallic charge transport, setting the stage for new applications in electronics and materials science.

An international team of researchers has successfully created a multilayered two-dimensional polyaniline (2DPANI) crystal, demonstrating exceptional conductivity and a unique ability to transport charge in a metallic-like manner. Their findings were published on February 5 in Nature.

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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye. The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1,313,424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow”—a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy—shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a ninth using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Previous observations of other galaxies show a maximum of two or three rings.

“This was a serendipitous discovery,” said Imad Pasha, the lead researcher and a doctoral student at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “I was looking at a ground-based imaging survey and when I saw a galaxy with several clear rings, I was immediately drawn to it. I had to stop to investigate it.” The team later nicknamed the galaxy the “Bullseye.”

Hubble and Keck’s follow-up observations also helped the researchers prove which galaxy plunged through the center of the Bullseye—a blue dwarf galaxy to its center-left. This relatively tiny interloper traveled like a dart through the core of the Bullseye about 50 million years ago, leaving rings in its wake like ripples in a pond. A thin trail of gas now links the pair, though they are currently separated by 130,000 light-years.

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