Lifeboat Foundation

So, is it true…

As I say, Carlson was roundly criticized for his comments. Some of that criticism was entirely justified, although much of it was not. And in any case, Longoria will not be criticized at all for her statements, in part because she’s a leftist and, thus, above criticism, and in part because she, like Carlson, has a point. Public spaces in American cities are, in most cases, grotesque. That’s almost inarguable. Among other things, Tucker was bashed because he made what seemed to be a partisan argument. He was clearly and undeniably criticizing urban Democratic politics and policies. The irony here is that Longoria was too, although neither she nor any of her supporters and fans understand that.

As Democrats continue their soul-searching, and as media and other analysts try to dissect the causes of the enormous Republican victory not quite two weeks ago, one lesson will likely go unlearned. The American people really do want their country to be great again. To them, that doesn’t mean that the United States should be an omnipotent global colossus, striding the globe, enforcing its will on everyone and everything. And it doesn’t mean that Americans should win every gold medal at every Olympics or every Nobel Prize or anything like that. Americans just want their country to work again. They just want their cities to function. They want to be able to build homes or power plants or new factories without having to spend countless months and endless resources complying with arcane and ridiculous regulations. They want their country to look and feel and operate like a normal place again.

Continue reading “Making America Great Again Means Fixing Its Dystopian Cities” »

The U.S. faces a critical cybersecurity threat as quantum computers edge closer to disrupting the cryptographic systems that secure vital government and infrastructure data, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

U.S. faces significant cybersecurity risks from quantum computing due to leadership gaps and an incomplete national strategy.

Dr. Seung-Woo Lee and his team at the Quantum Technology Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed a world-class quantum error correction technology and designed a fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture based on it.

- Quantum error correction is a key technology in the implementation and practicalization of quantum computing.

- Groundbreaking quantum error correction technology contributes to the development of K-quantum computing deployments.

Continue reading “Developed proprietary quantum error correction technology beyond the world’s leading quantum computing companies” »

We further investigated whether these associations were driven by caffeine by performing two meta-analyses on the PREDICT1 and PREDICT3 22UKA samples for which the intake of decaffeinated and caffeinated coffee was available. Partial correlations between SGB-ranked abundances and decaffeinated versus caffeinated coffee were run independently (excluding individuals who drank exclusively caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee, respectively). In addition, partial correlations were also adjusted for the other type of coffee consumed by the individuals in case their record reported both kinds. We identified 150 correlations, which remained highly significant after controlling for the decaffeinated coffee intake (q 0.001, n_participants = 12,089; Extended Data Fig. 4c and Supplementary Table 8). This indicated a substantial independence on caffeine of the observed impact on the microbiome. Next, we analysed the decaffeinated coffee association with the microbiome in individuals consuming decaffeinated coffee and adjusting by caffeinated coffee as well as by sex, age and BMI. In this reduced set of samples (n_participants = 6,089) we identified 22 correlations at q 0.001 and 66 at q 0.1 (Supplementary Table 9). The top three correlations identified were L. asaccharolyticus (ρ = 0.27 (0.21–0.33), q 10⁻¹⁰), the Lachnospiraceae SGB4777 (ρ = 0.18 (0.16–0.21), q 10⁻¹⁰), and M. coli (SGB29305, ρ = 0.17 (0.13–0.2), q 10⁻¹⁰; Fig. 2b).

As expected, several coffee-associated SGBs were also L. asaccharolyticus co-abundant SGBs, possibly indicating similar independent stimulatory effects of coffee rather than ecological relations (Extended Data Fig. 5 and Supplementary Table 10). The top-five SGBs associated with L. asaccharolyticus abundance were, however, not among the strongest associations with coffee. In particular, the two SGBs with the strongest co-abundance pattern with L. asaccharolyticus were Dysosmobacter welbionis (SGB15078) and the Clostridiales bacterium SGB15143 (ρ = 0.57 and 0.51, respectively, q 1 × 10⁻¹⁰; Extended Data Fig. 5), which were both only weakly associated with total coffee (ρ ≤ 0.05; Supplementary Table 7). Overall, these results indicate that a panel of species, and in particular L. asaccharolyticus is robustly associated with total and decaffeinated coffee consumption, suggesting that the association is not purely due to caffeine.

Among the top coffee-associated SGBs, L. asaccharolyticus showed the highest and the most uniform prevalence across all the cohorts (93.5%; Fig. 2c). In the ‘never’ group from the USA, its prevalence was uniformly high (average prevalence of 87.8 ± 2%) across nine different regions (samples from PREDICT2 and PREDICT3 US22A, n = 9,210). Over and above this, however, it was uniformly increased in all regions when considering coffee consumption; it increased from 87.8% to 95.6% in moderate drinkers and from 95.6% to 97.7% in high drinkers (Fig. 2d and Supplementary Table 11). Degree of urbanization (rural versus urban living context) was not associated with L. asaccharolyticus in the microbiome (Extended Data Fig. 6 and Supplementary Table 12). Overall, the median abundance of L. asaccharolyticus ranged from 4.5-to 8-fold higher in the high compared with the never group (in the PREDICT3 US22A and MBS–MLVS cohorts), and 3.4-to 6.4-fold higher in the moderate versus the never group (in the PREDICT2 and MBS–MLVS cohorts; Supplementary Table 13). By contrast, the highest median fold change between moderate and high drinkers was only 1.4 and did not reach statistical significance in three out of five cohorts (Fig. 3a and Supplementary Table 14).

Using the set of first-light observations from the new William Herschel Telescope Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) wide-field spectrograph, a team of more than 50 astronomers, led by Dr. Marina Arnaudova at the University of Hertfordshire, has presented the first WEAVE scientific results on Stephan’s Quintet in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This state-of-the-art wide-field spectrograph is a 20-million Euro project that brings together leading experts from around the world. WEAVE is set to revolutionize our understanding of the universe, offering unprecedented detail, as demonstrated in this new study of Stephan’s Quintet.

Stephan’s Quintet, also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92, is a nearby galaxy group that consists of five galaxies (NGC 7,317, NGC 7318a, NGC 7318b, NGC 7,319 and NGC 7320c). Ever since its discovery in 1877, it has captivated astronomers, particularly because it represents a galactic crossroad where past collisions between galaxies have left behind a complex field of debris.

With AI progress ‘now measured in days’ Gemini and ChatGPT spent the week one-upping each other. Then this happened.

Background: The simplified Pulmonary Embolism Severity Index (sPESI) has limitations when evaluating acute pulmonary embolism (PE) in patients with concurrent malignancy. Despite its utility in predicting outcomes among cancer patients, the role of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status (ECOG PS) in acute PE remains underexplored. This study aims to assess the prognostic significance of ECOG PS ≥ 3 on short-and long-term mortality in acute PE with malignancy, correlating it with the sPESI.

Methods and results: We retrospectively analyzed 44 hemodynamically stable acute PE patients with unresectable or metastatic malignancies ineligible for curative treatment at Kameda Medical Center, a tertiary medical facility in Japan, from April 1, 2019, to March 2, 2023. Of these patients, 16 (36.4%) had ECOG PS ≥ 3.

Robot adoption in factories around the world continues at a rapid pace. Here’s where the U.S. ranks.

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