Brent Ellman – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Thu, 11 Jan 2024 01:50:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.2 Suspended Skyscraper Proposed For NYC Would Hang Inverted From An Asteroid https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/01/suspended-skyscraper-proposed-for-nyc-would-hang-inverted-from-an-asteroid https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/01/suspended-skyscraper-proposed-for-nyc-would-hang-inverted-from-an-asteroid#respond Thu, 11 Jan 2024 01:50:04 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2024/01/suspended-skyscraper-proposed-for-nyc-would-hang-inverted-from-an-asteroid

What if we told you a future NYC skyscraper could actually extend vertically from the clouds rather than the ground?


Clouds AO’s proposed Analemma Tower would be the world’s tallest building that could be suspended over any city from an asteroid.

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AIM protein-enriched cat food aims to help cats live longer https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/12/aim-protein-enriched-cat-food-aims-to-help-cats-live-longer https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/12/aim-protein-enriched-cat-food-aims-to-help-cats-live-longer#respond Thu, 14 Dec 2023 05:22:23 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/12/aim-protein-enriched-cat-food-aims-to-help-cats-live-longer

Osaka-based Marukan Co., Ltd., the maker of a new range of nutritional cat food with AIM protein to prevent kidney disease, wants to help extend the lives of cats to 30 years.


Learn more about a protein-enriched cat food aiming to help cats live longer.

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What If Money Expired? https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/11/what-if-money-expired https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/11/what-if-money-expired#respond Thu, 16 Nov 2023 19:24:36 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/11/what-if-money-expired

More than a century ago, a wild-eyed, vegetarian, free love-promoting German entrepreneur and self-taught economist named Silvio Gesell proposed a radical reformation of the monetary system as we know it.


A long-forgotten German economist argued that society and the economy would be better off if money was a perishable good. Was he an anarchist crank or the prophet of a better world?

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Crack vaccine research on rats could help babies of mothers who use cocaine—and reduce addiction https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/crack-vaccine-research-on-rats-could-help-babies-of-mothers-who-use-cocaine-and-reduce-addiction https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/crack-vaccine-research-on-rats-could-help-babies-of-mothers-who-use-cocaine-and-reduce-addiction#respond Fri, 27 Oct 2023 06:22:35 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/crack-vaccine-research-on-rats-could-help-babies-of-mothers-who-use-cocaine-and-reduce-addiction

UFMG-V4N2 proved effective in producing antibodies and making them block the passage of cocaine into the brain, which means that the vaccinated animals have a reduced perception of the drug’s effect: a very important advantage in a treatment.

This blockage occurs in the following way: we have a “protective shield” called the blood-brain barrier, which prevents toxic elements, viruses or bacteria from entering the brain, but because the cocaine molecule is very small, it manages to pass through this barrier.

The vaccine stimulates the production of antibodies, which bind to the drug molecules, increasing their weight and size and thus preventing them from getting past the protective shield. The cocaine is retained in the blood, but as it is bound to the antibody, it doesn’t act on the heart or arteries either, which means the risk of overdoses is reduced.


The most recent statistics put the number of regular cocaine or crack cocaine users in the world at 20 million. Of these, one in four will become addicted or develop use disorders.

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Adapting Ritalin to tackle cocaine abuse https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/adapting-ritalin-to-tackle-cocaine-abuse https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/adapting-ritalin-to-tackle-cocaine-abuse#respond Fri, 27 Oct 2023 06:22:22 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/adapting-ritalin-to-tackle-cocaine-abuse

Cocaine use continues to be a public health problem, yet despite concerted efforts, no drugs have been approved to resolve cocaine addiction. Research suggests that the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drug methylphenidate (MPH; Ritalin) could serve as a cocaine-replacement therapy, but clinical results have been mixed. Although several labs have produced MPH derivatives for testing, parts of the molecule remained chemically inaccessible. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have cleared that hurdle.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5 million Americans reported actively using cocaine in 2020, and almost 25,000 Americans died of a cocaine-related overdose in 2021. Although small-molecule drugs have proven effective in treating other drug addictions—for example, methadone as a therapy for heroin abuse—no such medication exists for cocaine abuse.

MPH has been considered a potential treatment because it behaves similarly to the illicit drug, increasing dopamine levels in the brain by blocking dopamine reuptake. Additionally, have shown that MPH has a lower risk of abuse than cocaine.

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AI chatbots could help plan bioweapon attacks, report finds https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/ai-chatbots-could-help-plan-bioweapon-attacks-report-finds https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/ai-chatbots-could-help-plan-bioweapon-attacks-report-finds#respond Sat, 21 Oct 2023 16:22:38 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/ai-chatbots-could-help-plan-bioweapon-attacks-report-finds

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Basic-income participants in Denver say it helped turn their lives around https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/basic-income-participants-in-denver-say-it-helped-turn-their-lives-around https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/basic-income-participants-in-denver-say-it-helped-turn-their-lives-around#respond Sat, 21 Oct 2023 16:22:24 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/basic-income-participants-in-denver-say-it-helped-turn-their-lives-around

How basic income works.

Over the course of a year, the Denver Basic Income Project gives participants cash payments of varying amounts. Many participants, some of whom were living on the streets a few months before enrolling in the program, reported feeling safer, happier, and less anxious with better living arrangements.

The Denver Basic Income Project began in 2021 and was granted a $2 million contribution from the city. Researchers at the University of Denver’s Center on Housing and Homelessness Research found most of those who received money from the program were significantly better off six months in.


Dia Broncucia and Justin Searls bought a car, rented an apartment, and improved their mental health after receiving monthly basic-income payments.

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Even the CIA is developing an AI chatbot https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/even-the-cia-is-developing-an-ai-chatbot https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/even-the-cia-is-developing-an-ai-chatbot#respond Sat, 14 Oct 2023 11:09:04 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/even-the-cia-is-developing-an-ai-chatbot

“The CIA and other US intelligence agencies will soon have an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT. The program, revealed on Tuesday by Bloomberg, will train on publicly available data and provide sources alongside its answers so agents can confirm their validity. The aim is for US spies to more easily sift through ever-growing troves of information, although the exact nature of what constitutes “public data” could spark some thorny privacy issues.

“We’ve gone from newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps going,” Randy Nixon, the CIA’s director of Open Source Enterprise, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We have to find the needles in the needle field.” Nixon’s division plans to distribute the AI tool to US intelligence agencies “soon.””.


The CIA confirmed that it’s developing an AI chatbot for all 18 US intelligence agencies to quickly parse troves of ‘publicly available’ data.

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Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/blowback-how-israel-went-from-helping-create-hamas-to-bombing-it https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/blowback-how-israel-went-from-helping-create-hamas-to-bombing-it#respond Tue, 10 Oct 2023 01:23:30 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/blowback-how-israel-went-from-helping-create-hamas-to-bombing-it

“This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a ” counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as ” a creature of Israel.”)

The Israeli government gave me a budget, the retired brigadier general confessed, and the military government gives to the mosques.

Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation, Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious… More.


What do you know about Hamas?

That it’s sworn to destroy Israel? That it’s a terrorist group, proscribed both by the United States and the European Union? That it rules Gaza with an iron fist? That it’s killed hundreds of innocent Israelis with rocket, mortar, and suicide attacks?

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Musicgen Streaming by sanchit-gandhi https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/musicgen-streaming-by-sanchit-gandhi https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/musicgen-streaming-by-sanchit-gandhi#respond Mon, 09 Oct 2023 20:29:46 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/musicgen-streaming-by-sanchit-gandhi

“Stream the outputs of the MusicGen text-to-music model by playing the generated audio as soon as the first chunk is ready.”


Discover amazing ML apps made by the community.

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