Lifeboat Foundation

It has been really fun talking to the kids about AI. Should we help AI consciousness to emerge — or should we try to prevent it? Can you design a kindest AI? Can we use AI as an universal emotion translator? How to search for an AI civilization? And many many other questions that you can discuss with kids.

Ultimately, early introduction of AI is not limited to formal instruction. Just contemplating future scenarios of AI evolution provides plentiful material for engaging students with the subject. A survey on the future of AI, administered by the Future of Life Institute, is a great starting point for such discussions. Social studies classes, as well as school debate and philosophy clubs, could also launch a dialogue on AI ethics – an AI nurse selecting a medicine, an AI judge deciding on a criminal case, or an AI driverless car switching lanes to avoid collision.

Demystifying AI for our children in all its complexity while providing them with an early insight into its promises and perils will make them confident in their ability to understand and control this incredible technology, as it is bound to develop rapidly within their lifetimes.

Continue reading “Why Children Need To Learn About Artificial Intelligence” »

“In our current study we were able to uncover important limitations for the use of metformin as longevity medicine,” says Dr. Ermolaeva. In contrast to the positive longevity effects in young organisms that received metformin, lifespan is shortened through metformin intake at an older age. “Previous studies that provided evidence of an extended longevity by metformin usually examined animals treated with metformin from young adult or middle age until the end of life. In contrast, we have looked at treatment windows covering the entire life span, or restricted to early life or to late life”. The study also utilized a human cell culture model of replicative aging to assess human responses to metformin at a cellular level and compare them to organismal responses of the worms.

**Metformin longevity benefits are reversed with age**

The research team led by Dr. Ermolaeva found that the very same metformin treatment that prolonged life when C. elegans worms were treated at young age, was highly toxic when animals of old age were treated. Up to 80% of the population treated at old age were killed by metformin within the first 24 hours of treatment. Consistently, human primary cells demonstrated a progressive decrease in metformin tolerance as they approached replicative senescence. The researchers were able to link this detrimental phenotype to the reduced ability of old cells and old nematodes to adapt to metabolic stressors like metformin. Under these circumstances, the exact same dose of the drug that increased longevity of young-treated organisms by triggering adaptive stress responses was harmful in animals treated at old age, which were unable to activate such protective signals.

Continue reading “Age is decisive for positive or negative effects of the diabetes drug metformin” »

It will allow for near-instantaneous virtual interactions, allowing people to send a hug to a loved one or shake hands with a colleague online. Its increased capacity and speed will revolutionise virtual reality and allow for wholesale ‘teleportation of senses’, researchers claim.

Potential applications include doctors monitoring patients remotely, embracing and holding hands with a loved one who may be thousands of miles away, and having virtual meetings with no lag…

Continue reading “UK’s first 6G innovation centre launches at University of Surrey” »

Forget glue, screws, heat or other traditional bonding methods. A Cornell University-led collaboration has developed a 3D printing technique that creates cellular metallic materials by smashing together powder particles at supersonic speed.

This form of technology, known as “cold spray,” results in mechanically robust, porous structures that are 40% stronger than similar materials made with conventional manufacturing processes. The structures’ small size and porosity make them particularly well-suited for building biomedical components, like replacement joints.

The team’s paper, “Solid-State Additive Manufacturing of Porous Ti-6Al-4V by Supersonic Impact,” published Nov. 9 in Applied Materials Today.

I guess we need to thank our neanderthal forebearers. 😃

A new study shows how interbreeding of modern humans and Neanderthals boosted our genomes.

A team of physicists from the University of Konstanz and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany have achieved attosecond time resolution in a transmission electron microscope by combining it with a continuous-wave laser—offering new insights into light-matter interactions.

Electron microscopes provide deep insight into the smallest details of matter and can reveal, for example, the atomic configuration of materials, the structure of proteins or the shape of virus particles. However, most materials in nature are not static and rather interact, move and reshape all the time. One of the most common phenomena is the interaction between light and matter, which is ubiquitous in plants as well as in optical components, solar cells, displays or lasers. These interactions—which are defined by electrons being moved around by the field cycles of a light wave—happen at ultrafast time scales of femtoseconds (10^-15 seconds) or even attoseconds (10^-18 seconds, a billionth of a billionth of a second). While ultrafast electron microscopy can provide some insight into femtosecond processes, it has not been possible, until now, to visualize the reaction dynamics of light and matter occurring at attosecond speeds.

Now, a team of physicists from the University of Konstanz and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München have succeeded in combining a transmission electron microscope with a continuous-wave laser to create a prototypical attosecond electron microscope (A-TEM). The results are reported in the latest issue of Science Advances.

ReVector researchers have expertise in synthetic biology, human microbiome, and mosquito studies.

The American Society for Microbiology estimates that there are trillions of microbes living in or on the human body that constitute the human microbiome¹. The human skin microbiome (HSM) acts as a barrier between humans and our external environment, protecting us from infection, but also potentially producing molecules that attract mosquitos. Mosquitos are of particular concern to the Department of Defense, as they transmit pathogens that cause diseases such as chikungunya, Zika, dengue, West Nile virus, yellow fever, and malaria. The ReVector program aims to maintain the health of military personnel operating in disease-endemic regions by reducing attraction and feeding by mosquitos, and limiting exposure to mosquito-transmitted diseases.

Genome engineering has progressed to the point where editing the HSM to remove the molecules that attract mosquitos or add genes that produce mild mosquito repellants are now possible. While the skin microbiome has naturally evolved to modulate our interactions with the environment and organisms that surround us, exerting precise control over our microbiomes is an exciting new way to provide protection from mosquito-borne diseases.

Continue reading “DARPA Selects Teams to Modify Skin Microbiome for Disease Prevention” »

The final €85 billion budget is €1.5 billion more than first proposed by the European Commission in 2018, but €5 billion is reserved for applied research and support for small tech firms under a postpandemic recovery fund. The remaining budget is a little larger than the current program, Horizon 2020, but European agencies receive less in the early years of a 7-year budget. That means basic science organs such as the European Research Council (ERC) could have less money in 2021 than in 2020, depending on further negotiations over the budget breakdown, to be held in the coming weeks.

European Parliament wins concessions to bring Horizon Europe budget to €85 billion—but research advocates remain unimpressed.

‘Germicidal’ ultraviolet light technology has a proven track record against indoor transmission of tuberculosis and other airborne microbes. It’s now being used in some restaurant…