Lifeboat Foundation

The workplace is going to look drastically different ten years from now. The coming of the Second Machine Age is quickly bringing massive changes along with it. Manual jobs, such as lorry driving or house building are being replaced by robotic automation, and accountants, lawyers, doctors and financial advisers are being supplemented and replaced by high level artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

So what do we need to learn today about the jobs of tomorrow? Two things are clear. The robots and computers of the future will be based on a degree of complexity that will be impossible to teach to the general population in a few short years of compulsory education. And some of the most important skills people will need to work with robots will not be the things they learn in computing class.

Continue reading “How Artificial Intelligence and the robotic revolution will change the workplace of tomorrow” »

For people interested or working on Crispr related stuff.

*Benefits of performing arrayed CRISPR RNA (crRNA) screening.

*How to setup a successful arrayed crRNA screen.

Continue reading “Crispr Webinar: Using Synthetic Crispr libraries” »

Science has taken another step toward delivering the perfect newborn – or at least a bouncing baby free of certain genetic defects.

Chinese researchers used a genome editing technique called CRISPR to rid normal embryos of hereditary diseases that cause blood disorders and other ailments, according to New Scientist. Experts who reviewed the project told the publication that, even though it involved just six embryos, it carries promise.

“It is encouraging,” Robin Lovell-Badge, a human genome expert at the Francis Crick Institute in London, told New Scientist.

Continue reading “Chinese researchers announce designer baby breakthrough” »

This is nowhere near the power of the biggest systems, but still allows us to participate in research and development powered by supercomputer.

The idea that a computer could deliver an increase in life expectancy arises for a number of reasons, Prof Desplat says. Major gains are expected from the emergence of personalised medicine, care specifically tailored to match your genetic make-up. This will be driven in the not too distant future by “deep artificial intelligence learning” run on a supercomputer. These will also deliver faster more accurate early diagnosis, he says.

These computers are used in a variety of ways, from weather forecasting and climate modelling to energy usage modelling, statistical processing and seismic analysis when prospecting for oil and gas.

Continue reading “Supercomputers may boost life expectancy” »

And today a clear lesson in why jumping the gun and not using appropriate engineering safety in regenerative medicine is reckless and dangerous. The steady and scientific path is always the best way when health is on the line. The current system needs streamlining for sure and projects like Lifespan.io are helping to create a progressive environment but ensuring appropriate safety is observed. We must be careful in healthcare and this story reminds us why.

Three women suffered severe eye damage at a Florida clinic, exposing gaps in protections for people seeking unproven treatments.

George Church is very interested in your memories now.

Harvard researcher George Church is looking for people with exceptionally good memory to take part in a study aimed at finding genetic mechanisms that boost memory in research that could one day result in better drugs or diagnostic tests.

Church and other researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Harvard Medical School’s Personal Genome Project, in collaboration with Lumos Labs — the makers of the brain-training game Lumosity — will look for common genetic markers in individuals with exceptional memories, attention and reaction speeds.

Continue reading “George Church, Lumosity want those with good memory to ‘share it, not hoard it’” »

You can’t save data on a quantum computer. So a commercial one will need to use vintage tech—ultra dense hard drives, maybe made of DNA or single atoms.

Inside a Boston lab just a few miles away from MIT, a team of PhDs is building tools for a future where factories are powered by biology, not traditional manufacturing. The startup, Ginkgo Bioworks, currently helps clients design flavors and fragrances by modifying the DNA of microbes like yeast. Once the yeast have been tweaked to produce a particular scent as a byproduct, they can be brewed like beer and the smell can be extracted and bottled — which reduces the client’s need to depend on natural resources for ingredients. (video by: Alan Jeffries, Victoria Blackburne-Daniell, Drew Beebe) (Source: Bloomberg)

Part man, part machine: Researchers at the University of Oxford are making The Terminator a reality.

Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy and Andrew Carr, of the Oxford Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit, test medical technology by dressing robots in human flesh.

The cyborgs “wear” tissue grafts to help develop artificial muscles and tendons before transplantation.

Continue reading “Scientists Grow Human Skin on Robots” »