Lifeboat Foundation

https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=P-wiCEov7oQ&u…ture=share

Michael B. Fossel, M.D., Ph.D. (born 1950, Greenwich, Connecticut) was a professor of clinical medicine at Michigan State University and is the author of several books on aging, who is best known for his views on telomerase therapy as a possible treatment for cellular senescence. Fossel has appeared on many major news programs to discuss aging and has appeared regularly on National Public Radio (NPR). He is also a respected lecturer, author, and the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine (now known as Rejuvenation Research).

Prior to earning his M.D. at Stanford Medical School, Fossel earned a joint B.A. (cum laude) and M.A. in psychology at Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in neurobiology at Stanford University. He is also a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy. Prior to graduating from medical school in 1981, he was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship and taught at Stanford University.

In addition to his position at Michigan State University, Fossel has lectured at the National Institute for Health, the Smithsonian Institution, and at various other universities and institutes in various parts of the world. Fossel served on the board of directors for the American Aging Association and was their executive director.

Continue reading “Michael Fossel — Defeating Aging” »

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — A chickenpox outbreak at a private school now ranks as North Carolina’s largest since a vaccine for the virus became available more than 20 years ago, health officials say.

As of Friday, 36 students at Asheville Waldorf School had contracted the varicella virus, known to most as chickenpox. The school has one of the highest vaccination religious exemption rates in the state.

The viral infection manifests in an itchy rash in most cases and is not typically life-threatening. But the outbreak at Asheville Waldorf should cause concern, said Dr. Jennifer Mullendore of Buncombe County Department of Health and Human Services.

Continue reading “School with major chickenpox outbreak has high vaccination exemption rate” »

En Taro AI

The latest results in a long-running contest of video-game-playing AIs reveal how hard it is for machines to master swarming insectoid Zergs or blitzing Protos. They also show that even old-school approaches can still sometimes win out.

The AIIDE Starcraft Contest has been running at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, since 2010. Participating teams submit bots that play an original version of Starcraft, a sprawling sci-fi-themed game, in a series of one-on-one showdowns.

Continue reading “An old-fashioned AI has won a Starcraft shootout” »

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About 15 years ago, UNC Lineberger’s Dale Ramsden, Ph.D., was looking through a textbook with one of his students when they stumbled upon a scientific mystery.

A small line in the book indicated that a protein that helps repair major breaks in our genetic code did so by adding DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, as expected. However, there were hints that it could also add RNA, or ribonucleic acid, at least in a test tube. It seemed unlikely that this would occur during repair of DNA in living cells, since RNA is normally used only as a messenger to carry information from the genetic code to make proteins.

Continue reading “By solving a mystery of gene repair, scientists uncover an exception to biology’s rules” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gqoIEjKQ3yE

A team of scientists and engineers from the Universities of Birmingham and Bristol have returned from Guatemala where they have been teaching local scientists how to use drones to map the Fuego volcano which violently erupted earlier this year.

13-year-old Rishab Jain won the 2018 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge for making a tool to help treat pancreatic cancer more safely.

Lattice QCD is not only teaching us how the strong interactions lead to the overwhelming majority of the mass of normal matter in our Universe, but holds the potential to teach us about all sorts of other phenomena, from nuclear reactions to dark matter.

Later today, November 7th, physics professor Phiala Shanahan will be delivering a public lecture from Perimeter Institute, and we&s;ll be live-blogging it right here at 7 PM ET / 4 PM PT. You can watch the talk right here, and follow along with my commentary below. Shanahan is an expert in theoretical nuclear and particle physics and specializes in supercomputer work involving QCD, and I&s;m so curious what else she has to say.

Continue reading “At Last, Physicists Understand Where Matter’s Mass Comes From” »

…but Our Timelines Are Too Rosy I would actually welcome a correction in public opinion about what AI can and cannot do. This has happened to me multiple times, where I would listen to a CEO on stage make an announcement about what their company is doing with AI, and then 20 minutes later I’d talk to one of their engineers, and they’d say, “No, we’re not doing that, and we have no idea how to do it.” I think it still takes judgment to know what is and what isn’t possible with AI, and when the C-suite does not yet have that judgment it’s possible for companies to make promises very publicly that are just not feasible. Frankly, we see some of this in the self-driving space. Multiple auto [original equipment manufacturer] CEOs have promised self-driving car roadmaps that their own engineers think are unrealistic. I feel [CEOs are] being sincere but just not really understanding what can be done in a certain timeframe.

The co-founder of Google’s deep-learning research team on the promise of a conditional basic income, the need for a skills-based education system and what CEOs don’t understand about artificial intelligence.

If you haven’t heard, universities around the world are offering their courses online for free (or at least partially free). These courses are collectively called MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses.

In the past six years or so, over 800 universities have created more than 10,000 of these MOOCs. And I’ve been keeping track of these MOOCs the entire time over at Class Central, ever since they rose to prominence.

In the past four months alone, 190 universities have announced 600 such free online courses. I’ve compiled a list of them and categorized them according to the following subjects: Computer Science, Mathematics, Programming, Data Science, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education & Teaching, Health & Medicine, Business, Personal Development, Engineering, Art & Design, and finally Science.

Continue reading “190 universities just launched 600 free online courses. Here’s the full list” »