Lifeboat Foundation

More than 2000 Australian suffering from advanced melanoma will soon receive financial relief with an expansion of treatments on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt says.

From March 1 the PBS listed Opdivo (nivolumab) will be expanded, assisting 1500 patients who might otherwise pay more than $100,000 per course of treatment without the PBS subsidy.

“Opdivo is a breakthrough immunotherapy which works by blocking proteins and helping the body’s own immune system to find, attack and destroy cancer cells,” Mr Hunt said in a statement on Sunday.

Stocks cratered again on Tuesday, hitting their sessions lows after a CDC official told the U.S. to brace for a possible breakout of coronavirus here.

In this post, you’ll find why I think SENS Research Foundation (SRF) is great to finance from an EA perspective along with the interview questions I want to ask its Chief Science Officer, Aubrey de Grey. You are welcome to contribute with your own questions in the comments or through a private message. Here is a brief summary of each section:

Introduction: Aging research looks extremely good as a cause-area from an EA perspective. Under a total utilitarian view, it is probably second or third after existential risk mitigation. There are many reasons why it makes sense to donate to many EA cause-areas, such as to reduce risk, if there are particularly effective specific interventions, or if some cause-areas are already well funded.

SRF’s approach to aging research: SRF selects its research following the SENS general strategy, which divides aging into seven categories of damage, each having a corresponding line of research. This categorization is very similar to the one described in the landmark paper The Hallmarks of Aging. This sort of damage repair approach seems more effective and tractable than current geriatrics and biogerontology that are aimed at slowing down aging, as it enables LEV and many more QALYs. It makes rejuvenation possible instead of just slowing down aging as a best-case scenario, and it doesn’t require an in-depth knowledge of our metabolism, which is extremely complicated and full of unknown-unknowns.

The University of Southern California (USC) has a new plan to make college tuition-free.

Here’s what you need to know.

Tuition-Free

Continue reading “USC Announces New Tuition-Free Plan” »

Despite a federal judge’s ruling last September that the U.S. government’s terror watch list violates constitutional rights, an FBI report obtained by Yahoo News shows local and state law enforcement agencies are being used to gather intelligence on individuals to collect information about those already in the database.

Law enforcement “encounters of watchlisted individuals almost certainly yield increased opportunities for intelligence collection,” says the FBI document, dated more than a month after the federal court ruling. The FBI says such encounters could include traffic stops or domestic disputes, which gives law enforcement “the opportunity to acquire additional biographic identifiers, fraudulent identification documents, financial information and associates of watchlisted individuals,” which might assist in thwarting terrorist acts.

The Terrorism Screening Database, widely known as the watch list, was created in 2003 and consists of names of people suspected of being involved with terrorism. Over the years, the list has grown to include the names of 1.1 million people, raising concerns that many of those on the list have no involvement in terrorism but have little or no legal resources with which to challenge the designation.

The space industry is in the midst of a widespread transformation, as the last decade has seen several young, private companies seek to profit in areas historically dominated by governmental interests. Among these areas is lunar mining, which represents a crucial step for the development of the space economy by enabling the utilization of lunar resources. Though significant opportunities exist for wealth creation and societal benefits, it will require sustained multibillion-dollar investment to develop a vibrant lunar mining industry.

Exploration is the essential first step for any mining endeavor, terrestrially or otherwise, but with the technical challenges of lunar mining largely solved, access to capital has become the prevailing constraint. While the uncertainty of operating in space is the commonly used explanation for capital constraints, in reality, terrestrial explorers have seen funding steadily decline for a decade, with investors favoring lower risk, passive exposure to the mining sector. For lunar mining firms seeking to attract capital for exploration, this essay details the incompatibility of traditional investment options, the financing strategies developed by the similarly cash-strapped terrestrial mining industry, and how prospective lunar miners should capitalize on emerging trends in project finance.

Tesla has released the first official picture of a Model Y production vehicle, as well as pictures of the production line pictures — hinting at their previously discussed body manufacturing breakthrough.

With the release of Tesla’s Q4 2019 financial results, the automaker also announced the start of Model Y production, which happened earlier this month, and the start of deliveries in March.

For almost a year now, we have seen Model Y pre-production prototypes on public roads as part of Tesla’s extensive test program.

The World Health Organization said the fast-spreading coronavirus that’s infected more than 8,200 people across the world is a global health emergency — a rare designation that helps the international agency mobilize financial and political support to contain the outbreak.

The announcement comes just hours after the U.S. confirmed its first human-to-human transmission of the virus, which has killed at least 171 people in China and has now spread to at least 18 other countries.

Since emerging less than a month ago in Wuhan, China, the coronavirus has infected more people than the 2003 SARS epidemic, which sickened roughly 8,100 people across the globe over nine months. As of Thursday, there are at least eight cases in four countries, outside of China, of human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus.