Lifeboat Foundation

Serious Safety Questions about the first paying space tourism flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo while wishing them the best.

Congratulations to Virgin Galactic for a successful mission today! I looked great! But there are still serious safety questions about the missions going forward about paying space tourism flights on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. I do wish Virgin Galactic the best on their venture going forward!

Continue reading “Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Safety Questions” »

Artificial intelligence (AI) proponents say the technology will transform every industry from healthcare and automobiles to yogurt.

Danone S.A., a renowned multinational food company, plans to use AI and a top-secret robot stomach to revolutionize its operations and drive growth in the highly competitive yogurt market.

By harnessing the power of AI, Danone aims to improve its products and operations on several fronts to boost profits and keep the company at the forefront of the yogurt industry.

The Europe Union is introducing “crash test” systems for artificial intelligence to ensure new innovations are safe before they hit the market.

The trade bloc launched four permanent testing and experimental facilities across Europe on Tuesday, having injected €220 million ($240 million) into the project. The centers, which are virtual and physical, will from next year give technology providers a space to test AI and robotics in real-life settings within manufacturing, health care, agriculture and food, and cities.

Weeds are one of the most “tedious, time-consuming and challenging” elements of farming, Carbon Robotics told Fox Business via email.

The LaserWeeder can eliminate over 200,000 weeds per hour and offer up to 80% cost savings in weed control.

Carbon Robotics CEO and founder Paul Mikesell “knows farmers and has a lot of friends who are farmers,” he said.

The technology could eventually revolutionize health care. We’ve seen CRISPR start to be used experimentally to treat children with cancer, for example. It is being explored for lots of genetic diseases. And last year, a company used CRISPR to try to treat a woman with dangerously high cholesterol.

But CRISPR could also transform farming, including aquaculture. This week, I wrote about researchers who inserted an alligator gene into catfish. The idea isn’t to make these fish more alligator-like, but to make them more resistant to disease. It turns out that alligators have a particular talent for fighting off infections.

These gene-edited fish, pigs, and other animals could soon be on the menu.

Continue reading “How CRISPR is making farmed animals bigger, stronger, and healthier” »

In a 1931 essay, Winston Churchill wrote about how he sees the future of food production: “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium,” he wrote.

Fast forward some 90 years, and Churchill’s prediction is coming true, thanks in part to Israeli food-tech company Aleph Farms, which has developed a unique method to cultivate steak meat from isolated cow cells.

First to develop cultured steak.

The robots will be self-driving.

Estonian ride-hailing firm Bolt has revealed it will soon begin delivering food to people’s doors using a fleet of autonomous robots. The move hails from a partnership with robotics firm Starship Technologies.

The company will first trial its online food deliveries in its home city of Tallinn, Estonia later this year.

Continue reading “Ride-hailing firm Bolt to soon offer robot-powered food delivery in Tallinn” »

To survive long-term in deep space? The answer is a lukewarm maybe, according to a new theory that outlines the intricate challenges of maintaining gravity and oxygen, securing water, cultivating food, and managing waste while being distant from Earth.

Dubbed the Pancosmorio theory – a word coined to mean “all world limit” – it was described in a paper published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

“For humans to sustain themselves and all of their technology, infrastructure, and society in space, they need a self-restoring, Earth-like, natural ecosystem to back them up,” said co-author Morgan Irons, a doctoral student conducting research with Johannes Lehmann, professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University. Her work focuses on soil organic carbon persistence under Earth’s gravity and varying gravity conditions. “Without these kinds of systems, the mission fails.”

Suseela Santhosh, director of Vishwa Vidyapeeth school in Bengaluru started an organic farm in her school that feeds its 1,400 students and staff for free.