Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: futurism – Page 894

Opting In for a Positive Future — Allison Duettmann

Excellent speech.

Our civilization is made up of countless individuals and pieces of material technology, which come together to form institutions and interdependent systems of logistics, development and production. These institutions and systems then store the knowledge required for their own renewal and growth.

We pin the hopes of our common human project on this renewal and growth of the whole civilization. Whether this project is going well is a challenging but vital question to answer.

History shows us we are not safe from institutional collapse. Advances in technology mitigate some aspects, but produce their own risks. Agile institutions that make use of both social and technical knowledge not only mitigate such risks, but promise unprecedented human flourishing.

Watch this video where we investigate this landscape, evaluate our odds, and try to plot a better course.

Continue reading “Opting In for a Positive Future — Allison Duettmann” | >

Water recycling, reuse could dramatically slash cities’ need for fresh water resources, research shows

Using Houston as a model, researchers at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering have developed a plan that could reduce the need for surface water (from rivers, reservoirs or wells) by 28% by recycling wastewater to make it drinkable once again.

While the cost of energy needed for future advanced purification systems would be significant, they say the savings realized by supplementing fresh water shipped from a distance with the “direct potable reuse” of municipal wastewater would more than make up for the expense.

And the water would be better to boot.

Missing Children in America: Unsolved Cases

The shocking case of Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 27, and Michele Knight, 32, all of whom were abducted as long as 11 years ago, provides fresh hope for parents still grappling with their own child’s disappearance.

Thousands of people go missing in the United States each year and many are never heard from again.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, roughly 800,000 children are reported missing each year in the United States — that’s roughly 2,000 per day. Of those, there are 115 child “stranger abduction” cases each year, which means the child was taken by an unknown person.

This is the hard-to-swallow truth about a future coronavirus vaccine (and yes, I’m a doctor)

When pharmaceutical company Moderna issued a press release about the promising results of its Phase I clinical trial for a coronavirus vaccine, the media and the markets went wild. The New York Times ran a story that went viral on Twitter, racking up millions of views as social media influencers and doctors alike shared it far and wide. Moderna’s stock price shot up 20 percent and several peer companies like Novavax rallied even higher at more than 30 percent.

But was it justified?

The news cycle in the era of the coronavirus pandemic feels like tidal waves of hope and fear on steroids. Perhaps that’s because with more than 36 million Americans losing their jobs and more than 90,000 losing their lives, everyone is desperately looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. Covid-19 is taking an unprecedented physical and psychological toll on the American people and so small bits of potentially good news that should be taken with a grain of salt can end up dominating the headlines. People turn molehills into mountains because we really need and want a game-changer right now. But the truth is the truth regardless of what we want or feel, especially in science and medicine.

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