Lifeboat Foundation

As we are progressing towards the end 2021, let’s summarize what we did and where we are for Space Renaissance International. It was a quite intense and fruitful year.

A first Key Performance Indicator is membership: we have grown more than 110% in membership since November 2020, but we need more registrations, and partnerships! We have a goal for 2021, we are not far from it, and we hope to exceed it within December 20!

**A special invitation for the last event of 2021, December 20th: the Xmas Special meeting with our president Prof. Bernard Foing!** That will be a very special event, where we hope we can celebrate the achievement of our membership goal for 2021! The Zoom meeting will be open to all the SRI Members and invited friends — just registered or going to register during the meeting. During the meeting all the participants will have the possibility to make questions to the SRI President, the Founder and the Board of Directors, about the 2022 program: criticisms and proposals will be welcome.

Continue reading “Space Renaissance 2021: Highlights and Perspectives, and a Special Invitation” »

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What does it mean when someone calls you smart or intelligent? According to developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, it could mean one of eight things. In this video interview, Dr. Gardner addresses his eight classifications for intelligence: writing, mathematics, music, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.

Continue reading “8 Intelligences: Are You a Jack of All Trades or a Master of One? | Howard Gardner | Big Think” »

Recent projects used machine learning to resurrect paintings by Klimt and Rembrandt. They raise questions about what computers can understand about art.

Full Story:

IN 1945, FIRE claimed three of Gustav Klimt’s most controversial paintings. Commissioned in 1,894 for the University of Vienna, “the Faculty Paintings”—as they became known—were unlike any of the Austrian symbolist’s previous work. As soon as he presented them, critics were in an uproar over their dramatic departure from the aesthetics of the time. Professors at the university rejected them immediately, and Klimt withdrew from the project. Soon thereafter, the works found their way into other collections. During World War II, they were placed in a castle north of Vienna for safekeeping, but the castle burned down, and the paintings presumably went with it. All that remains today are some black-and-white photographs and writings from the time. Yet I am staring right at them.

Continue reading “Can AI Truly Give Us a Glimpse of Lost Masterpieces?” »

Le Imagini con la sposizione dei dei de gli antichi (The Images of the Gods of the Ancients and their Explanations) was first published in Venice in 1556. Illustrations were added in subsequent editions. New engraving and translation into other languages continued for about 150 years. Although Vicenzio Cartari lived in Renaissance Italy in 1556. he was an antiquarian, and most of the imagos originate from the late Ptolemaic period. I was an antiquarian book dealer in London specialising in Emblem books, and have most of the different early Cartari editions.

The birth of Tarrochini in Italy predates Cartari. The “Four Orders of Virtue” game by Martiano da Tortona is first mentioned in 1425. Robert Place and Ross Caldwell have replicated the lost paintings of the da Tortona using written descriptions. My approach is to use “Images of the Ancient Gods” (Cartari’s imagos) as the source images for Apollo, Hercules and the others. These icons would have been familiar to da Tortona, and could formed the basis for his lost paintings. The Wheel of Fortune originally was the Wheel of Fortuna — Goddess — but Christianised “occult” tarot of the Victorians removed as many pagan traces as it could get away with, adding The Devil, Pope and a few purely Christian images. Eliphas Levi is partly to blame.

The most important engravings are by Bolognino Zaltieri, 1571. A later 1,614 edition has slightly different engravings by Paulus Hachenberg, and I have colourized both these series. Some imagos retain banners of names or slogans associated with particular emblemata. My names won’t be agreed by everyone and can be argued about, but the reasons for these names are given in my book with reference to Cartari and The fountaine of ancient fiction Wherein is liuely depictured the images and statues of the gods of the ancients, with their proper and perticular expositions. Done out of Italian into English, by Richard Linche Gent. London: Printed by Adam Islip, 1599. I will post these 176 plus versions together with meanings and extra information on these Patreon pages regularly.

Most human diseases can be traced to malfunctioning parts of a cell—a tumor is able to grow because a gene wasn’t accurately translated into a particular protein or a metabolic disease arises because mitochondria aren’t firing properly, for example. But to understand what parts of a cell can go wrong in a disease, scientists first need to have a complete list of parts.

By combining microscopy, biochemistry techniques and artificial intelligence, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and collaborators have taken what they think may turn out to be a significant leap forward in the understanding of human cells.

The technique, known as Multi-Scale Integrated Cell (MuSIC), is described November 24, 2021 in Nature.

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Researched and Written by JD Voyek.
Narrated and Edited by David Kelly.
Thumbnail Art by Ettore Mazza.

Continue reading “Why Is The Universe Out Of Balance?” »

Over the past few years, scientists have been trying to understand how listening to music affects your brain. One of the features of music that seems to be important is whether you have an emotional connection to it. In other words, listening to a favorite tune will have a different effect on your brain than an unknown or disliked piece of music.

Now, a new study has shown that people with Alzheimer’s Disease can improve their cognition by listening to music that has personal meaning to them, such as songs they’ve been listening to for years.

Researchers Corinne Fischer, Nathan Churchill and colleagues from the University of Toronto ran a small study to find out what exactly happens when people with Alzheimer’s listened to their favorite songs. They asked fourteen people with early stage Alzheimer’s Disease to spend one hour per day listening to music they enjoyed and were very familiar with. Before and after the test period all participants also took a cognitive test, and had their brain activity measured by functional MRI (fMRI).

The team has set an internal deadline of 2025.

In a move that could peg it against electric vehicle market leader, Tesla, Apple has begun working aggressively on its fully autonomous electric car, Bloomberg reported. Developing a car has been on Apple’s agenda since 2014 but recent moves within the company signal a push towards making an Apple car a reality.

Given Apple’s history of taking regularly used products and transforming them into their must-have versions using excellent design, it is hardly a surprise. With Steve Jobs at the helm of affairs, Apple made the iPod even when music players were ubiquitous. Then the company revealed the iPhone when Nokia was still selling resistive touch screens as its premium product. And recently, the Apple Watch has become the “it” wearable even though there are other smartwatch options in the market. During a time where electric vehicles are in a surge, it only seems natural that the electric car is Apple’s next target.

Name: Travis Chen and Brian Femminella

Age: 22 and 21

Location: Seattle, Washington; Los Angeles, California.

Continue reading “Meet the Gen Z founders who created a music app to help combat pandemic-induced anxiety and depression” »