Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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A BASIC income (BI) is defined as a modest, regular payment to every legal resident in the community, paid unconditionally as a right, regardless of income, employment or relationship status.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the case for BI does not rest on the assumption that robots and artificial intelligence will cause mass unemployment or that it would be a more efficient way of relieving poverty than present welfare systems (although it would). The main arguments are ethical and relate to social justice, individual freedom and the need for basic security.

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Often only a few years separate the tinfoil hats from the millionaires to be. I was writing the piece on the Youbionic arm and thinking of how we will use 3D printing to augment human beings. Clearly augmenting the human body with mechatronics would be a good idea. The flesh is weak but stepper motors are strong! Oh how we will eeck, ooow, brrrr whine in our old stepper augmented age. Machines could very well fill the gaps once our bodies start failing us. But, will old people homes really be filled with Borg grandmas?

Will your grandad get that night vision upgrade he’s always wanted so he can deer hunt whenever he damn pleases? Would it be a good idea if I on a whim replaced my tennis elbow with a tennis racket? We never get the future right and most of our visions of mechatronic augmentations of humans are either a bit Johhny Cab or they’re ruined by that tiara Geordi was wearing across his face in Star Trek. I know he can’t see it, but someone should have told him really.

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This is part of our ongoing series of articles that discuss the Hallmarks of Aging. Published in 2013, the paper divides aging into distinct categories (“hallmarks”) of damage to explain how the aging process works and how it causes age-related diseases. Today, we will be looking at the hallmark of cellular senescence.

What are senescent cells?

As you age, increasing numbers of your cells enter into a state known as senescence. Senescent cells do not divide or support the tissues of which they are part; instead, they emit a range of potentially harmful chemical signals that encourage nearby healthy cells to enter the same senescent state. Their presence causes many problems: they reduce tissue repair, increase chronic inflammation, and can even eventually raise the risk of cancer and other age-related diseases.

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Like a team in a science fiction movie, the six-lab squad funded by a 2017 MEDx Biomedical research grant is striking in its combination of diverse skills and duties.

The project is led by Kafui Dzirasa, MD’09, Ph.D.’07, HS’10-’16, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and assistant professor in neurobiology and neurosurgery; and Nenad Bursac, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering and associate professor in medicine. Their team includes: Marc Caron, Ph.D., James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology, professor in neurobiology and medicine; Fan Wang, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology; Christopher Kontos, MD, HS’93-’97, professor of medicine and associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology—all at Duke University School of Medicine—and Jennie Leach, Ph.D., associate professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, along with a cadre of committed graduate students, postdocs, and technicians.

Dzirasa’s background in engineering informs his approach to the study of neuropsychiatric illness and disease. In the summer of 2016, he and members of his lab were discussing the challenge of precisely monitoring .

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Almost everyone who eats fast food is familiar with the frustration of trying to squeeze every last drop of ketchup out of the small packets that accompany french fries.

What most consumers don’t realize, however, is that food left behind in packaging is not simply a nuisance. It also contributes to the millions of pounds of perfectly edible food that Americans throw out every year. These small, incremental amounts of sticky foods like condiments, dairy products, beverages, and some meat products that remain trapped in their packaging can add up to big numbers over time, even for a single household.

New research from Virginia Tech aims to cut down on that waste – and consumer frustration – with a novel approach to creating super slippery industrial packaging. The study, which was published in Scientific Reports and has yielded a provisional patent, establishes a method for wicking chemically compatible vegetable oils into the surfaces of common extruded plastics.

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A team of researchers from Cologne and New York has presented proposals for future traffic management. A dynamic, fair toll for road use could reduce congestion.

In the current issue of Nature, the economists Peter Cramton, Axel Ockenfels (both University of Cologne) and Richard Geddes (Cornell University) describe a concept in which drivers would have to pay a dynamic fee for the use of roads. This would contribute to avoiding traffic jams and protecting the environment, the researchers argue. Fees that respond to traffic volumes in and with site precision, taking into account factors such as vehicle type and exhaust emissions, can significantly improve and contribute to reducing air pollution.

Traffic jams are not only annoying and time-consuming, they are also costly. In Germany, the economic damage caused by congested roads in 2017 totaled approximately €80 billion. “Currently, who cause , while damaging the environment and even incurring costs, are paying just as much as those who are not involved,” says Ockenfels. “Without a toll, this means that the general public is subsidizing these users. That’s unfair.” A toll for road use would bring these costs to light and reduce congestion. “If the fee adapts to the volume of traffic and the situation on the road in real time, i.e., is more expensive at rush hour than around noon, everyone can choose the route that suits them best. This already works for navigation systems,” explains Cramton. “Ultimately, this would reduce the load on main traffic arteries, improve traffic flow and reduce CO2 emissions.

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https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Ph.D. is a German metahumanist philosopher, Nietzsche scholar, philosopher of music, and an authority in the field of ethics of emerging technologies.

Stefan teaches philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome and is director and cofounder of the Beyond Humanism Network, Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute for the Humanities at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, and Visiting Fellow at the Ethics Centre of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, where he was also Visiting Professor during the Summer of 2016. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Posthuman Studies.

In recent years, he taught at the Universities of Jena (Germany), Erfurt (Germany), Klagenfurt (Austria), Ewha Womans University in Seoul (South Korea), and Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). His main fields of research are Nietzsche, the philosophy of music, bioethics and metahumanism, posthumanism, and transhumanism.

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