Lifeboat Foundation

You could say that Illumina is to DNA sequencing is what Google is to Internet search, but that would be underselling the San Diego-based biotech company. Illumina’s machines, the best and cheapest on the market, generate 90 percent of all DNA sequence data today. Illumina is, as they say, crushing it.

But as lucrative as that 90 percent slice is for Illumina now, the whole pie is likely to get even bigger in the future. Less than 0.01 percent of the world’s population has been sequenced so far. So recently, Illumina has made bold moves positioning itself for the future: The company is consolidating its core hardware business—this week, it sued an upstart competitor, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, for patent infringement—while moving into the genetic testing business with new ventures like the liquid cancer biopsy spinoff, Grail.

The company is a looking toward a future in which a lot more people gets genetic tests—and a lot more often. “Grail’s business will be very different than Illumina’s core business,” Eric Endicott, Illumina’s director of global public relations, said in an email. “We are at a tipping point in genomics, where a broad community of scientists and researchers continue to translate the potential of the genome from science to discoveries and applications.”

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Attention to all fortune tellers, tea leave readers, Shaman/ Shawoman, etc. Wall Street needs a new futurist to predict the 2016 Stock Market.

So far, 2016 has been the worst opening act in the history of the stock markets. The moving parts, and the speed at which they are changing is mind dulling. Predicting what is coming next will take a rare talent – if it does exist, it will likely be fleeting.

Investment success is really a combination of common sense, experience, and to some extent luck. Part of my plan going into the next 10 months is to review my investment thesis. In other words, define what I believed before they year began, so here goes.

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Data from the DZero experiment shows evidence of a particle containing four different types of quarks.

By Clara Moskowitz on February 26, 2016.

Interesting model when looking at AI around the net and search engines.

A new mathematical model sheds light on the nature of viral social trends.

European turboprop aircraft manufacturer ATR said a prototype ATR 72 conducted a demonstration flight to test an all-electrical energy management system that aims to optimize electrical power distribution.

The flight is the second the ATR 72 demonstration aircraft has flown as part of the European Union’s “Clean Sky Joint Undertaking” program. The first test flight by the ATR 72 prototype, conducted in July 2015, trialed “new and more effective composite insulation materials and new vibro-acoustic sensors integrated into a large panel of the ATR aircraft fuselage,” ATR said in a statement.

The manufacturer said the two demonstration flights “also tested new generation optical fibers for improved identification of micro-cracks and easier maintenance.”

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A new US Mystery has emerged at Apple. Wonder what it could be?

Strange sounds emanating from a mysterious building in the dead of night. White cars following families as they walk their dogs nearby. Science fiction movie? No, just Apple’s latest project.

Residents of Sunnyvale, Calif., who live near a complex of buildings Apple started occupying in 2014 tell the San Jose Mercury News it’s clear something is going on at the complex, where the sheet metal fences are 12 feet high and security is intense, but no one knows what.

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The tiny injectable machine could turn your noodle into a remote control.

The Pentagon is attempting what was, until recently, an impossible technological feat—developing a high-bandwidth neural interface that would allow people to beam data from their minds to external devices and back.

That’s right—a brain modem. One that could allow a soldier to, for example, control a drone with his mind.

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There’s increasing buzz about the clandestine weapon.

Around the world, the animals that pollinate our food crops — more than 20,000 species of bees, butterflies, bats and many others — are the subject of growing attention. An increasing number of pollinator species are thought to be in decline, threatened by a variety of mostly human pressures, and their struggles could pose significant risks for global food security and public health.

Until now, most assessments of pollinator health have been conducted on a regional basis, focusing on certain countries or parts of the world. But this week, a United Nations organization has released the first-ever global assessment of pollinators, highlighting their importance for worldwide food and nutrition, describing the threats they currently face and outlining strategies to protect them.

The report, which was released Friday by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), has been in the works since the summer of 2014. The research team consisted of more than 70 experts, who drew on the most up-to-date global pollinator science, as well as local and indigenous knowledge, to complete the assessment.

Continue reading “Unprecedented scientific report says decline of pollinators a threat to food security” »