Lifeboat Foundation

Xconomy National —

Drugs that use molecular scissors to snip out or replace defective genes. Altered mosquitoes meant to sabotage entire disease-carrying populations. Both are potential uses of genome editing, which thanks to the CRISPR-Cas9 system has spread throughout the world’s biology labs and is now on the doorstep of the outside world. But with its first applications could also come unintended consequences for human health and the environment. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—a famed military R&D group—wants to finance safety measures for the new gene-editing age.

The idea for the funding program, called Safe Genes, is to get out ahead of problems that could bring the field to a screeching halt. “We should couple innovation with biosecurity,” DARPA program manager Renee Wegrzyn, said Tuesday at the SynBioBeta conference in South San Francisco. “We need new safety measures that don’t slow us down. You have brakes in your car so that you can go fast but can stop when you need to.”

Continue reading “With New Program, DARPA To Encourage Safety ‘Brakes’ For Gene Editing” »

As security threats are more sophisticated today than in the past, modern data centers are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Micro-segmentation is your answer to protect your data center against these sophisticated threats. Read this trend brief to see how it builds security into the DNA of the data center for a cost-effective, future-proof way to protect what matters.

Ww.geekwire.com/2016/iot-genetics-self-driving-ships-space-travel-darpa-chief-arati-prabhakar-tours-agencys-landscape/

The Internet of Things so widely predicted as the Next Big Thing in computing is full of promise but presents a correspondingly large vulnerability to cyber attacks, said Arati Prabhakar, director of DARPA, at the 2016 GeekWire Summit in Seattle today.

IoT offers “a huge value, but then with every advance comes more attack surface,” said Prabhakar during an interview with Alan Boyle, GeekWire’s aerospace and science editor. “Provably secure embedded systems is part of the answer.”

Continue reading “DARPA chief Arati Prabhakar on self-driving ships, space travel, IoT, genetics, and more” »

The futuristic weapon could soon be unleashed on enemies of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

A Chinese man has been sentenced to three years in a U.S. prison for conspiring to steal high-tech U.S. corn seeds with the intention of transporting them to China, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday.

Mo Hailong, 46, pleaded guilty in January in federal court in Iowa to conspiring to steal patented corn seeds from DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto Co. Mo was employed as director of the international business of the Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group Co Ltd.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Continue reading “Chinese man gets three years in US prison for theft of corn secrets” »

China will soon get its first suspension railway, joining Japan and Germany as the third country on earth to develop the technology.

China’s 1st #skytrain, a #lithium -battery powered train suspended from railway line, finished test run in Chengdu pic.twitter.com/lk0xzLRPFg

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) September 30, 2016

Continue reading “China set to roll out hanging panda-shaped ‘sky trains’ next year” »

As I have continued for over a year to repeat that for any company or government entity to not include QC in their 5+ yrs future state roadmap is truly enabling their company or government to be easy pickings for hackers.

Quantum scientist Michele Mosca will discuss security in the coming quantum age during a live Webcast tonight at 7 P.M.

Digitising Business —

At the bleeding edge of AI: Quantum grocery picking and transfer learning.

Computer vision, neural nets, and deep learning are hot topics at UK R&D centres.

Continue reading “At the bleeding edge of AI: Quantum grocery picking and transfer learning” »

After some weeks’ hiatus, Quanta for Breakfast is back! Today I want to give my thoughts on the Fault-Tolerant Quantum Technologies Workshop that I attended this summer in Benasque, Spain. It was my first time visiting the beautiful town and both the location and the workshop definitely lived up to my expectations.