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Jul 13, 2016

Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Announces Contract with U.S. Army to Deliver Dragon Silk

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, military

ANN ARBOR, Mich., –July 12, 2016- Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc. (OTCQB: KBLB) (“Company”), the leading developer of spider silk based fibers, today announced that it has received a contract valued at up to $1.0 million, if the option phase is awarded, for the development of high performance fibers for protective apparel applications. Under the fully funded base effort, valued at $99,962, the Company will deliver ballistic shoot packs constructed from its proprietary Dragon Silk™ material for performance testing. These shoot packs will be tested and evaluated for critical Soldier protective applications including ballistic impact. If awarded, the option phase will significantly expand this work with the US Army.

“Dragon Silk scores very highly in tensile strength and elasticity, which makes it one of the toughest fibers known to man and the ideal material for many applications,” stated Jon Rice, COO. “Providing material for this ballistic shoot pack initiative is an important next step for Kraig and spider silk. This contract reinforces the many significant potential applications for recombinant spider silk. Today is a great day for spider silk.”

“We’re proud to be working with the Department of Defense to assess the exciting potential of spider silk for military applications,” stated Kim K Thompson, CEO and founder of Kraig Biocraft Laboratories. “We are honored that the U.S. Army has selected us for this program. This effort will provide Kraig Labs with the opportunity to validate our longstanding belief that spider silk technology has had an incredible potential for protective and lifesaving materials and expand our ability to design and engineer innovative materials solutions.”

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Jul 13, 2016

You have to see what ‘Pokémon Go’ has done to Central Park

Posted by in category: futurism

People are gathering in masses to catch Pokémon.

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Jul 13, 2016

17 Ways Technology Will Change Our Lives by 2050

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, space

Goodbye smartphones, hello space tourism. Here are 17 bold predictions about the future from a futurist with an 85% accuracy track record.

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Jul 13, 2016

Reaction Engines secures €10 million funding to enable development of SABRE demonstrator engine

Posted by in categories: energy, space, transportation

Reaction Engines Ltd. announces today the signing of a €10m Development Contract with the European Space Agency, finalizing the UK Government’s £60m commitment.

Reaction Engines Ltd., today announces the signing of a €10m European Space Agency (ESA) contract which will enable the development of a ground based demonstrator of SABRE, a new class of aerospace engine which is highly scalable with multiple potential applications in hypersonic travel and space access.

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Jul 13, 2016

3/3 Liz Parrish and Avi Roy: Genetic and other innovative therapy against aging

Posted by in categories: genetics, life extension

Here’s Liz Parrish talking about driving down costs, replacing viral vectors, and having all kinds of trouble with the lid of a bottle.


Liz Parrish, founder or Bioviva company, which developing genetic therapy against aging. He first in world tested such genetic therapy on himself and resulting effect make her cells be like 20 years younger.

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Jul 12, 2016

Why is Bitcoin Capped at 21M units?

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, government, transparency

I was asked this at Quora.com, where I answer questions under the pen name, ‘Ellery’. But the query deserves a companion question, and so I approached the reply by answering two questions.


You might have asked “Why was Bitcoin designed to have a cap?” But, instead, you asked “Why is the cap set at 21 million bitcoins”. Let’s explore both questions starting with the choice of a circulation cap…

Why set the cap at 21 million BTC?

The choice of a cap number is arbitrary and in fact, it could be 1 or it could be 1 hundred trillion. It makes no difference at all and it has no effect on the economy—even if Bitcoin were to be adopted as a currency all over the world. If it were set to 1 BTC, we would simply discuss nano-BTC instead of 1 BTC for amounts of about $650.

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Jul 12, 2016

Should We Blame the U.S. and Israel for Cyber Warfare?

Posted by in categories: entertainment, military

Blaming the US and israel for cyber warfare?!


Alex Gibney’s new film “Zero Days” charts the terrifying history of cyber warfare, focusing in particular on the attack that the U.S. and Israel allegedly launched against the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran.

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Jul 12, 2016

Berkshire offers cyber cover for architects and engineers

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Not shocked by this because I have seen some of these policies in various forms already.


Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Co. on Tuesday said it has launched a U.S. professional liability policy for architects and engineers that includes cyber coverage.

Professional First Architects & Engineers Professional Liability Insurance’s cyber coverage addresses media, technology and network security and privacy liability exposures, including the cost of responding to a data breach or network extortion threat, BHSI said in a statement.

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Jul 12, 2016

Sharper than living matter permits

Posted by in categories: biological, quantum physics

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund have now found a way to pinpoint the positions of individual molecules while at the same time measuring their activity and interactions in the same living cell. A dedicated cooling protocol on a microscope allows to pause cellular life at subzero temperatures, to let it continue to live again after warming. From the series of individual snapshots obtained, the researchers are able to form a precise spatial-temporal picture of the activity patterns of individual molecules within individual cells.

Fluorescence microscopy allows seeing where biological molecules are in cells. However, what Werner Heisenberg formulated for quantum physics to a certain extent has its analogy in biology: In the living state one can observe the collective movement of molecules in cells, which makes it however difficult to determine their exact positions. Paradoxically, the molecular dynamics that sustain life have to be halted to record the position of molecules using high-resolution fluorescence microscopy.

Living matter maintains its structure by energy consumption, which results in dynamic molecular patterns in cells that are difficult to observe by fluorescence microscopy, because the molecules are too numerous and their movements too fast. To tackle this problem a choice needs to be made: to precisely record the position of the molecules in a ‘dead’ state or to follow their collective behaviour in the living state. Although researchers have been able to stop movements in cells by chemical fixation, such methods lead to irreversible cell death and the acquired images of molecular patterns are not representative of a living system.

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Jul 12, 2016

Microfluidic Chips Made of Silk Replicate Human Tissues for Drug Testing, Implantable Applications

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, computing

At the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and Tufts University a team has developed a microfluidic chip that mimics human tissue for use in drug testing applications. The chip is based on a silk gel that overcomes the limitations of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a silicon material widely used to host living cells within microfluidic devices. As an example, PDMS has problems handling lipids, absorbing them instead of letting them move freely along with other nearby compounds and so not applicable with lipid-based compounds. Additionally, PDMS is not biodegradable and so a small device based on it can’t easily be used as an implantable. Silk, on the other hand, just needed a bit of engineering to make a candidate that overcomes many of PDMS’s limitations.

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