Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Developments in computing are driving the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. In this interview Justine Cassell, Associate Dean, Technology, Strategy and Impact, at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, and co-chair of the Global Future Council on Computing, says we must ensure that these developments benefit all society, not just the wealthy or those participating in the “new economy”.

Why should the world care about the future of computing?

Today computers are in virtually everything we touch, all day long. We still have an image of computers as being rectangular objects either on a desk, or these days in our pockets; but computers are in our cars, they’re in our thermostats, they’re in our refrigerators. In fact, increasingly computers are no longer objects at all, but they suffuse fabric and virtually every other material. Because of that, we really do need to care about what the future of computing holds because it is going to impact our lives all day long.

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More progress with cancer and using a similar approach to senolytics, no surprise really as cancer and senescent cell share a lot of common ground and approach that work with one may well work with the other if they are aimed at inducing apoptosis.

Apoptosis, or , is a rapid and irreversible process to efficiently eliminate dysfunctional cells. A hallmark of cancer is the ability of malignant cells to evade apoptosis.

Dr Luminita Paraoan, from the University’s Department of Eye and Vision Science in the Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, has published new findings in the British Journal of Cancer that identify the requirement of a protein called p63 for the initiation of apoptosis in UM.

Chromosome 3 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. People normally have two copies of each chromosome. One part of chromosome 3 contains the gene for the protein p63. Unfortunately people with aggressive (resistant to apoptosis) UM do not have this part and therefore do not have the p63 protein.

Continue reading “Protein that promotes ‘cell-suicide’ could revolutionise eye cancer treatment” | >

Very cool.

World Patent Marketing, a vertically integrated manufacturer and engineer of patented products, introduces the Gamete Manipulator, a medical invention that will allow people to easily move micro-sized materials.

“The healthcare industry is worth $3 trillion,” says Scott Cooper, CEO and Creative Director of World Patent Marketing. “People still require medical attention even during economic downturns so there is a consistent demand for this industry.”

“Medical practice is extremely difficult and requires years of hard work,” says Jerry Shapiro, Director of Manufacturing and World Patent Marketing Inventions. “It’s important that practitioners have the proper tools for the job. This medical intervention will help will precise procedures.”

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Creative Machines; however, are they truly without a built in bias due to their own creator/s?

Despite nature’s bewildering complexity, the driving force behind it is incredibly simple. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is an uncomplicated but brutally effective optimization strategy that has allowed life to solve complex problems, like vision and flight, and colonize the harshest of environments.

Researchers are now trying to harness this optimization process to find solutions to a host of science and engineering problems. The idea of using evolutionary principles in computation dates back to the 1950s, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that the idea really took off. By the 1980s the approach had crossed over from academic curiosities into real-world fields like engineering and economics.

Continue reading “Evolution’s Brutally Simple Rules Can Make Machines More Creative” | >

With BMI technology, cell circuitry, etc. this is no surprise.

Are you scared of artificial intelligence (AI)?

Do you believe the warnings from folks like Prof. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others?

Is AI the greatest tool humanity will ever create, or are we “summoning the demon”?

Continue reading “The Brain Tech to Merge Humans and AI Is Already Being Developed” | >

One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. That’s because the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. The case in point: Northrop Grumman’s new Tern, a drone designed to do everything armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers can, but to do it flying from small ships or rugged scraps of land – i.e., no runway needed.

“No one has flown a large, unmanned tailsitter before,” Brad Tousley, director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Tern’s primary funder, said in a news release. The key word there is “unmanned.”

Back in 1951, when all sorts of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft ideas were being tried, Convair and Lockheed built experimental manned tailsitters for the Navy. Convair’s XFY-1 and Lockheed’s XFV-1, nicknamed “Pogo” and “Pogo Stick,” each had two counter-rotating propellers on its nose and was to take off and land pointing straight up. Convair’s Pogo had a delta wing and, at right angles to the wing, large fins. Lockheed’s Pogo Stick had an X-shaped tail whose trailing tips, like Convair’s wing and fins, sported landing gear.

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The following press release was written and and published by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and originally published on their website. Click here to see the original version of this post.

On a recent sunny fall day in the nation’s capital, several hundred volunteers—each toting a backpack containing smartphone-sized radiation detectors—walked for hours around the National Mall searching for clues in a “whodunit” scavenger hunt to locate a geneticist who’d been mysteriously abducted. The geneticist and his abduction were fictitious. But the challenge this scavenger hunt was designed to address is real: The need to detect even small quantities of radioactive material that terrorists might try to bring into an urban area with the intent of detonating a “dirty bomb,” or worse. By getting volunteers to walk all day looking for clues, the DARPA-sponsored exercise provided the largest test yet of DARPA’s SIGMA program, which is developing networked sensors that can provide dynamic, real-time radiation detection over large urban areas.

A key element of SIGMA, which began in 2014, has been to develop and test low-cost, high-efficiency, radiation sensors that detect gamma and neutron radiation. The detectors, which do not themselves emit radiation, are networked via smartphones to provide city, state, and federal officials real-time awareness of potential nuclear and radiological threats such as dirty bombs, which combine conventional explosives and radioactive material to increase their disruptive potential. Following a demonstration earlier this year with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey involving more than 100 SIGMA sensors, the 1,000-detector deployment in Washington, D.C., marked the largest number of SIGMA mobile detectors ever tested at one time and was a demonstration of the program’s ability to fuse the data provided by all those sensors to create minute-to-minute situational awareness of nuclear threats.

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