Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 11580

Different species of animals either live a very long time or do not die of old age. Some cases are the tortoise & lobster species that live to be over 130 years old naturally and don’t usually die unless they get sick or are killed.

After we grow up our cells ultimately stop self-replicating. A researcher named Leonard Hayflick figured out that each of our cells divide around 50 times and then they stop. Once all of our cells stop duplicating we start to deteriorate and then ultimately die. This finding showed that we are in fact programmed to die biologically.

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Nation states cause some of our biggest problems, from civil war to climate inaction. Science suggests there are better ways to run a planet.

By Debora MacKenzie

Try, for a moment, to envisage a world without countries. Imagine a map not divided into neat, coloured patches, each with clear borders, governments, laws. Try to describe anything our society does – trade, travel, science, sport, maintaining peace and security – without mentioning countries. Try to describe yourself: you have a right to at least one nationality, and the right to change it, but not the right to have none.

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Miniaturization is one of the most world-shaking trends of the last several decades. Computer chips now have features measured in billionths of a meter. Sensors that once weighed kilograms fit inside your smartphone. But it doesn’t end there.

Researchers are aiming to take sensors smaller—much smaller.

In a new University of Stuttgart paper published in Nature Photonics, scientists describe tiny 3D printed lenses and show how they can take super sharp images. Each lens is 120 millionths of a meter in diameter—roughly the size of a grain of table salt—and because they’re 3D printed in one piece, complexity is no barrier. Any lens configuration that can be designed on a computer can be printed and used.

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