Lifeboat Foundation

Bioprinting companies can be successful at start-up investment conferences, although they are sometimes outshone by more immediately accessible products. Bioprinters have the potential to drastically change life expectancy and quality in the long term, but can “only” help out with scientific research in the short term and that, often, is not exciting enough for start-up awards.

That was not the case at the recent SVOD (Silicon Valley Open Doors) Europe, an investment conference that began in 2005 and went global in 2015. The event then came to Europe for the first time in an effort to connect the Eastern European tech community with more established ecosystems. This year, the event took place in Ireland and “local” startupper Jemma Redmond took home the top prize with the Ourobotics 10 material 3D bioprinter.

I have been following Jemma and her team’s progress, from the pre-conference preparation all the way up to her presentation, via Facebook feed and other updates. The event took place at Google’s Dublin HQ and the winning team received, among other things, $5,000 in Google Adwords credits. Clearly happy about this success, Jemma told me they faced off against 25 other teams.

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At the StartmeupHK Festival in Hong Kong, Musk stated that he was prepared to unveil SpaceX’s Mars roadmap at the International Astronautical Conference, which will take place from September 26 to 30 in Mexico. And according to Berger of Ars Technica, Musk’s plan may call for the kick-off of humans to Mars by 2025, a fairly ambitious goal that puts it nearly a decade ahead of NASA’s nebulous Mission to Mars plans.

SpaceX is working on the Falcon Heavy, a rocket ready to debut later this year capable of lifting 58 tons of material into Low Earth Orbit, which is about four times the lifting power of the Falcon 9. It’s specs are just a few hairs short of NASA’s own Space Launch System, the largest rocket since the Saturn V rockets that carried out the Apollo moon landings.

Continue reading “Elon Musk and Spacex to reveal the Spacex Mars roadmap at IAC from Sept 26-30th 2016” »

As Google’s head of artificial intelligence takes charge of search, deep learning is already changing the way Googling works.

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The 6th annual European Smart Grid Cyber Security conference (7th – 8th March 2016)

Boy! I wish I could attend this meeting. I can imagine all of the conversations now “Quantum” & “Cyber Attacks” with some good old AI thrown in the mix. I am also guess that the 2 articles this week on the NSA maybe brought up too.

SMi Group reports: The MITRE Corporation will be presenting at the SMi’s 6th annual European Smart Grid Cyber Security conference (7th – 8th March 2016)

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Not sure how I missed this article from late Jan. If you haven’t read my article on Linkedin Pulse called “AI holding your information hostage — food for thought”; you may wish to read it. It parallels beautifully with this report/ article:

A new report from application delivery and cyber security specialist Radware suggests that the human element will increasingly be excluded from security as 2016 brings a ‘battle of the bots’.

It finds that throughout 2015, no industry was immune to cyber attacks, and few were prepared for them. In 2016, attacks are predicted to become even more aggressive with the arrival of Advanced Persistent Denial of Service (APDoS) attacks and an increase in volume and scope of sophisticated bot-generated assaults against web application infrastructure.

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AirBar – Get touch functionality on any PC.

https://www.producthunt.com/tech/airbar

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CytoDyn Inc. announced in a news release last week that its ongoing extension study of PRO 140 monotherapy has shown “complete viral-load suppression” for well over a year, with some patients approaching 17 months. The phase I trial included 23 patients.

“The company believes that complete virologic suppression through treatment with a single agent, PRO 140, a safe and efficacious antibody, rather than through the widely used HAART combination therapy, could present a significant opportunity to treat HIV patients. Based on these monotherapy results, the company plans to file a second Phase 3 protocol for PRO 140 monotherapy with the FDA. CytoDyn is currently conducting a pivotal phase 3 trial for PRO 140 as an adjunct therapy with expected commercialization in 2017.”

On Jan 22, the company filed a request for Breakthrough Therapy Designation with the FDA for PRO 140 as a treatment for HIV-1 infection in treatment experienced patients with virologic failure, meaning other medications alone no longer work for them.

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A polymer film coating with the ability to turn contact lenses into computer screens is set to transform the wearable visual aids into the next generation of consumer electronics.

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Very interesting discovery about how our brain thinks; our brain isn’t always 100% error proof according to this report from Carnegie Mellon University. Therefore, when researchers are mapping the brain plus mimicking human brain functions; what is the tolerance level for error allowed then?

A study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University investigated the brain’s neural activity during learned behavior and found that the brain makes mistakes because it applies incorrect inner beliefs, or internal models, about how the world works. The research suggests that when the brain makes a mistake, it actually thinks that it is making the correct decision—its neural signals are consistent with its inner beliefs, but not with what is happening in the real world.

“Our brains are constantly trying to predict how the world works. We do this by building internal models through experience and learning when we interact with the world,” said Steven Chase, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. “However, it has not yet been possible to track how these internal models affect instant-by-instant behavioral decisions.”

Continue reading “Mental Miscues” »