Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 11889

Welcome to the future, folks.

There is more mineral wealth just floating around our solar system than a million times the amount Earth EVER contained. As these asteroids are mined, tunnels will be built, forming the basis for a space station and/or colony. This fact more than doubling the usefulness of the entire operation, AND it’s return on investment. I think THIS is going to be the way in which we’ll begin to colonize our Solar System. Also, a lot of the hazardous (to the environment, human beings, and/or both) that are an inevitable byproduct of heavy industry on our planet could be exported to stations like these, tripling the value of the entire operation.

Today, the Luxembourg Government announced that they are taking steps to become Europe’s hub for mining space resources.

Continue reading “The Race To Mine Asteroids Gains International Support” | >

Ampakines are known mental stimulants, but in rats they can also shelter the brain from age-related decline and even reverse deterioriation

A number of changes happen in the aging brain and one of these is a dendritic loss which onsets around middle age. In a new study, researchers have shown a particular drug belonging to the ampakine class of compounds, has significant neuroprotective properties.

Shielding the brain

Ampakines have already been shown to aid cognitive function in older rats, and they also appear to boost levels of BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is associated with staving off neural decline. In the latest study using one such ampakine, older rat brains were compared to adolescent samples. While untreated rats had short dendrites and fewer dendritic branches, after 3 months of treatment older rat brains were identical to younger ones. If that wasn’t enough, they showed enhanced signalling and even had more dendritic spines than the adolescent rats did.

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Another article just came out today providing additional content on the Quantum Computing threat and it did reference the article that I had published. Glad that folks are working on this.

The NSA is worried about quantum computers. It warns that it “must act now” to ensure that encryption systems can’t be broken wide open by the new super-fast hardware.

In a document outlining common concerns about the effects that quantum computing may have on national security and encryption of sensitive data, the NSA warns that “public-key algorithms… are all vulnerable to attack by a sufficiently large quantum computer.”

Quantum computers can, theoretically, be so much faster because they take advantage of a quirk in quantum mechanics. While classical computers use bits in 0 or 1, quantum computers use “qubits” that can exist in 0, 1 or a superposition of the two. In turn, that allows it to work through possible solutions more quickly meaning they could crack encryption that normal computers can’t.

Continue reading “NSA Plans to ‘Act Now’ to Ensure Quantum Computers Can’t Break Encryption” | >

2016-01-29-1454078214-8291223-Patterson_cancer.jpg
By David Patterson Professor of Computer Science University of California, Berkeley This ancient assassin, first identified by a pharaoh’s physician, has been killing people for more than 4,600 years. As scientists found therapies for other lethal diseases–such as measles, influenza, and heart disease–cancer moved up this deadly list and will soon be #1; 40% of Americans will face cancer during their lifetimes, with half dying from it. Most of us ignore cancer until someone close is diagnosed, but instead society could zero in on this killer by recording massive data to discover better treatments before a loved one is in its crosshairs.

Cancer is unlimited cell growth caused by problems in DNA. Some people are born with precarious DNA, and others acquire it later. When a cell divides, sometimes it miscopies a small amount of its DNA, and these errors can overwhelm a cell’s defenses to cause cancer. Thus, you can get it without exposure to carcinogens. Cigarettes, radiation, asbestos, and so on simply increase the copy error rate. Speaking figuratively, every time a cell reproduces, we roll the dice on cancer, with such mutagens loading the dice to raise cancer’s chances.

Most cancer studies today use partial genomic information and have fewer than 1,000 patients. One wonders whether their conclusions would still hold if they used complete genomes and increased the number of patients by factors of 10–100.

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NSA states it must act now against the “Quantum Computing Threat” due to hackers can possess the technology. I wrote about this on Jan 10th. Glad someone finally is taking action.

The National Security Agency is worried that quantum computers will neutralize our best encryption – but doesn’t yet know what to do about that problem.

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German scientists today will set about the first steps towards what has become the Holy Grail of energy—nuclear fusion, which has the potential for unlimited amounts of clean power. There are a number of challenges to harnessing this power —researchers need to build a device that can heat atoms to temperatures of more than 100 million °C (180 million °F).

After almost nine years of construction work and more than a million assembly hours, researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Greifswald are set to do just that by heating a tiny amount of hydrogen until it becomes as hot, hopefully, as the center of the Sun.

Researchers are keen to tap into the incredible amount of energy released when atoms join together at extremely high temperatures in the super-hot gas known as plasma. Today’s test will not produce any energy, just the plasma—a different state of matter created at extremely high temperatures. German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has a doctorate in physics, will reportedly attend.

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