Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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WIKIPEDIA, AYACOP Boosting levels of ghrelin, a hormone involved in hunger, keeps aging-related declines at bay in mice, according to a study published yesterday (February 2) in Molecular Psychiatry.

The authors gave mice a traditional Japanese medicine called rikkunshito or an extract from rikkunshito to stimulate hormone production. In three different mouse lines—two with shortened lifespans and another with a normal lifespan—the treatment resulted in the animals living longer.

“These findings suggest that the elevated endogenous ghrelin signaling has an important role in preventing aging-related premature death,” Akio Inui of Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences and colleagues wrote in their report.

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However, one also must look at the past for insights and guidance on things that were done wrong to ensure bad history is not repeated.

Therefore, let me share with you a part of history that we need to be aware of and protect our future from ever repeating again.

Many folks have never heard of Poor Farms in the South and Poor Houses in some parts of the Midwest. Before soc. Security and Welfare we had poor farms/ houses. They date from the late 1800s until 1930s.

Poor farms/ houses were often filled with the elderly and others that had no money or anyone to take care them. People often worked the land for 16+ hours days, dressed in rags, and had very little to eat. Once you were there you could not leave ever until you died.

My grandfather always taught us that if Social Security and Welfare were ever eliminated, that a model of Poor Farms/ houses would return.

Continue reading “History: I know that we often write about the future, etc” | >

Press Release From: Ames Research Center Posted: Friday, February 12, 2016.

Reporters are invited to a media day on Friday, Feb. 19, at 10 a.m. PST at Made In Space, Inc. (MIS), located at NASA’s Research Park, at Moffett Field, California, to learn about the startup company’s recent proposal award as part of NASA’s “Utilizing Public-Private Partnerships to Advance Tipping Point Technologies” solicitation, issued through NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).

Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for STMD, will share the importance of the solicitation and give remarks, followed by a tour of the MIS facilities. The two-hour event will include informal briefings with MIS leadership as they discuss their winning proposal.

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The pace at which robots and intelligent machines are able to take over the jobs traditionally performed by humans will result in more than half the population being unemployed within 30 years, an expert in computing has predicted.

While some may look forward to a life of leisure, many others face the dismal prospect of long-term unemployment as a result of the rise of smart machines, from self-driving cars and intelligent drones to smart financial-trading machines, said Moshe Vardi, professor of computational engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

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A group of scientists are calling on the WHO to classify aging as a disease, asserting that we need to create a better classification for what happens to our bodies as we get older.

A new controversy is brewing, as one group of scientists is recommending that aging be considered a disease.

Scientists from Insilico Medicine are highlighting the need to create a more granular and applied classification for what happens to our bodies when we age. Their work is outlined in a recent paper published in Frontiers in Genetics. The classification that they argue for is based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), which is expected to be finalized in 2018.

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Cotton Candy’s new inspiration.

Scientists are now able to spin a three-dimensional slab of gelatin that contains a microvascular network, something very like our capillaries, using a cotton candy-esque machine.

What do cotton candy and artificial organs have in common? More than you might think.

Leon Bellan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University, is using a cotton candy machine to spin out networks of tiny threads comparable in size, density, and complexity to the patterns formed by capillaries.

Continue reading “Cotton Candy May be the Key to Creating Artificial Organs” | >

Research, innovation, discovery, and evolution that causes amazing science and technology disruptions is a beautiful thing. And, we each have our own story and passion in why and what drives us.

And, occasionally in our drive to make change or disruption happen; reality grounds us back on what is important and why we do what we love. In my own case is to finally see things like cancer eradicated.

A finger prick test for cancer may soon be possible as research have developed a new technology to detect disease biomarkers in the form of nucleic acids, the building blocks of all living organisms.

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Women will want to design their own robots especially those that would provide any companionship to them or even as a caregiver. Granted we’re still 30+ years off for that level of sophistication. And, the 1st woman owned and ran robot company with women engineers; will make billions because this is a huge void currently.

Whether robots could one day think for themselves and the how this would affect humans’ relationships with them is a common subject in science fiction. However, novelists are increasingly investigating another burning issue: could robots love a human?

Imagine a Venn Diagram with one circle representing the dark steeliness of humanoid robots and the other the flowery soft-focus pink of a Mills & Boon romance.

What would happen where the circles cross?

Continue reading “The rise of the romantic robot” | >

This is wonderful program for students wanting to learn robotics. I do believe for real AI/ traditional Robotics (not referring to nanobots or microbots) to truly accelerate in capabilities; it will require technology like Quantum.

Two young engineering students are making robotics more accessible to enthusiasts across the country

A spartan apartment at a nondescript housing society in Pashan is filled with robots of all shapes and sizes. Among the curious looking machines are two robotic hands that mimic the movement of a human body and a large quadcopter that looks as if it’s ready to fly. This is the working space of College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP) alumni Amol Gulhane and Pratik Pravin Deshmukh — the 20-something founders of Robolab, a venture that’s making robotics accessible to the masses by building robotics labs across the country.

“We were inspired to start Robolab because of two reasons. Being members of the Robot Study Circle, a college group dedicated to robotics at CoEP, we were passionate about building robots. Although we were specialising in electronics and telecommunications, robotics brought out the best in us. When the time approached for graduation in 2013, the thought of having to give up our hobby was depressing. So, the idea to start Robolab in November 2013 was born out of the desire to stay true to our calling,” said Deshmukh. The second reason, revealed the youngsters, was more idealistic. In the course of launching Robolab, the duo conducted a survey to find out the number of colleges in India having labs dedicated to robotics. “We found out there were just a handful of colleges like the IITs who had such labs. Since not many people can make it to the IITs, we decided to take robotics to the masses with Robolab.”

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Now, we’re hearing that it will be another 30 years before we see AI take 50% of the positions. Just last week, it was reported that within 10 years we would see 50% of the jobs lost to AI. I do caution folks not to be careful in over promising and under deliver because I believe that learned from that lesson in 1999 — 2001.

Society faces its biggest challenge in finding meaning in a life mostly run by machines, warns Rice University’s Moshe Vardi.

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