Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Mary (Missy) Cummings is Associate Professor at Duke University and Director of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Humans and Automation Laboratory.

In just the past two years, it seems as if drones are everywhere in the news. This technology has been around for more than 60 years, but has only recently captured both national and international attention. This is primarily because of the increasing use in the military, but also because of concerns that such technology will be turned on a country’s own citizens.

The average person thinks of a drone as a flying spy camera, loitering overhead waiting to spot a target and then possibly launching a weapon when that target is labeled as a threat. To be sure, this is indeed one mission of drones, typically of organizations like the CIA.

However, this is by far the least common mission. The vast majority of military drone missions today are data and image collection. Their ability to provide “situational awareness” to decision makers on the ground is unparalleled in military operations since drones can essentially conduct perch and stare missions nearly endlessly.

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Robox 3D printer

The printer will be available to the public in early 2014 for about $1,400. CEL CEO Chris Elsworthy said the machine could someday be used to 3D scan an object or ice a cake.

In 1999, my elementary school got every single kid to love computer class with a single move: It replaced a fleet of Macintosh Classic IIs with iMac G3s. The candy-colored shells, bright graphics and whimsical shape made it feel like you were spending time with some hip, space-age machine. Computing was so in that year.

The G3 bas been discontinued for a decade, but it is still an icon of the optimism of the computing industry in the 1990s. 3D printers are going through a similar phase right now, as machine after machine hits the market. While they haven’t quite hit the ease-of-use of a 1990s era computer, they’re certainly getting there.

The Robox, a $1,400 3D printer that completed a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter today after raising more than $450,000, is the G3 of the 3D printing world. It comes in bright green or blue and has bold curves. From the side, it kind of looks like an iMessage bubble. It’s a beautiful machine that comes with a claim that’s very common these days: “accessible to all.”

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(Nanowerk News) Three stakeholder groups agree that regulators are not adequately prepared to manage the risks posed by nanotechnology, according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One (“Expert Views on Regulatory Preparedness for Managing the Risks of Nanotechnologies”).
In a survey of nanoscientists and engineers, nano-environmental health and safety scientists, and regulators, researchers at the UCSB Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) and at the University of British Columbia found that those who perceive the risks posed by nanotechnology as “novel” are more likely to believe that regulators are unprepared. Representatives of regulatory bodies themselves felt most strongly that this was the case. “The people responsible for regulation are the most skeptical about their ability to regulate,” said CNS Director and co-author Barbara Herr Harthorn.
“The message is essentially,” said first author Christian Beaudrie of the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, “the more that risks are seen as new, the less trust survey respondents have in regulatory mechanisms. That is, regulators don’t have the tools to do the job adequately.”

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In post-apocalyptic North America, the Capitol composed of the elite and the rich, controls 12 Districts of Panem. Every year, two representatives from each district are chosen, one boy and one girl, to compete for food supply, thrown in the arena created by the Capitol to fight. Only can be the winner. They called it – Hunger GamesThe Future Predictive Scenario – The Hunger Games.

Based on Suzanne Collins’ trilogy novel, “The Hunger Games” has created immense popularity among movie and novel enthusiasts. But for some, it has drawn fears and futuristic theories. They fear that Hunger Games can be our future predictive scenario. Who wouldn’t blink at an idea like this?

World hunger, in its basic definition, is the want and scarcity of food aggregated to the world level. Evidently, a disparity between human and food resources can cause unparalleled precondition – hunger revolution. Now, with a place ravaged by war, greed, statuses, and human right abuses, ask yourselves, “Are you the next Katniss and Peeta? Or are you part of the Capitol using food hoarding and killing as form of entertainment?”

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By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

US scientists have performed a dramatic reversal of the ageing process in animal studies.

They used a chemical to rejuvenate muscle in mice and said it was the equivalent of transforming a 60-year-old’s muscle to that of a 20-year-old — but muscle strength did not improve.

Their study, in the journal Cell, identified an entirely new mechanism of ageing and then reversed it.

Other researchers said it was an “exciting finding”.

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By DAN SANTELLA The Monitor

PEÑITAS — It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … no, it’s a Border Patrol blimp. Mobile, unmanned, aerial security surveillance has arrived in the Rio Grande Valley.

A so-called aerostat surveillance blimp was unveiled to media Thursday afternoon in a field south of Interstate 2/Expressway 83. Standing behind a U.S. Department of Homeland Security dais, local and national officials introduced the big, white airship and fielded questions about its upcoming use.

Noting how border fencing ends near Peñitas, Rosendo Hinojosa, chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, said that the aerostat will provide Valley authorities with means previously unavailable to them.

“This is good technology,” he said of the camera-bearing aircraft, which will roam 1,000 feet above the ground. “It’s proven technology.”

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By Jane Wakefield

He knows this because when he had his genetic code read, he found out that he was likely to get age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The disease leaves the sufferer with a very narrow field of vision.

As head of bio-technology at the world’s most futuristic learning institution, Singularity University, he found the news “burdensome” at first.

“I had never heard of AMD, I had no family history of it and in many ways it was the worst story you can get in genetic diagnosis, ‘Here’s something that you didn’t know about which we can’t do anything about,’” he says.

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When Newport Beach City Council candidate Michael Glenn thinks of freedom, that includes the freedom to choose how to donate — be it with dollar, peso or bitcoin.

Glenn claims to be the first local politician to accept campaign donations in the esoteric digital currency. He is running against businesswoman Diane Dixon and Harbor Commissioner Joe Stapleton for the Balboa Peninsula’s 1st District council seat.

Glenn’s announcement comes just weeks after customers used bitcoins to pay for a Tesla, and then a Lamborghini, from a Costa Mesa dealership.

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Online retail outlet Overstock.com will start accepting Bitcoins as early as the end of Q2 2014, according to CEO Patrick Byrne.

They will be the first major online retailer to do so. The news was first reported on newsBTC.

Byrne told us by phone this afternoon that he considers himself a believer in the Austrian economics school, which says fiat currency, like the U.S. dollar, is fundamentally flawed since it is prone to inflation and manipulation. Bitcoin, like gold, is immune to this, since there is a fixed supply.

“Philosophically, we support Bitcion,” he said.