Lifeboat Foundation

I’m excited to share my new opinion article for Newsweek. It advocates for transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex! Give it a read!

America spends 45 percent of its discretionary federal spending on defense and wars, while around us, the world burns in ways that have nothing to do with fighting or the military. Global warming has escalated into an enormous crisis. A fifth of everyone we know will die from heart disease. And an opioid crisis is reducing the average lifespans of Americans for the first time in decades. There’s plenty of tragedy, fear, and hardship all around us, but it has nothing to do with the need to make more bombs. It does, however, have to do with science.

It seems obvious America should do something different than spend so much of its tax dollars on defense. We should consider halving that money, and directing it to science, transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex. Despite science and technological progress being broadly responsible for raising the standard of living around the world over the last 50 years, America spends only 3 percent of its GDP ($205 billion) on science and medical research across the federal government. Notably, this is dramatically less than the $877 billion the U.S. will spend on defense this year.

Continue reading “Could We Transform America Into a Science-Industrial Complex?” »

Scientists at the University of Sydney have, for the first time, used a quantum computer to engineer and directly observe a process critical in chemical reactions by slowing it down by a factor of 100 billion times.

Joint lead researcher and Ph.D. student, Vanessa Olaya Agudelo, said, It is by understanding these basic processes inside and between molecules that we can open up a new world of possibilities in materials science, drug design, or solar energy harvesting.

Continue reading “Scientists use quantum device to slow down simulated chemical reaction 100 billion times” »

A team of researchers reports they have succeeded in disproving a long-held tenet of modern physics–that useful work cannot be obtained from random thermal fluctuations–thanks in part to the unique properties of graphene.

The microscopic motion of particles within a fluid, otherwise known as Brownian motion for its discovery by Scottish scientist Robert Brown, has long been considered an impossible means of attempting to generate useful work.

The idea had been most famously laid to rest decades ago by physicist Richard Feynman, who proposed a thought experiment in May 1962 involving an apparent perpetual motion machine, dubbed a Brownian ratchet.

After decades of research the potential of regenerative medicine becomes a life-saving reality.

Renewing the aging gut microbiome holds promise for preventing inflammatory brain and eye degeneration.

A new study shows that intermittent fasting and calorie restriction change the microbiome diversity in the gut, which could impact other functions in the body.

A Scanner Darkly.
by Philip K. Dick.
Read by Gary Telles.
Originally issued by NLS on cassette in 1994
I guess I’ll come back on Thursday.
This is a pretty good alternative to Paul Giamatti’s narration.
“In a near-future, drug-ridden America, narcotics agent Bob Arctor goes undercover to catch a drug dealer. In the junkie culture in which he operates (even his girlfriend is a dealer), he takes large doses of a drug that splits his brain into two separate personalities. The agent has no knowledge of his other self, who, as it turns out, is the drug dealer he is after.“
00:00:00 — (i) Book info.
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Like these books? Want to help?
These books come from the National Library Services.
I encourage you to donate:
https://www.loc.gov/nls/about/donate/

A black hole created by the collision of two parent bodies can rebound at a speed of more than 28,000 kilometres per second.

For the first time, researchers have been able to track the behavior of triplons, a quasi-particle created between entangled electrons. They are very tricky to study and they do not form in conventional magnetic material. Now, researchers have been able to detect them for the first time using real-space measurements.

Quasi particles are not real particles. They form in specific interactions, but for as long as that interaction lasts they behave like a particle. The interaction in this case is the entanglement of two electrons. This pair can be entangled in a singlet state or a triplet state, and the triplon comes from the latter interaction.

To get the triplon in the first place, the team used small organic molecules called cobalt-phthalocyanine. What makes the molecule interesting is that it possesses a frontier electron. Now, don’t go picture some gunslinger particle – a frontier electron is simply an electron on the highest-energy occupied orbital.