Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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A pair of new studies led by researchers at Columbia University explains why babies get so many common respiratory infections and identifies a specialized cluster of immune cells found only in babies that help them better cope with new pathogens.

“We know little about how the immune system develops throughout life, and most of what we know about immune system development in children comes from animal studies,” says Donna Farber, Ph.D., an expert in immune system development at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons who led the research. “But mice develop much more quickly than humans and their immune systems are a bit different than ours.”

Using a trove of tissue samples from deceased pediatric organ donors, Farber’s team was able to pinpoint aspects of development that distinguish babies from adults.

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Pain affects millions of Americans. It’s hard to measure, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all treatment approach. NIH conducts and supports basic, translational, and clinical research on pain, as well as strategies for treating it. Here are just a few recent examples.

Basic pain research

Basic research is conducted in labs by scientists who study the most fundamental building blocks of life, including genes, proteins, and cells. This kind of research helps us better understand living systems and processes.

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Some sharks get a new set of teeth every few weeks, while crocodiles can go through thousands of chompers in their long lifetimes. Yet the ability to endlessly replace our pearly whites is something that’s eluded us and nearly all other mammals. By the time our 32 ‘adult’ teeth grow in, that’s as good as it gets.

Now, a Japanese team of scientists is set to trial an experimental drug that would allow humans to grow completely new teeth.

A clinical trial scheduled for July 2024 will initially be for participants with tooth agenesis, a genetic condition that results in the absence of teeth, but the scientists have a view to making the treatment available for general use by as soon as 2030.

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Australia-based Q-CTRL has officially announced that it will partner with the Australian military and AUKUS to develop GPS-free navigation using quantum sensors.

Australian quantum technology developer Q-CTRL has now officially partnered with Australia’s Department of Defence (DoD) and, by proxy, AUKUS partners to develop quantum sensors that will deliver quantum-assured navigation capability for military platforms. The program will use Q-CTRL’s “software-ruggedized” quantum sensing technology to enhance positioning and navigation.

Q-CTRL

Continue reading “Q-CTRL’s quantum navigation uses atom vibration for dead reckoning” | >

This could help us improve our understanding of the Sun and its impact on space weather.

A collaborative effort between researchers at the University of Graz in Austria and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) in Russia used artificial intelligence (AI) to study the magnetic field in the upper atmosphere of the Sun, a press release said.

The solar magnetic field is a poorly understood area of research among astronomers. Even after centuries of watching the Sun, we only have limited information about how sunspots are formed or whether they will lead to events like a flare or a coronal mass ejection (CME).

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Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing our lives for the better making it easier, better, more entertaining, and, hopefully, longer and healthier. Between 2013 and 2014, advances in deep learning led to machines outperforming humans in image recognition, text recognition, voice recognition and many other tasks. The generative AI revolution, which, despite the many early proof-of-concept papers, went mainstream after the publication of the Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in 2014 and Transformers in 2017, has led to the creation of many advanced generative tools and apps that are transforming our lives in the most profound way possible. Many predictions made by Jensen Huang, the prolific CEO of NVIDIA — a company that has enabled and powered the AI revolution, have come true and even exceeded expectations. Instructional Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are already in mainstream use. ChatGPT can already outperform me in the many writing tasks, and we even co-authored an academic paper. Today, there are millions of professionals working on the development of AI systems and applications. Many of these professionals, including the author of this article, would very likely celebrate ‘International AI Day’ if there were one.

On July 16th, social media lit up with the celebratory posts for the “AI Appreciation Day” often using the #AIAppreciationDay hashtag. Several large brands and academic institutions, including Zeiss, Wistar Institute, and MBZUAI followed.

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MicroNeuro ensures surgical safety and frees surgeons from labor-intensive tasks.

Today, less than 3 surgeries in the world are robot-assisted. The most common type of clinical robotic surgical system surgeons use includes a camera and mechanical arms with surgical instruments attached to them.

Robot assistance is known to provide more precision in brain surgeries than humans performing surgery, which may lead to damage to healthy tissues.

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Here’s my new Opinion essay at Newsweek. It’s about the need to use our nation’s massive natural resources to pay for a bipartisan tax free universal basic income, called the Federal Land Dividend. I hope you will read and share it!

In 2018, I began lecturing about the Federal Land Dividend, a bipartisan tax-free Universal Basic Income (UBI) based on monetizing the 640 million acres of mostly unused federally owned land. Due to the lasting effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which include a struggling U.S. economy, there is increasing interest in implementing basic income plans. The Federal Land Dividend is the only method that is both bipartisan and tax free.

An estimated 50 percent of the 11 most western states are mostly empty land that belong to the government. Estimates say this land and its resources are worth approximately $100 to $200 trillion. If we divide the middle— $150 trillion —by America’s population of 333 million, every person would have approximately $450,000 in equity. That’s much higher than the median net worth in America of $122,000.

The Federal Land Dividend aims to lease out land and natural resources to big business that agree, in exchange, to pay a monthly income to all Americans. It’s estimated that if just 60 percent of America’s unused federal land was leased out at fair rates, a $1,000 monthly check could be sent to all Americans—regardless of age—for decades if not centuries. Because land and raw materials often move in tandem with inflation, payouts could increase with inflation. Furthermore, this plan does not touch any national parks whatsoever. Much of this land is in places that few humans ever visit or see.

Continue reading “It’s Time to Consider the Federal Land Dividend” | >