Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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For the first time, scientists have created healthy, fertile mouse pups from the DNA of two adult males — no female DNA required.

While the research is currently only a proof of concept and has yet to be peer-reviewed, the team behind the process thinks it could translate to people — meaning two men could potentially have biological children together one day.

Reproduction 2.0: For nearly all of humanity’s existence, reproduction has required sperm from one man and an egg from one woman — put the two together in a welcoming womb, and nine months later, you have a baby.

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AI powered photo editing tool.

The research team noted in its paper that new details can be added within the regeneration of the edited aspects of images that are beneficial to the update. “Our approach can hallucinate occluded content, like the teeth inside a lion’s mouth, and can deform following the object’s rigidity, like the bending of a horse leg.”

There are many brands that are attempting to offer editing options for generative AI content. However, most do not go as far as allowing for the actual editing of images, but rather for aspects such as editing around images. For example, Microsoft’s Designer app allows you to generate AI images from a text prompt, and you can select your favorite from three results, then take it to the design studio where you can create a host of creativity and productivity-based projects, such as social media posts, invitations, digital postcards, or graphics with the image as the focal point. However, you cannot edit the AI-generated image.

With the DragGAN tool still being a demo for now, there is no telling what the quality of a readily available technology would be, or if it would even be possible, especially since the demos are based on low-resolution videos. However, it is an interesting example of how quickly AI continues to develop.

Continue reading “Click and drag AI image editing could change everything” | >

John Yang:

Artificial intelligence is finding its place in all sorts of scientific fields, and perhaps none holds more life savings promise than healthcare programs are learning to answer patient’s medical questions and diagnose illnesses. But there’s still some problems to be worked out. Earlier, I spoke with Dr. Isaac Kohane, the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine AI, and the chair of Harvard’s Department of Biomedical Informatics. I asked him about AI’s potential in medicine.

Dr. Isaac Kohane, Editor-in-Chief, New England Journal of Medicine AI: Doctors can definitely use AI as an augmentation, so they’ll remember or be reminded of all the things that they should know about their patient, their specific patient, and all other similar patients like them.

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On Friday, May 19, SpaceX released a 20-second video demonstrating that it is already conducting tests on technology aimed at fortifying the ground beneath its enormous Starship rocket’s orbital launch pad. The launch pad, situated at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, endured significant damage during the inaugural test flight of a fully-integrated Starship vehicle on April 20. During the test flight, the sheer power of the Super Heavy rocket’s 33 Raptor engines created a substantial crater beneath the pad. As a result, chunks of shattered concrete were sent soaring through the air.

SpaceX founder Chief Engineer Elon Musk shared that SpaceX is actively developing a solution to mitigate such damage. He said that they plan to build “a massive water-cooled, steel plate to go under the launch mount.” The footage of the test shows a methane-fueled Raptor engine ignited with its beam hitting a steel-plate and a massive stream of water. “One hell of a plasma beam!” said Musk when he shared the video via Twitter, shown below. A single Raptor V2 engine is capable of generating around 230 tons of thrust. Engineers must build a strong structure that could support such intense power, collectively, all 33 Raptor engines generate over 17 million pounds of thrust!

Regarding launch pad modifications –“We’re going to put down a lot of steel” under the launch tower before the next Starship flight with a water flame diverter system, Musk said during a Subscriber-only Twitter Spaces discussion on April 29. “We certainly didn’t expect” to destroy the concrete under the launch pad during the flight test, he said (pictured below). He speculates that the crater was caused due to “compressed the sand underneath the concrete to such a degree that the concrete effectively bent and then cracked.”

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German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg first introduced his uncertainty principle in a 1925 paper. It’s special because it remains intact no matter how good our experimental methods get; this isn’t a lack of precision in measurement. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how sophisticated your equipment, is you can’t think your way past it. It’s a fact of nature.

Legendary physicist and master bongo player Richard Feynman put it like this: “The uncertainty principle ‘protects’ quantum mechanics. Heisenberg recognized that if it were possible to measure both the momentum and the position simultaneously with greater accuracy, quantum mechanics would collapse. So he proposed that must be impossible.”

Reality is telling us that we can have our quantum cake, but we can’t eat it, too.

Continue reading “Our Existence Always Contains Some Uncertainty. This Physics Principle Explains Why” | >

But that may change soon enough.

A recent study in Nature Communications finally found a possible death cap mushroom antidote. The researchers report that an FDA-approved compound known as indocyanine green (ICG) can inhibit the mushroom’s deadly toxin.

Scientists have been studying death cap mushrooms since the early 1700s but an antidote has largely eluded them because “we know little about how mushroom toxins kill cells,” Qiaoping Wang, a professor of pharmacology at Sun Yat-Sen University and one of the study’s lead authors, told Insider.

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The Mediterranean diet has become famous far beyond its namesake sea, as research increasingly supports its longstanding reputation for boosting health and longevity.

Studies have shown that people on the Mediterranean diet – which emphasizes plant-based foods and fish, and not so much red meat or dairy – tend to be healthier in multiple ways, with lower rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, and overall mortality.

But why? Despite strong evidence for health benefits, it remains unclear how exactly this mix of foods, at the cellular level, can lengthen lifespan.

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