Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Anthony J. Ferrante, Global Head of Cybersecurity and Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting, Inc.

Artificial intelligence (AI) models are built with a type of machine learning called deep neural networks (DNNs), which are similar to neurons in the human brain. DNNs make the machine capable of mimicking human behaviors like decision making, reasoning and problem solving. This presentation will discuss the security, ethical and privacy concerns surrounding this technology. Learning Objectives:1: Understand that the solution to adversarial AI will come from a combination of technology and policy.2: Learn that coordinated efforts among key stakeholders will help to build a more secure future.3: Learn how to share intelligence information in the cybersecurity community to build strong defenses.

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Can we turn up—or dial down—their fervor by tweaking their genes?

Enter a new kind of CRISPR. Known mostly as a multi-tool to cut, snip, edit, or otherwise kneecap an existing gene, this version—dubbed CRISPRa—forcibly turns genes on. Optimized by scientists at Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco, the tool is counterbalanced by CRISPRi—“i” for “interference,” which, you guessed it, interferes with the gene’s expression.

Though previously used in immortal cells grown in labs, this is the first time these CRISPR tools are rejiggered for cells extracted from our bodies. Together, the tools simultaneously screened nearly 20,000 genes in T cells isolated from humans, building a massive genetic translator—from genes to function—that maps how individual genes influence T cells.

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Supplement companies often market nootropics like they’re some kind of new scientific discovery. However, human beings have been using nootropics to boost mental performance for millennia. What’s different now is that scientists actually understand how nootropics work, and which ones have synergistic interactions with each other.

This new understanding is what helped TruBrain create Brain Food.

Brain Food is a nutritional supplement that has been methodically engineered by TruBrain’s team of scientists to create the biological conditions necessary for peak cognitive performance. Like a lot of other nootropic supplements, Brain Food contains the so-called “everyman stack” of caffeine and l-theanine, a combo humans have been taking for thousands of years in the form of green tea.

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Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine say that they were able to treat depression in patients by stimulating their brains with magnets.

In a study published on Friday 0, the researchers found that nearly 80 percent of patients had experienced remission of their depression after the procedure, which is called Stanford neuromodulation therapy (SNT). The technique is a modified form of transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and works by delivering high doses of magnetic pulses into a patient’s brain with a device containing magnetic coils placed outside of their skull.

The treatment takes just five days and is customized to each patient based on an MRI scan which shortens the typical timeline of rTMS treatment from a span of weeks into days.

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In a pilot human study, researchers from the University of Minnesota Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital show it is possible to improve specific human brain functions related to self-control and mental flexibility by merging artificial intelligence with targeted electrical brain stimulation.

Alik Widge, MD, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and member of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction at the U of M Medical School, is the senior author of the research published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The findings come from a human study conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston among 12 patients undergoing for epilepsy—a procedure that places hundreds of tiny electrodes throughout the brain to record its activity and identify where seizures originate.

In this study, Widge collaborated with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Sydney Cash, MD, Ph.D., an expert in epilepsy research; and Darin Dougherty, MD, an expert in clinical brain stimulation. Together, they identified a brain region—the internal capsule—that improved patients’ mental function when stimulated with small amounts of electrical energy. That part of the brain is responsible for cognitive control—the process of shifting from one thought pattern or behavior to another, which is impaired in most .

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READER QUESTION: If humans don’t die out in a climate apocalypse or asteroid impact in the next 10,000 years, are we likely to evolve further into a more advanced species than what we are at the moment? Harry Bonas, 57, Nigeria

Humanity is the unlikely result of four billion years of evolution.

From self-replicating molecules in Archean seas, to eyeless fish in the Cambrian deep, to mammals scurrying from dinosaurs in the dark, and then, finally, improbably, ourselves—evolution shaped us.

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