Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists at Princeton have good news for interstellar travel.

Amazon has placed an order of 1,800 electric vans with Mercedes-Benz, adding to the 100,000 electric delivery vans it has on order with Rivian.

Back in 2017, neuroscientists used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains.

What they discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.

We’re used to thinking of the world from a 3D perspective, so this may sound a bit tricky, but the results of this study could be the next major step in understanding the fabric of the human brain — the most complex structure we know of.

Basic income is not a favor, but a right.”

“Ideas can and do change the world,” says historian Rutger Bregman, sharing his case for a provocative one: guaranteed basic income. Learn more about the idea’s 500-year history and a forgotten modern experiment where it actually worked — and imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

Continue reading “Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash” »

« Acording to Electrek, an FBI complaint details how the feds helped foil a plot by Russian hackers to target Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory with a massive ransomware hack and data breach.

It’s worth noting that the complaint itself never explicitly says that the target of the hack was Tesla, though its Gigafactory is located outside Sparks, Nevada. Electrek, though, is reporting as fact that Tesla is the target. We’ve reached out to Tesla for additional information and we’ll update if any new info comes to light. »

Intriguingly, it sounds as though the hackers weren’t just after ransom.

Continue reading “FBI Reportedly Foils Russian Hack at Tesla Factory” »

Neuralink will demonstrate a working brain-machine interfacing device at 3pm PT (6pm ET) on Friday. Musk says a second-generation robot designed to attach the company’s technology to the brain will be unveiled.

Intel scientist who built stephen hawking’s communicator is updating it with AI and GPT-2, open sourcing it.

An international team of researchers have discovered a new and highly conserved site on the SARS-CoV-2 virus that can be neutralized by a specific antibody. Previous studies have reported that antibodies that block the virus interaction with the human receptor (ACE2) have a significant neutralizing effect and can be used to save the lives of critically ill patients. However, this recent study published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology describes a different target that can be bound in synergy with ACE2 blocking antibodies for a stronger neutralizing effect. Together, with a group at a hospital in Taiwan, the team using the Electron Bio Imaging Centre (eBIC) at the UK’s national synchroton, Diamond Light Source, to identify antibodies from a convalescent patient that could create a real potential for a drug target.

Antibodies are part of the body’s defense against infections. They are proteins that bind to pathogens such as viruses preventing them from coming into contact with human cells. Antibody therapies have shown promise in the treatment of COVID-19, especially for extremely ill patients. Antibodies harvested from people recovering from the disease can be injected into COVID-19 patients and can significantly reduce the severity of the disease and lessen the potential long term effects. There is also evidence that antibody therapy can prevent serious symptoms from developing when administered before an individual is infected.

Scientists were able to isolate an antibody named EY6A from a patient recovering from COVID-19. Subsequent structural biology studies revealed that EY6A bound to a novel target on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and demonstrated a new way of preventing the spread of COVID-19. “This finding is valuable because it comes from a real patient who had the virus. And the discovery of this new target means that more effective combination therapies which attack the virus at different points are now possible,” comments one of the authors Prof. Dave Stuart, Director of Life Sciences at Diamond Light Source and Joint Head of Structural Biology at University of Oxford.