Lifeboat Foundation

By Valentina Lagomarsino figures by Sean Wilson

Nearly four months ago, Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced that he had edited the genes of twin babies with CRISPR. CRISPR, also known as CRISPR/Cas9, can be thought of as “genetic scissors” that can be programmed to edit DNA in any cell. Last year, scientists used CRISPR to cure dogs of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. This was a huge step forward for gene therapies, as the potential of CRISPR to treat otherwise incurable diseases seemed possible. However, a global community of scientists believe it is premature to use CRISPR in human babies because of inadequate scientific review and a lack of international consensus regarding the ethics of when and how this technology should be used.

Early regulation of gene-editing technology.

Industrial powerhouse Honeywell says its latest quantum computer is now the fastest in the world. How quickly real-world applications will develop or how swiftly they’ll be able to impact industries or affect cryptographic systems such as Bitcoin is the subject of rigorous debate.

In an announcement on Thursday, Honeywell says its team of scientists, engineers and technicians has delivered a quantum volume of 64. The metric measures both the total number of the computer’s qubits and how well it handles them. IBM’s machine scored a 32, suggesting Honeywell’s quantum computer is twice as fast.

Continue reading “Tech Giant Announces ‘World’s Fastest Quantum Computer’ – Are Bitcoin (BTC) and Cryptographic Systems at Risk?” »

My interview.

An African perspective on COVID-19 and technology.

Summary: Findings reveal individual differences in the severity of depressive symptoms following a relationship breakdown are associated with changes in resting-state whole-brain dynamics.

Source: UPF Barcelona

During a person’s life, the experience of a stressful life event can lead to the development of depressive symptoms, even in a non-clinical population. For example, a relationship breakup is a fairly common event and is a powerful risk factor for quality of life, in addition to increasing the risk of a major depressive disorder.

For instance, suppose a neural network has labeled the image of a skin mole as cancerous. Is it because it found malignant patterns in the mole or is it because of irrelevant elements such as image lighting, camera type, or the presence of some other artifact in the image, such as pen markings or rulers?

Researchers have developed various interpretability techniques that help investigate decisions made by various machine learning algorithms. But these methods are not enough to address AI’s explainability problem and create trust in deep learning models, argues Daniel Elton, a scientist who researches the applications of artificial intelligence in medical imaging.

Elton discusses why we need to shift from techniques that interpret AI decisions to AI models that can explain their decisions by themselves as humans do. His paper, “Self-explaining AI as an alternative to interpretable AI,” recently published in the arXiv preprint server, expands on this idea.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has applied to offer high-speed internet to Canadians living in remote areas by beaming it to them via satellites.

The Globe and Mail newspaper first reported that space exploration company SpaceX applied with Canada’s telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), for what’s known as a Basic International Telecommunications Services, or BITS, licence.

From Alaska airlines flight

#SpaceExploration

Solar Eclipse from Alaska airlines flight #SpaceExploration

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Emory Vaccine Center (EVC) are first to show a new adjuvant, 3M-052, helps induce long-lasting immunity against HIV. The study results are published today in Science Immunology.

In this pre–clinical study that included 90 rhesus monkeys, the researchers showed 3M-052, a new, synthetic small molecule that targets a specific receptor (TLR 7/8), successfully induced vaccine-specific, long-lived bone marrow plasma cells (BM-LLPCs), which are critical for durable immunity. In a striking observation, 3M-052-induced BM-LLPCs were maintained at high numbers for more than one year after vaccination. This prolonged interval is not only feasible in monitoring pre–clinical effectiveness, it is also highly informative in down selecting vaccine candidates.

First author Sudhir Pai Kasturi, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a research assistant professor at Yerkes and the EVC, says, “We have known adjuvants are critical immunity-boosting supplements that help improve the effectiveness of vaccines. Until now, however, it has been unclear which class of adjuvants can promote stable and long-lived immunity in nonhuman primate models. Our study provides that information.”

In 2018, China launched a secret project with the goal of eradicating U.S. submarines.

It’s called Project Guanlan, which means “Watching the Big Waves,” and it’s a space-based laser weapon.

If you’re a regular reader, then this won’t come as a surprise to you.

Continue reading “China’s Top-Secret Laser Project” »