Lifeboat Foundation

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Elon Musk may be a strong proponent of all things tech. But he’s far from positive on its implications for the jobs market.

In fact, the Tesla CEO says one of tech’s great developments — artificial intelligence — could spell the end of many jobs altogether.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: ‘A.I. will make jobs kind of pointless’ — so study this” »

The biotech Mesoblast is starting a compassionate use study of its stem cell product for kids with a severe offshoot of COVID-19.

The cellular drug in this case is remestemcel-L (more below).

While most children fare better than adults in dealing with COVID-19, the rare subset of kids with COVID-19 for this study have more severe disease than the average COVID patient and some die.

The historic moment when Shepard and Mitchell deploy the US flag on the lunar surface. The video was shot at 12 frames per second, but this video is presented at 24 frames per second.

Scientists at Harvard University and the Black Hole Initiative (BHI) have developed a new method to find black holes in the outer solar system, and along with it, determine once-and-for-all the true nature of the hypothesized Planet Nine. The paper, accepted to, highlights the ability of the future Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) mission to observe accretion flares, the presence of which could prove or rule out Planet Nine as a black hole.

Dr. Avi Loeb, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard, and Amir Siraj, a Harvard undergraduate student, have developed the new method to search for black holes in the outer solar system, based on flares that result from the disruption of intercepted comets. The study suggests that the LSST has the capability to find black holes by observing for accretion flares resulting from the impact of small Oort cloud objects.

“In the vicinity of a black hole, small bodies that approach it will melt as a result of heating from the background accretion of gas from the interstellar medium onto the black hole,” said Siraj. “Once they melt, the small bodies are subject to tidal disruption by the black hole, followed by accretion from the tidally disrupted body onto the black hole.” Loeb added, “Because black holes are intrinsically dark, the radiation that matter emits on its way to the mouth of the black hole is our only way to illuminate this dark environment.”

Featured Image Source: u/TomHockenberry via Reddit.

SpaceX is developing its next-generation launch vehicle — Starship — at the company’s South Texas facility located in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville, TX. Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, runs 24/7 operations to develop the stainless-steel spacecraft before the year 2022. SpaceX’s first private customer, Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, booked a journey around the moon aboard Starship scheduled for 2023. NASA also selected SpaceX to develop a Starship Lunar Lander as part of the agency’s Artemis program which aims to take the first woman and the next mand to the moon’s surface by 2024. Musk recently shared he still hopes to launch a cargo mission to Mars in 2022 and deploy the first humans to the Red Planet aboard Starship in mid-2024. The company is certainly working on a tight schedule to meet these ambitious timelines.

Continue reading “SpaceX submits a request stating a Starship flight may occur within 7 months” »

A giant underground gyroscope array has taken its first measurements of how the world goes ’round.

In the COVID-19 outbreak frenzy, several countries are considering massive fiscal stimulus packages and printing money, to blunt the concurrent crises underway: the pandemic and the unraveling economic depression.

These plans are essential, but they need to be strategic and sustainable. Because in addressing the current crises, we must avoid sowing seeds of new ones, as the stakes are incredibly high.

It is time to add a new element to the policy packages that governments are introducing, one we know but have abandoned: Universal Basic Income (UBI). It is needed as part of the package that will help us to get out of this yawning pit.

Pancreatic cancer is rarely detected at its early stages when it’s most curable. This is because it often doesn’t cause symptoms until after it has spread to other organs. Treatment options are chosen based on the extent of the cancer and may include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or a combination of these. Using mice and lab-grown pancreas models, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have discovered that they can stop the growth of pancreatic cancer cells by blocking the way the cells store cholesterol.

Their study, “SOAT1 promotes mevalonate pathway dependency in pancreatic cancer,” was published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine and led by David Tuveson, MD, PhD, professor at CSHL.

Tuveson’s team wanted to know why pancreatic cancer cells, like many cancer cells, produce abundant amounts of cholesterol. “Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a dismal prognosis, and new therapies are needed. Altered metabolism is a cancer vulnerability, and several metabolic pathways have been shown to promote PDAC. However, the changes in cholesterol metabolism and their role during PDAC progression remain largely unknown. Here we used organoid and mouse models to determine the drivers of altered cholesterol metabolism in PDAC and the consequences of its disruption on tumor progression,” the scientists wrote.

New research re-examining old data showed that 28 objects previously described as distant galaxies or dim black holes are in fact bright, shrouded supermassive black holes.