Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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The UN population forecast predicts that by 2050 there will be almost 10 billion people on the planet. They’ll live mostly in cities and have an older median age than the current global population. One looming questions is, what will they eat?

The Green Revolution of the 1960s used selective breeding to double crop yields of rice and wheat in some areas of the world, rescuing millions of people from food shortages and even famine. Now, the fast-growing global population combined with the impact of climate change on our ability to produce food—increased droughts and extreme weather events many crops can’t withstand—points to the need for another green revolution.

Luckily there’s already one underway. It’s more decentralized than the last, which makes sense given there are different challenges surfacing in different parts of the world. A Norwegian startup called Desert Control has a running start on solving a problem that’s only likely to get worse with time.

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Mennonite pastors in Belize and in other nations are also pushing back against worldwide lock-down regulations in an effort to be allowed to continue to worship…

The Mennonite pastor said, “The calling of God is higher than the calling of this government.” He said his church will meet again next Sunday, with permission or not.

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Careful, you may end up with mini cyborgs!

“The closer we come to his goal, the more likely we will get a brain that is capable of sentience and of feeling pain, agony and distress,” Christof Koch, chief scientist and president of the Allen Brain Institute, told the NYT.

The human brain is so complex that scientists are still guessing at many aspects of how it works. That’s the appeal of mini-brains — they’re comparatively simple balls of neurons that simulate some characteristics of full brains but which barely scratch the surface of their capabilities. But this new study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, suggests that the mini-brains could be more complex than previously believed.

“There are some of my colleagues who say, ‘No, these things will never be conscious,’” Muotri told the NYT. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Continue reading “Scientists Grew Tiny Human Brains and Hooked Them up to Robots” | >

Summary: Astrocytes are involved in regulating inhibitory synapses by binding to neurons through the NrCAM adhesion molecule.

Source: Duke University

In the orchestra of the brain, the firing of each neuron is controlled by two notes–excitatory and inhibitory– that come from two distinct forms of a cellular structure called synapses. Synapses are essentially the connections between neurons, transmitting information from one cell to the other. The synaptic harmonies come together to create the most exquisite music–at least most of the time.

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Elon Musk founded The Company “to solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic.” He envisions a network of tunnels where Autonomous Electric Vehicles (AEV) can transport passengers at high speeds through an underground transportation system called “Loop”. The Company’s AEVs are made up of modified Tesla Model 3 and Model X. These zero-emission vehicles will shuttle passengers through the tunnels at approximately 150-miles per hour. The first set of underground roads are under construction at Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). The tunneling project is almost finished. According to city officials it will be operational by January 2021. The Company plans to expand the LVCC Loop transportation system to other parts in Las Vegas. The Company submitted a proposal this year to the Las Vegas City Planning Commission to expand the tunnel to the downtown area.

On Tuesday, the Las Vegas City Planning Commission held a meeting in which the company received approval to connect the LVCC center set of tunnels to a future tunneling system that will lead downtown. The Commission gave the green light during a meeting, video below. The city council plans to review the proposal to cast a final vote in December. The downtown tunnel will begin at the LVCC, run through Las Vegas Boulevard, connect to Ogden, and lead back into Main Street. The City of Las Vegas shared via Twitter the map of where the tunnel will be built, pictured below.

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Harun Šiljak, Trinity College Dublin

Google reported a remarkable breakthrough towards the end of 2019. The company claimed to have achieved something called quantum supremacy, using a new type of “quantum” computer to perform a benchmark test in 200 seconds. This was in stark contrast to the 10,000 years that would supposedly have been needed by a state-of-the-art conventional supercomputer to complete the same test.

Despite IBM’s claim that its supercomputer, with a little optimisation, could solve the task in a matter of days, Google’s announcement made it clear that we are entering a new era of incredible computational power.

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The cause of the crashes remain unclear. The Arecibo Observatory was built in the 1960s and has been in used for decades to search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Experts are worried cables could corrode further as they age.

The radio telescope, among the world’s largest single-dish radio telescopes, is now in a sorry state — and at risk of total collapse.

“For me, it’s probably fifty-fifty,” former observatory director Michael Nolan from the University of Arizona told National Geographic. “They are doing what can be done. I’m still really worried that they can’t do enough.”

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