Lifeboat Foundation

A few years ago, popular YouTuber Life Noggin published a video titled “WHY DO WE DIE?” In this video, he briefly goes into the science behind the gradual cellular degradation of the biological substrate, which causes all known side-effects associated with aging. At the end of the video, however, he revealed that he’d much rather “live forever” than die.

As a result, his subscribers, which is nearly at 2.9 million, took to the comments section to overwhelmingly declare similar hopes. Not everyone was convinced, however.

As we continue searching for the cure to aging, we’ll need to better inform the public that we’ve no intention of dictating how long they’re to live and when they’re to die.

Continue reading “Immortality’s a Red Herring; We Want Indefinite Life Extension” »

Here’s something you don’t hear every day: two theories of consciousness are about to face off in the scientific fight of the century.

Backed by top neuroscientist theorists of today, including Christof Koch, head of the formidable Allen Institute for Brain Research in Seattle, Washington, the fight hopes to put two rival ideas of consciousness to the test in a $20 million project. Briefly, volunteers will have their brain activity scanned while performing a series of cleverly-designed tasks targeted to suss out the brain’s physical origin of conscious thought. The first phase was launched this week at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference in Chicago, a brainy extravaganza that draws over 20,000 neuroscientists each year.

Both sides agree to make the fight as fair as possible: they’ll collaborate on the task design, pre-register their predictions on public ledgers, and if the data supports only one idea, the other acknowledges defeat.

So, you should just be able to give them a chill pill and be done with it, right?

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI) and Tohoku University in Japan have recently identified an anomaly in the electromagnetic duality of Maxwell Theory. This anomaly, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could play an important role in the consistency of string theory.

The recent study is a collaboration between Yuji Tachikawa and Kazuya Yonekura, two string theorists, and Chang-Tse Hsieh, a condensed matter theorist. Although the study started off as an investigation into string theory, it also has implications for other areas of physics.

In current physics theory, classical electromagnetism is described by Maxwell’s equations, which were first introduced by physicist James Clerk Maxwell around 1865. Objects governed by these equations include electric and magnetic fields, electrically charged particles (e.g., electrons and protons), and magnetic monopoles (i.e. hypothetical particles carrying single magnetic poles).

In what is believed to be a transit industry first in the United States, TriMet’s all-electric buses will be powered by 100 percent wind energy. TriMet and project partner Portland General Electric made the historic announcement on Tuesday, April 16, 2019. As Oregon’s largest transit provider, TriMet has committed to a non-diesel bus fleet by 2040. The initial journey toward a non-diesel fleet now begins with battery-electric buses that will be powered by PGE’s Clean Wind℠ renewable energy program.

“Today, we are riding the winds of change. TriMet’s commitment to a zero-emissions bus fleet by 2040 and support of wind power put the agency and our region at the forefront of a cleaner future.”

Continue reading “A US transit industry first: TriMet’s new electric buses powered entirely by wind” »

Forget everything you thought you knew about boiling and freezing, thanks to these MIT scientists.

The Air Force’s mystery space plane is back on Earth, following a record-breaking two-year mission.

The X-37B landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Sunday. The Air Force is mum about what the plane did in orbit after launching aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2017. The 780-day mission sets a new endurance record for the reusable test vehicle.

It looks like a space shuttle but is one-fourth the size at 29 feet.

Security researchers have been following the xHelper malware on Android with great interest, owing to the app’s seemingly incomprehensible ability to reinstall itself on an infected device despite factory resets.

When we think of avatars, we imagine a blue film character. But now they’re being used very differently.