Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Jun 17
2021

Nuclear energy: Fusion plant backed by Jeff Bezos to be built in UK

The new facility will be built at Culham, home to the UK’s national fusion research programme.

Canadian company General Fusion is set to build a $400m fusion demonstrator near Oxford.

Jun 17
2021

Chinas Rocket Carrying First Crew To New Space Station Blasts Off

The first astronauts for China’s new space station blasted off Thursday for the country’s longest crewed mission to date, a landmark step in establishing Beijing as a major space power.

Jun 17
2021

Study: Half of US cosmetics contain toxic chemicals

In some products it is not listed as an ingredient.

More than half the cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada likely contain high levels of a toxic industrial compound linked to serious health conditions, including cancer and reduced birth weight, according to a new study.

Jun 17
2021

Mars Perseverance rover wouldnt exist without these 6 groundbreaking missions — look

Perseverance, NASA’s rover that landed on Mars in February, is looking for signs of ancient microbial life and determining if the Red Planet is habitable for humans.

From Mariner 4 to Curiosity, these historical missions have shaped our understanding of the Red Planet.

Jun 17
2021

Omega-3s May Hold Key to Unlocking Blood-Brain Barrier

Summary: A new imaging study reveals how the MFSD2A transporter protein provides a gateway for omega-3 fatty acids to enter the brain.

Source: Columbia University.

Spectacular images of a molecule that shuttles omega-3 fatty acids into the brain may open a doorway for delivering neurological therapeutics to the brain.

Jun 17
2021

IBM’s first quantum computer outside of the US has just gone live

Big Blue has, for the first time, built a quantum computer that is not physically located in its US data centers. For the company, this is the start of global quantum expansion.

Jun 16
2021

Marvelous Machines: NVIDIA Omniverse Launches A New Contest

Don’t miss another chance to win a powerful GPU.

Jun 16
2021

Talking quantum dots could be used as qubits

Computer model simulates how interactions extend exciton lifetimes.

Jun 16
2021

Quasiprobabilities shed light on quantum advantage

Given the importance of the Kirkwood–Dirac quasiprobability’s nonclassical values, two natural questions arise: Under what conditions does this quasiprobability behave anomalously? And how anomalous can its behaviour get? That’s what we wanted to explore.

What did you do in the paper?

We pinned down conditions under which the Kirkwood–Dirac quasiprobability assumes nonclassical values. Using these conditions, one can calculate which experiments can exhibit certain types of quantum advantages. We also put a “ceiling” on how much nonclassicality one Kirkwood–Dirac quasiprobability distribution can contain.

Jun 16
2021

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gives away $2.7bn to hundreds of charities

It was the third round of announcements Scott has made regarding her philanthropy, which rivals the largest of foundations. In 2020, she made two similar surprise announcements and donated about $6bn to causes including Covid relief, gender equity, historically Black colleges and universities and other schools.

Ex-wife of Jeff Bezos gives to 286 groups and says she wants to donate ‘fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change’