Lifeboat Foundation

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, known simply as “Luca” to generations of human geneticists, died this week at age 96. More than any other human geneticist, Cavalli-Sforza believed in the potential of genes and culture together to trace humanity’s origins. In the course of his work, he pioneered new ideas and models that brought together these two distinct areas of science.

Like most scientists, many of his ideas would turn out to be wrong in the details. But his work helped form the foundation of our current knowledge of human genome variation across the world.

In 1991, Cavalli-Sforza wrote an essay for Scientific American that explained the course of his life’s work to that point. He recollected a time as a young man when he worked in the Cambridge laboratory of Ronald A. Fisher, one of the founders of modern evolutionary theory.

Continue reading “The man who tried to catalog humanity” »

The red tide that is choking Florida’s southwest coast is causing symptoms including coughs, headaches and shortness of breath, local doctors say.

This video is the second in a two-part series discussing 5G. In this video, we’ll be discussing the transition from fourth to fifth generation mobile networks along with the timeline for deployment of 5G infrastructure we can expect to see.

[0:35–5:15] First we’ll take a look at how 4G networks have been evolving and their future trajectory, as well as the organizations in charge of setting the standards for a mobile generation.

[5:15–9:55] Following that, we’ll look at how 4G networks will ease the transition to 5G, unlimited data plans and some of the use cases opened up by 4.5G/5G.

The passive exoskeleton is already part of the Russian Army’s Ratnik (warrior), or ‘future combat system’, which also includes a range of surveillance, communications, and defensive equipment. The active exoskeleton may become part of Ratnik by 2025, according to Military-Scientific Committee Chair of the Ground Forces Aleksandr Romanyuta.

Russia has tested a battery-powered electric motor exoskeleton. The ‘Iron Man’ suit enables the wearer to accurately hit a target with a machine gun one-handed.

Soldiers wearing the high-tech exosuit can run faster and wield heavier equipment and weapons, Oleg Faustov – the chief designer of military industry company TsNIITochMash, which developed the exoskeleton – told TASS.

Continue reading “The future is here! Russia successfully tests exosuit enabling wearer to shoot machine gun 1-handed” »

We write often here about the security vulnerabilities of Android devices that are due, at least in part, to how much of a delay there can be in the latest software updates making the rounds. Which can leave some handsets dangerously vulnerable if the device manufacturer is slow on the uptake.

Which means we’re constantly writing posts like this one: Researchers from Nightwatch Cybersecurity this week put out an advisory about an Android vulnerability that purportedly exposes information about a user’s device to all applications running on the device. There’s a fix for it, but not if you’re running a too-old version of Android.

According to the advisory, the information includes “the Wi-Fi network name, BSSID, local IP addresses, DNS server information and the MAC address. Some of this information (MAC address) is no longer available via APIs on Android 6 and higher, and extra permissions are normally required to access the rest of this information. However, by listening to these broadcasts, any application on the device can capture this information thus bypassing any permission checks and existing mitigations.”

Two-thirds of all cancers are caused by DNA replication errors, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. But don’t light a celebratory cigarette just yet.

Satellite images could help target public health interventions.

The ability to reverse ageing is something many people would hope to see in their lifetime. This is still a long way from reality, but in our latest experiment, we have reversed the ageing of human cells, which could provide the basis for future anti-degeneration drugs.

Ageing can be viewed as the progressive decline in bodily function and is linked with most of the common chronic diseases that humans suffer from, such as cancer, diabetes and dementia. There are many reasons why our cells and tissues stop functioning, but a new focus in the biology of ageing is the accumulation of “senescent” cells in the tissues and organs.

Senescent cells are older deteriorated cells that do not function as they should, but also compromise the function of cells around them. Removal of these old dysfunctional cells has been shown to improve many features of ageing in animals such as the delayed onset of cataracts.

Continue reading “Ageing in Human Cells Successfully Reversed in the Lab” »

I think this is a great idea and I would invest in it for here. But I would create it as a vending machine also and for $1 and a beer (and soda) bottle you would get…? what? I need some ideas. What do beer drinkers want? How about for soft drinks?