Lifeboat Foundation

Between the never-ending stream of news linking bad actors to social networks and studies documenting society’s growing smartphone addiction, it seems almost wrong today to think that technology can — ahem — help make the world a better place.

That’s why I am thankful for the annual Inclusive Innovative Challenge, hosted by MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. Launched in 2016, the IIC seeks out and awards entrepreneurs that are leveraging technology advances to reinvent the future of work. That’s right. There remains, even in this news cycle, firms committed to tapping technology’s ability to connect—and not divide—people and build—and not threaten—jobs and other economic activities.

Or, as the challenge organizers put it:

Continue reading “Some Good Tech News: Entrepreneurs Leverage Tech for Economic Inclusion” »

In a collaborative study presented by scientists primarily affiliated with Stanford and Brown Universities, participants suffering from significant paralysis were successfully able to use non-modified applications on an Android tablet using their brain waves. In previous studies, “point-and-click” computer functionality interpreted from these kinds of signals has been accomplished, but the applications available to participants was limited to software and devices that had been specialized and personalized for users’ specific needs. This study has demonstrated technology that overcomes this limitation and enables access to the full range of software available to non-disabled users. Participants enjoyed applications previously unavailable to them such as streaming music services and a piano keyboard player.

To accomplish the study’s objectives, scientists capitalized and combined existing technologies for their unique end. Brain waves from participants’ brain implants were sent to a commercially available recording system and then processed and decoded by an existing real-time interpreter software. The decoded data was then transmitted to a Bluetooth interface configured as a wireless mouse which was paired to an Android tablet. While the steps to accomplish the task at hand are many, the result somewhat resembles telepathy but largely resembles greater accessibility for the disabled.

Continue reading “Paralyzed individuals successfully use brain waves to operate tablet computers” »

Residents of a tiny Alaska Native community woke up to a little pre-Thanksgiving excitement Wednesday, with a neighbouring volcano spewing a billowing dark cloud high into the air.

The sooty emissions from Mount Veniaminof were visible from the Aleut village of Perryville nearly 40 kilometres to the south, locals said. But the wind was pushing the plume away from the community of 101 people.

“It’s a big, black, ugly cloud,” lifelong resident Victoria Tague said of the ash, which later slipped behind a cloud cover.

Continue reading “Ash from Alaska volcano prompts aviation warning” »

From elongated oblongs to near-perfect spheres, vegetables come in almost every size and shape. But what differentiates a fingerling potato from a russet or a Roma tomato from a beefsteak?

Researchers at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences have recently found the genetic mechanism that controls the shape of our favorite fruits, vegetables and grains.

In article published this month in the journal Nature Communications, Esther van der Knaap, professor of horticulture, and her team at UGA detail the genetic traits, shared by multiple plants that have been shown to control fruit, leaf and seed shape.

Continue reading “UGA researchers discover genes that give vegetables their shape” »

Corals and the microbes they host evolved together, new research by Oregon State University shows.

INCREDIBLE time-lapse video of a rocket launching a resupply ship to the International Space Station… as seen from ISS itself!

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a technique to stop the movement of cancer cells. When cancer moves from a primary tumor to other sites in the body, it becomes far more dangerous to the patient, and that has driven scientists to work for years to learn more about how cancer cells migrate. This work, which was reported in Nature Communications, may help create therapeutics that can prevent cancer from spreading.

Continue reading “Stopping Cancer Cells in Their Tracks” »

While on the run, he also developed a lifelong interest in fossils — possibly the result of scrambling across a fossil-filled rock pile while evading German patrols, his son said — and in physics.

Here’s a look at fast-moving jet material from the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole when a star wandered just a little too close: https://go.nasa.gov/2FAO1XB #BlackHoleFriday