Lifeboat Foundation

Derrick Broze, Guest Waking Times

New scientific research is causing scientists to rethink what they believe about the static nature of genes. What do these discoveries mean for a species increasingly facing environmental and political calamity?

Ongoing discoveries regarding how environmental factors can affect life on the genetic level are causing many scientists and researchers to rethink the notion that the genetic makeup of an individual is static and unchanging. Most recently, a team of researchers with Tufts University has found evidence which suggests stress or mistreatment during childhood can lead to genetic changes which are passed down to the victim’s children and grandchildren. Larry Feig and his team have shown that inducing stress on mice can lead to genetic changes which are imprinted on the sperm. This same effect has been found in male humans as well.

Continue reading “What Does Epigenetics Mean for Humanity’s Awakening?” »

The evidence is increasingly clear: 2018 is the year of the Chinese venture deal.

With half of the year now complete, China is driving ahead of Silicon Valley and the rest of the United States on venture capital dollars invested into startups, according to a number of data sources including Crunchbase, China Money Network, and Pitchbook.

These sorts of top line numbers are always driven by large deals, and the Chinese VC market is no exception. Monster rounds this year have included a $1.9 billion investment from Softbank Vision Fund into Manbang Group, a truck hailing startup formed from the merger of two competitors, Yumanman and Huochebang, as well as Ant Financial, which raised a whopping $14 billion from investors.

Continue reading “China VC has overtaken Silicon Valley, but do aggregate numbers tell the whole story?” »

Would you eat lab grown meat?

The startup uses 3D-printing techniques to assemble a human heart, one heart-cell layer at a time.

Canadian researchers have discovered a new and direct molecular mechanism to stop cancer cells from proliferating. In the prestigious journal Nature Cell Biology, scientists from Université de Montréal show that a disruption of a fine balance in the composition of ribosomes (huge molecules that translate the genetic code into proteins) results in a shutdown of cancer cell proliferation, triggering a process called senescence.

“Ribosomes are complex machines composed of both RNAs and proteins that make all the proteins necessary for cells to grow,” said UdeM biochemistry professor Gerardo Ferbeyre, the study’s senior author. Cancer cells grow and proliferate relentlessly and thus require a massive amount of ribosomes, he explained. Growing cells must coordinate the production of both ribosomal RNAs and ribosomal proteins in order to assemble them together in strict proportion to each other.

“We were surprised, however, to find that if the production of ribosomal RNA–protein proportions are driven out of balance in a cancer cell, proliferation can be shut down by in a very simple and direct manner,” said Ferbeyre.

Continue reading “Scientists discover a new mechanism that prevents the proliferation of cancer cells” »

Thousands of people in Sweden have inserted microchips, which can function as contactless credit cards, key cards, and even rail cards, into their bodies. Once the chip is underneath your skin, there is no longer any need to worry about misplacing a card or carrying a heavy wallet. But for many people, the idea of carrying a microchip in their body feels more dystopian than practical.

Some have suggested that Sweden’s strong welfare state may be the cause of this recent trend. But actually, the factors behind why roughly 3,500 Swedes have had microchips implanted in them are more complex than you might expect. This phenomenon reflects Sweden’s unique biohacking scene. If you look underneath the surface, Sweden’s love affair with all things digital goes much deeper than these microchips.

Continue reading “The reason thousands of Swedish people are inserting microchips into themselves” »

Electrical engineers at Princeton, working with UK manufacturer Element Six, created synthetic diamonds capable of storing and transmitting quantum information, as published in the journal ‘Science’ on Thursday. The research is a major advance for the creation of quantum-encrypted communications.

I’m not that interested in this on the movie end, because i think most movies already suck, and couldnt really get any worse.

AUDREY HEPBURN DIED in 1993, but in 2013 she nevertheless starred in an advertisement for Galaxy, a type of chocolate bar. She was shown riding a bus along the Amalfi coast before catching the eye of a passing hunk in a convertible. In 2016 Peter Cushing, who died in 1994, reprised his role as the villainous Grand Moff Tarkin in the Star Wars film “Rogue One”. Such resurrections are not new, but they are still uncommon enough to count as news. Yet advances in special effects—and, increasingly, in artificial intelligence (AI)—are making it ever easier to manufacture convincing forgeries of human beings.

In recent months this has led to concern that propagandists will use the technology to generate videos in which political figures appear to say compromising things. A video created by BuzzFeed, a news website, in April shows Barack Obama apparently saying “We’re entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time,” for example. In May a Belgian political party produced a fake video of Donald Trump saying implausible things about Belgium’s climate policy. In both cases the video looks slightly off, and the voice is provided by an impersonator. But the technology is improving fast, prompting a dozen AI researchers to place bets on whether a fake video will disrupt America’s midterm elections later this year. (Tim Hwang, a Harvard academic, is overseeing the wager.)

Continue reading “What if AI made actors immortal?” »

Cheap technology will sweep away lots of jobs. That’s an argument for a better safety net.