Lifeboat Foundation

A new review by researchers from Oxford Population Health and the University of Iceland, published in Nature Aging, reveals how your DNA shapes reproductive health, fertility, and even life expectancy.

Led by researchers from the University of Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the University of Iceland, the review explores how genetic variations can explain differences in reproductive health and longevity.

The study provides the most comprehensive review of male and female genetic discoveries of reproductive traits to date, and provides new insights into how our DNA affects when we have children, the timing of menopause, and even how that is connected to how long we live.

Scientists have long known that light can sometimes appear to exit a material before entering it—an effect dismissed as an illusion caused by how waves are distorted by matter.

Now, researchers at the University of Toronto, through innovative quantum experiments, say they have demonstrated that “negative time” isn’t just a theoretical idea—it exists in a tangible, physical sense, deserving closer scrutiny.

The findings, posted on the preprint server arXiv but not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, have attracted both global attention and skepticism.

Considering what’s known about their brain structures, sensory systems and learning capacity, it appears that cephalopods as a group may be similar in intelligence to vertebrates as a group. Since many societies have animal welfare standards for mice, rats, chickens and other vertebrates, logic would suggest that there’s an equal case for regulations enforcing humane treatment of cephalopods.

Such rules generally specify that when a species is held in captivity, its housing conditions should support the animal’s welfare and natural behavior. This view has led some U.S. states to outlaw confined cages for egg-laying hens and crates too narrow for pregnant sows to turn around.

Continue reading “Octopuses and their relatives are a new animal welfare frontier − here’s what scientists know about consciousness in these unique creatures” »

A Chinese robotics firm has started mass-producing humanoid robots for general use, while its US counterparts, like Tesla, are aiming for such a feat in 2026.

Agibot, or Zhiyuan Robotics, showcased footage of its manufacturing facility on its official website and revealed that it’s on course to produce 1,000 units by the end of the year, according to a Chinese online news outlet.

Continue reading “China’s Agibot eyes 1,000-humanoid robot army to beat Elon Musk’s Tesla” »

OpenAI is slowly inviting selected users to test a whole new set of reasoning models named O₃ and O₃ mini, successors to the o1 and o1-mini models that just entered full release earlier this month.

Demographers estimate that in premodern societies, out of every 1,000 babies born, about 300 died before reaching their first birthday. Most of those infants succumbed to infectious diseases and malnutrition.

By 1900, infant mortality rates had fallen to approximately 140 per 1,000 live births in modernizing countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States. Infant mortality rates in the two countries continued to fall to about 56 per 1,000 live births in 1935 and down to about 30 per 1,000 live births by 1950. In 2017, the UK and U.S. infant mortality rates were, respectively, 3.8 and 5.9 per 1,000 live births. Since 1900, in other words, infant mortality in those two countries has fallen by more than 95 percent.

In the past few decades, infant mortality rates have been falling steeply in the rest of the world. The World Health Organization estimates that the global infant mortality rate was just under 160 per 1,000 live births in 1950. By 1990, the agency reports that the global infant mortality rate had dropped to 64.8 per 1,000 live births. In 2017, the global infant mortality rate was down to 29.4 per 1,000 live births, about the level of the United Kingdom and the United States in 1950.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll.
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/06/19/240-…-universe/

It’s somewhat amazing that cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, can make any progress at all. But it has, especially so in recent decades. Partly that’s because nature has been kind to us in some ways: the universe is quite a simple place on large scales and at early times. Another reason is a leap forward in the data we have collected, and in the growing use of a powerful tool: computer simulations. I talk with cosmologist Andrew Pontzen on what we know about the universe, and how simulations have helped us figure it out. We also touch on hot topics in cosmology (early galaxies discovered by JWST) as well as philosophical issues (are simulations data or theory?).

Continue reading “Mindscape 240 | Andrew Pontzen on Simulations and the Universe” »

OpenAI CEO says AGI is losing its meaning as the company edges closer to achieving the benchmark.

Phi-4 Technical Report by: Microsoft Research “We present phi-4, a 14-billion parameter language model developed with a training recipe that is centrally focused on data quality.”

Speakers: Cecile Tamura, Robert Pray, Riju Pahwa