Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 8

The race between Jupiter and Saturn for the most moons in the Solar System may have just finally come screeching to a halt.

A team of scientists has found a whopping 128 previously unknown moons hanging around Saturn, in a discovery officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union. This brings the planet’s total number of known moons to 274, leaving Jupiter, with its mere 95 moons, in the dust.

The first hint that there were more moons awaiting discovery came between 2019 and 2021, when 62 such objects were identified. Other small objects were also spotted at the time that couldn’t yet be designated.

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Can you pass me the whatchamacallit? It’s right over there next to the thingamajig.

Many of us will experience “lethologica”, or difficulty finding words, in everyday life. And it usually becomes more prominent with age.

Frequent difficulty finding the right word can signal changes in the brain consistent with the early (“preclinical”) stages of Alzheimer’s disease – before more obvious symptoms emerge.

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Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and the University of Tokyo have found a mathematical connection between spatial navigation and language processing, creating a model called “Disentangled Successor Information” (DSI).

This model generates patterns that closely resemble the activity of actual brain cells involved in both spatial awareness (place cells and grid cells) and concept recognition (concept cells).

The DSI model shows that the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex— previously known primarily for —likely use comparable computational processes to handle both physical spaces and meaningful ideas or words. Using this shared framework, both types of information can be processed through similar mathematical computations, which could be achieved in the brain by partial activation of specific groups of neurons.

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Mind Control: Past and Future https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2025-01/24_Meier_02.pdf

On Jan. 28, 2024, Noland Arbaugh became the first person to receive a brain chip implant from Neuralink, the neurotechnology company owned by Elon Musk. The implant seemed to work: Arbaugh, who is paralyzed, learned to control a computer mouse with his mind and even to play online chess.

The device is part of a class of therapeutics, (BCIs), that show promise for helping people with disabilities control prosthetic limbs, operate a computer, or translate their thoughts directly into speech. Current use of the technology is limited, but with millions of global cases of spinal cord injuries, strokes, and other conditions, some estimates put the market for BCIs at around $400 billion in the U.S. alone.

A new discussion paper from the Carr Center for Human Rights welcomes the potential benefits but offers a note of caution drawn from the past, detailing unsettling parallels between an era of new therapies and one of America’s darkest chapters: experiments into psychological manipulation and mind control.

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This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG12 Responsible Consumption and Production, and SDG 13 Climate Action.

As the global construction industry strives to reduce its environmental footprint, sustainable processes and materials are becoming increasingly vital. Innovation in cement and concrete technologies plays a key role in minimizing resource consumption, lowering carbon emissions, and enhancing long-term resilience. This collection highlights research that advances both sustainable development and application of cement and concrete for the building sector.

Topics of interest include the development of low-carbon cement alternatives, recycling and reuse of concrete materials, 3D concrete printing, and other energy-efficient construction techniques. We welcome contributions from fundamental material research, to applied solutions and large-scale real-world demonstrations.

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Predictions of theories that combine quantum mechanics with gravity could be observed using highly sensitive photon detection in a tabletop experiment.

Quantum-gravity theories attempt to unite gravity and quantum mechanics. A proposed tabletop experiment called Gravity from the Quantum Entanglement of Space Time (GQuEST) would search for a predicted effect of such theories using a new type of interferometer—one that counts photons rather than measuring interference patterns. The GQuEST team has now calculated the sensitivity of their design and shown that it can recover the predicted signal 100 times faster than traditional interferometer setups [1].

Quantizing gravity implies that spacetime is not continuous—it becomes “pixelated” when you look at scales as small as 10−35 m, far too small to be probed in any experiment. However, certain quantum-gravity models predict that spacetime can fluctuate—a kind of spontaneous stretching and squeezing in the spacetime fabric that might produce observable effects [2]. “You couldn’t detect a single pixel, but you could detect the coherent fluctuations of many pixels,” says Caltech theorist Kathryn Zurek. She has formulated a “pixellon” model, which predicts that collective fluctuations inside an interferometer can cause a detectable frequency change, or modulation, in the interferometer’s output light [3].