Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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First it was human embryos. Now scientists are trying to develop another way to modify human DNA that can be passed on to future generations, NPR has learned.

Reproductive biologists at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City are attempting to use the powerful gene-editing technique called CRISPR to alter genes in human sperm. NPR got exclusive access to watch the controversial experiments underway.

The research is aimed at finding new ways to prevent disorders caused by genetic mutations that are passed down from men — including some forms of male infertility. The team is starting with a gene that can increase the risk for breast, ovarian, prostate and other cancers.

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Two researchers at Harvard University, Aavishkar A. Patel and Subir Sachdev, have recently presented a new theory of a Planckian metal that could shed light on previously unknown aspects of quantum physics. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, introduces a lattice model of fermions that describes a Planckian metal at low temperatures (Tà 0).

Metals contain numerous , which carry . When physicists consider the electrical resistance of metals, they generally perceive it as arising when the flow of current-carrying electrons is interrupted or degraded due to electrons scattering off impurities or off the crystal lattice in the metal.

“This picture, put forth by Drude in 1900, gives an equation for the electrical resistance in terms of how much time electrons spend moving freely between successive collisions,” Patel told Phys.org. “The length of this time interval between collisions, called the ‘,’ or ‘electron liftetime,’ is typically long enough in most common metals for the electrons to be defined as distinct, mobile objects to a microscopic observer, and the Drude picture works remarkably well.”

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We are now on a collision course with the most significant event in the entire history of our planet comparable in criticality only to the emergence of life itself. This “Novacene” event would mark the technological maturity of human-machine civilization, as we are to inevitably transcend our biology, and even more importantly, we are to transcend our dimensionality by achieving the so-called Simulation Singularity.

Most of us are familiar with the concept of the Technological Singularity. While those terms can be often used interchangeably, the ’Intelligence Supernova’ adds a slightly different connotation — it means the Omega Point of Homo sapiens — the convergent point of exponential technologies and on a civilizational scale, progressively morphing into one Global Mind and a phase transition of humanity termed in the book ’The Syntellect Emergence’. This convergent point would signify no less than Self-Transcendence, in other words, engineered godhood.

Within the next few decades, we’ll witness accelerating changes so profound and swift that the linear progression of human history would eventuate as the Intelligence Supernova of astronomical significance, the “implosion” of all knowledge of man and “transcension” outside the dimensionality of “human” universe.

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This new frontier of space remains fraught with some hard realities.

European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, Expedition 40 flight engineer, enjoys the view of Earth from the windows in the Cupola of the International Space Station. A blue and white part of Earth is visible through the windows.

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With the increasing popularity of science journalism, scientists are starting to be rewarded for doing research that is more likely to have a public impact, rather than be centered on esoteric subjects. The bad side of this? To win acclaim and make a “big splash” in the media, a scientist may push results that are fraudulent or report findings that haven’t been completely verified yet in order to beat the competition.

In this video, game theory expert Kevin Zollman discusses how bad science is sometimes propagated nowadays for the sake of a scientist’s personal interests.

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Nearly one in 30 Americans over the age of 40 experience low vision—significant visual impairment that can’t be corrected with glasses, contact lenses, medication or surgery.

In a new study of patients with , an inherited degenerative eye disease that results in poor , Keck School of Medicine of USC researchers found that adapted augmented reality (AR) glasses can improve patients’ mobility by 50% and grasp performance by 70%.

“Current wearable low vision technologies using are limited and can be difficult to use or require patients to undergo extensive training,” said Mark Humayun, MD, Ph.D., director of the USC Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Institute for Biomedical Therapeutics, codirector of the USC Roski Eye Institute and University Professor of Ophthalmology at the Keck School.

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A University of Texas at Dallas physicist has teamed with Texas Instruments Inc. to design a better way for electronics to convert waste heat into reusable energy.

The collaborative project demonstrated that silicon’s ability to harvest energy from heat can be greatly increased while remaining mass-producible.

Dr. Mark Lee, professor and head of the Department of Physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, is the corresponding author of a study published July 15 in Nature Electronics that describes the results. The findings could greatly influence how circuits are cooled in electronics, as well as provide a method of powering the sensors used in the growing “internet of things.”

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But in many ways, the field of AI ethics remains limited. Researchers say they are blocked from investigating many systems thanks to trade secrecy protections and laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). As interpreted by the courts, that law criminalizes breaking a website or platform’s terms of service, an often necessary step for researchers trying to audit online AI systems for unfair biases.

Whittaker acknowledges the potential for the AI ethics movement to be co-opted. But as someone who has fought for accountability from within Silicon Valley and outside it, Whittaker says she has seen the tech world begin to undergo a deep transformation in recent years. “You have thousands and thousands of workers across the industry who are recognizing the stakes of their work,” Whittaker explains. “We don’t want to be complicit in building things that do harm. We don’t want to be complicit in building things that benefit only a few and extract more and more from the many.”

It may be too soon to tell if that new consciousness will precipitate real systemic change. But facing academic, regulatory and internal scrutiny, it is at least safe to say that the industry won’t be going back to the adolescent, devil-may-care days of “move fast and break things” anytime soon.

“There has been a significant shift and it can’t be understated,” says Whittaker. “The cat is out of the box, and it’s not going back in.”

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