Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Jun 2
2020

New research offers hope for a way through the blood-brain barrier, ‘the final frontier for drug delivery’

A duo of preclinical studies recently demonstrated a new way to ferry medicines past the blood-brain barrier. And other research is on the way.

Jun 2
2020

Einstein Ring: Astronomers Just Found Cosmic Golden Needle That Was Buried for Two Decades

Discovery Sheds New Light on Famous Einstein Ring

Social distance science made possible with public W. M. Keck Observatory and NASA archive data.

Determined to find a needle in a cosmic haystack, a pair of astronomers time traveled through archives of old data from W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauankea in Hawaii and old X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to unlock a mystery surrounding a bright, lensed, heavily obscured quasar.

Jun 2
2020

This device could provide cheap electricity to billions living in the dark

The thermoelectric generator harnesses the flow of heat between two surfaces — one exposed to the cold sky at night. It could be the nocturnal cousin of solar power, lighting the lives of the 1.7 billion people worldwide living with an unreliable electricity connection.

Jun 2
2020

Theoretical breakthrough shows quantum fluids rotate

If a drop of creamer falls from a spoon into a swirling cup of coffee, the whirlpool drags the drop into rotation. But what would happen if the coffee had no friction—no way to pull the drop into a synchronized spin?

Jun 2
2020

Out-of-sync brain waves may underlie learning deficit linked to schizophrenia

A new UC San Francisco study has pinpointed a specific pattern of brain waves that underlies the ability to let go of old, irrelevant learned associations to make way for new updates. The research is the first to directly show that a particular behavior can be dependent on the precise synchronization of high-frequency brain waves in different parts of the brain, and might open a path for developing interventions for certain psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia.

Jun 2
2020

Carnegie Mellon tool automatically turns math into pictures

Some people look at an equation and see a bunch of numbers and symbols; others see beauty. Thanks to a new tool created at Carnegie Mellon University, anyone can now translate the abstractions of mathematics into beautiful and instructive illustrations.

Jun 2
2020

Connecting the quantum internet

Researchers at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory in Paris have succeeded in implementing a novel “hybrid” entanglement swapping protocol, bringing within reach the connection of disparate platforms in a future, heterogeneously structured, quantum internet.

Jun 2
2020

Animals that can do math understand more language than we think

It is often thought that humans are different from other animals in some fundamental way that makes us unique, or even more advanced than other species. These claims of human superiority are sometimes used to justify the ways we treat other animals, in the home, the lab or the factory farm.

Jun 2
2020

In a Single Measure, Invariants Capture the Essence of Math Objects

To distinguish between fundamentally different objects, mathematicians turn to invariants that encode the objects’ essential features.

Jun 2
2020

The Future Of AI Is Unsupervised

Vlad Voroninski, CEO of Helm.ai, highlights the rise of unsupervised learning and how the technology is impacting our lives.