Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON — A new study offers some of the strongest evidence yet of the connection between the marketing of opioids to doctors and the nation’s addiction epidemic.

It found that counties where opioid manufacturers offered a large number of gifts and payments to doctors had more overdose deaths involving the drugs than counties where direct-to-physician marketing was less aggressive.

The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, said the industry spent about $40 million promoting opioid medications to nearly 68,000 doctors from 2013 through 2015, including by paying for meals, trips and consulting fees. And it found that for every three additional payments that companies made to doctors per 100,000 people in a county, overdose deaths involving prescription opioids there a year later were 18 percent higher.

Continue reading “Study Links Drug Maker Gifts for Doctors to More Overdose Deaths” »

A broader range of treatments for this disorder offers patients a more personalized approach.

• By David Blum on January 18, 2019

The problems with cryptocurrencies and their energy usage are well-known. However, Ethereum is planning to address the issue. They’re planning on doing a 99% decrease in the amount of energy used in obtaining new coins.

It would be good for other cryptocurrencies to take this problem just as seriously.

The cryptocurrency is going on an energy diet to compete with more efficient blockchains.

Continue reading “Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Absurd Energy Consumption” »

In December, NASA released a report on looking for “technosignatures” which are indirect pieces of evidence for extra-terrestrial civilizations. It covers a bunch of different scenarios.

NASA’s final report from their Technosignature Workshop is now out and addresses all the ways in which humanity is looking for evidence of extra-terrestrial civilizations.

Continue reading “NASA’s Technosignatures Report is Out. Every Way to Find Evidence of an Intelligent Civilization” »

This is a horrible, horrible idea. The company wants to create a series of satellites that can unfurl, which will reflect light, and that can be manipulated to send messages to earth. The entire collection, comprised of CubeSats, will provide an area of about 50 sq. km. and create a whole new kind of orbital debris.

According to the website, “When phones don’t work, during zero visibility, power cuts and catastrophical emergencies – government can use the display for urgent notifications for the population.” We can ignore the idea of them being seen during zero visibility, but can you imagine a message floating in the sky that you can’t just turn off?

It was bound to happen.

Continue reading “Astronomers aren’t pleased about a Russian plan to put billboards in space” »

A trio of researchers at the University of Wisconsin has discovered that a common soil bacterium produces a chemical that is more effective in repelling mosquitoes than DEET. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, Mayur Kajla, Gregory Barrett-Wilt and Susan Paskewitz describe their search for the chemical made by the bacteria and their hopes for its future.

DEET has been the leading mosquito repellent since the late 1940s and multiple studies have shown it to be safe to use—still, some believe its synthetic nature suggests it might be causing harm. Because of that, scientists have continued to look for a natural repellent. In this new effort, the researchers report that they have found a naturally occurring chemical that is even more repellent than DEET, though it will have to undergo extensive study to see if it is safe to use.

Continue reading “Soil bacteria found to produce mosquito repelling chemical stronger than DEET” »

Wants to address risks with $161m augmentation project.

Biological life extension may hit limits. “Clearly, there are biological reasons for each species’ average lifespan, so why would anyone think that people could live for much longer than we do now?” Perhaps new breakthroughs will nudge lifespans upwards, but maybe these scientists are correct. This is why I still work on artificial death (non biological uploading to MVT awareness engines). Even if average ages go up many folks will still become terminally ill, and apart from MVT artificial death (second best to life) they will only have expensive cryogenics or doubtful religious faith as alternatives.

The average age of people over 110 has not increased for nearly 50 years.

GitHub CEO predicts that automation will bring an end to traditional software programming GitHub, also referred to as the “Facebook for programmers”, is a.