Lifeboat Foundation

It’s crazy to think that we still don’t quite understand the mechanism behind one of the most common medical interventions — general anaesthetic.

But researchers in Australia just got a step closer by discovering that one of the most commonly used anaesthetic drugs doesn’t just put us to sleep; it also disrupts communication between brain cells.

The team investigated the drug propofol, a super-popular option for surgeries worldwide. A potent sedative, the drug is thought to put us to sleep through its effect on the GABA neurotransmitter system, the main regulator of our sleep-and-wake cycles in the brain.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Changed Our Understanding of How Anaesthesia Messes With The Brain” »

Using stem cells, scientists were able to grow working human muscle in the lab. This could have huge applications in both therapy and research.

• Ketones could super-charge the body in a way that’s unlike any other source of fuel.
• San Francisco-based startup HVMN recently launched a drink made of pure ketone ester to harness its performance-boosting qualities.
• The company partnered with Oxford University to leverage $60 million-worth of scientific research on elite athletes.

The nutrition label on a shot-sized bottle of this clear, odorless liquid defies traditional explanation. It contains 120 calories — roughly the equivalent of a hearty slice of bread — yet it has no fat, no protein, and no carbohydrates.

Those calories instead come from ketones, an ingredient that Geoff Woo, cofounder and CEO of San Francisco-based human performance startup called HVMN (pronounced “human”)to call “the fourth macronutrient.”

If you feel like having one of your fundamental beliefs thrown out the window, try this on for size — under the right conditions, you can boil water until it freezes solid.

Yep, as the Cody’s Lab video above demonstrates, after a few minutes of boiling, water starts to form solid ice crystals, and is actually cold to the touch. Crazy, right?

Continue reading “It’s Scientifically Possible to Boil Water Until It Freezes Solid” »

Yara Birkeland will be the world’s first autonomous electric cargo ship. Its costs will be $25 million and is being commissioned by two Norwegian companies.

Lightyear One, a car whose ability to use solar power has been thought of as an impossible feat, just won a Climate Change Innovator Award.

Designed by the Dutch startup Lightyear, the “car that charges itself” can supposedly drive for months without charging and has a 400–800 km range. But is a solar-powered car feasible?

Continue reading “A Fully Solar-Powered Car May Be Hitting The Road by 2019” »

Today at CES, Samsung unveiled DRVLINE, a hardware and software platform that will allow car makers to create customized, technologically advanced autonomous vehicles. Many platforms are an all-or-nothing solution, which forces users to adopt the entire package en masse, without any sort of customization. DRVLINE, however, allows vendors to swap and customize individual components, building the vehicle to their specifications, as well as allowing for rapidly evolving technology.

“Building an autonomous platform requires close collaboration across industry, as one company cannot deliver on this enormous opportunity alone,” said Young Sohn, the president and chief strategy officer of Samsung. “The challenge is simply too big and too complex. Through the DRVLINE platform, we’re inviting the best and brightest from the automotive industry to join us, and help shape the future of the car of tomorrow, today.”

The first DRVLINE initiative will be a camera that features lane departure warnings, adaptive cruise control, collision warning and algorithms that can deliver warnings about pedestrians. The system will start shipping this year.

Continue reading “Samsung introduces autonomous driving platform called DRVLINE” »

Mining asteroids might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but there are companies and a few governments already working hard to make it real. This should not be surprising: compared with the breathtaking bridges that engineers build on Earth, asteroid-mining is a simple, small-scale operation requiring only modest technological advances. If anything is lacking, it is the imagination to see how plausible it has become. I am afraid only that it might not arrive soon enough to address the urgent resource challenges that the world is facing right now.

As an academic researcher, I work with several asteroid -mining companies to address that urgency. I depend on their funding, so there are trade secrets I cannot share. However, I can reveal the core reasons why I am optimistic about the business case for asteroid-mining, and what it will mean for our future.

Many people are skeptical of asteroid-mining because they imagine that the goal is to bring platinum back for sale in Earth’s metals market. Reporters repeatedly cite an irresistible statistic that the platinum in an asteroid can be worth trillions of US dollars, but anyone with an understanding of economics realises that bringing home a huge stash of precious metal would crash the market, reducing the valuation of the asteroid.

Continue reading “Want faster data and a cleaner planet? Start mining asteroids” »

I get this question a lot. Today, I answered it at Quora.com. But, here, in the Lifeboat Blog, I have more bandwidth to elaborate.

Question:

What if I make a typo when sending Bitcoin. The recipient address
may be invalid or it may belong to another individual. —But there
is a third possibility. Couldn’t it be a valid address, but without any
wallet that can receive it? I bet the blockchain catches these errors
—Right? Will I always get my money back?

The short answer: “Don’t worry, it cannot happen. That won’t happen either. Sure, it’s possible. That’s wrong, and You’re screwed!”

Continue reading “What if you Send Bitcoin to a Non-Existent Address?” »