Lifeboat Foundation

Credit scores already control our finances. With personal data being increasingly trawled, our politics and our friendships will be next.

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Researchers from the Beijing-based technology firm trained its text-to-speech synthesis system on more than 800 hours of audio, taken from around 2,400 different speakers.

To work at its best, Deep Voice requires 100 five-second sections of sound but it can trick a voice recognition system 95 per cent of the time with just ten five-second samples.

Continue reading “Baidu’s creepy new AI can accurately mimic your voice” »

On the run up to Undoing Aging 2018, Nicola Bagalà from LEAF did an interview to learn a bit more about our foundation and the story of our involvement in life extension.

As our readers probably already know, from March 15 to March 17 this year, the Undoing Aging 2018 Conference will be held at the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany. The event is intended to bring together scientists working on repair-based therapies for aging as well as to give life sciences students—and anyone else who may be interested, really—an occasion to deepen their understanding of the current state of rejuvenation research.

Organised by the Forever Healthy Foundation and the SENS Research Foundation, the conference will feature eminent researchers among its many speakers, such as the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Dr. Anthony Atala; Dr. Kristen Fortney, who is an expert on computational drug discovery and aging biomarkers; Dr. Michael West, co-CEO of BioTime and founder of Geron Corporation; Dr. James Kirkland, a world-class expert on cellular senescence; and Dr. Vera Gorbunova, a pioneer of the comparative biology approach to the study of aging and co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center. In addition to its scientific, educational, and networking value, UA2018 will no doubt greatly contribute to the popularisation of this area of research and help spread awareness, both about the problem represented by age-related diseases and the great opportunity we have to finally bring aging under comprehensive medical control within a relatively short time frame.

Continue reading “Undoing Aging With Michael Greve” »

The Pentagon is hoping to tap into the incredible survival techniques of some of nature’s hardiest creatures to ‘slow biological time’ on the battlefield.

DARPA’s new program, dubbed Biostasis, aims to develop ways to buy extra time for wounded soldiers between the moment of injury and first medical treatment.

Continue reading “DARPA’s new program is looking for ways to ‘slow biological time’” »

A burger-flipping robot named Flippy is now cooking up hamburgers at a fast food restaurant called Caliburger.

A robot named Flippy is now in the kitchen at a fast food restaurant called CaliBurger in Pasadena. We were there for a preview event where Flippy made us some lunch.

Follow KTLA Tech Reporter Rich DeMuro on Facebook or Twitter for cool apps, tech tricks & tips!

Continue reading “Flippy the Burger Flipping Robot Is Now Cooking at the CaliBurger Fast Food Chain” »

An Australian research team are considering the benefits of “trying to land” an asteroid on earth for mining possibilities.

State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) and Tencent Research surveyed 8.000 respondents on their attitudes toward AI as part of CCTV’s China Economic Life Survey. The results show that 76.3 per cent see certain forms of AI as a threat to their privacy, even as they believe that AI holds much development potential and will permeate different industries. About half of the respondents said that they believe AI is already affecting their work life, while about a third see AI as a threat to their jobs.

A China Central Television and Tencent Research survey found that three in four respondents are worried about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to their privacy.

A research team composed of scientists from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and IBM Research has produced a new synthetic molecule that can target and kill five multidrug-resistant bacteria. This synthetic polymer was found to be non-toxic and could enable entirely new classes of therapeutics to address the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

The synthetic molecules are called guanidinium-functionalized polycarbonates and were found to be both biodegradable and non-toxic to human cells. Essentially, the positively-charged synthetic polymer enters a living body and binds specifically to certain bacteria cells by homing in on a microbial membrane’s related negative charge. Once attached to the bacteria, the polymer crosses the cell membrane and triggers the solidification of proteins and DNA in the cell, killing the bacteria.

Intelligent Machines

The elderly may toss their walkers for this robotic suit.

An early prototype of a soft exoskeleton that helps you walk could prove useful for the military and the aging population.

Continue reading “In the near future, our grandparents might be sprightly with this robotic suit” »