Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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MANILA, Philippines — Now in its 8th year, Space Apps is an international hackathon for coders, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, technologists, and others in cities around the world, where teams engage with NASA’s free and open data to address real-world problems on Earth and in space. Space Apps 2018 included over 18,000 participants at more than 200 events in 75 countries.

Since its inception in 2012, NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge has become the world’s largest global hackathon, engaging thousands of citizens across the globe to use NASA’s open data to build innovative solutions to challenges we face on Earth and in space.

2018 hackathon at Huntsville, AL

The NASA International Space Apps Challenge (or Space Apps) is an international hackathon that will take place over a 48-hour period in cities around the globe between October 18 and 20, 2019. The event embraces collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing open-source solutions to challenges we currently face on Earth and in space.

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According to condensed matter physics predictions, at a high enough pressure, hydrogen should dissociate and transform into an atomic metal. However, the exact pressure range at which this occurs has not yet been ascertained, and the process through which hydrogen becomes a metal is still somewhat unclear.

In a recent study, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry demonstrated that at a pressure of 350–360 GPa and at temperatures below 200K, molecular starts to conduct and becomes semimetallic. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, provides interesting new insight about the transition of hydrogen at high pressures, unveiling some of the properties it acquires.

“Typically, metallic hydrogen is considered to be atomic hydrogen—a crystal built from protons after dissociation of the molecules,” Mikhail Eremets, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “However, hydrogen can also transform into a metal in the molecular state—in this case, electronic bands of molecular hydrogen crystal broaden and eventually overlap so that the band gap closes, free electrons and holes appear—this is metallic state.”

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Using a new time-based method to control light from an ultrafast laser, researchers have developed a nanoscale 3D printing technique that can fabricate tiny structures 1000 times faster than conventional two-photon lithography (TPL) techniques, without sacrificing resolution.

Despite the high throughput, the new parallelized technique—known as femtosecond projection TPL (FP-TPL)—produces depth resolution of 175 nanometers, which is better than established methods and can fabricate structures with 90-degree overhangs that can’t currently be made. The technique could lead to manufacturing-scale production of bioscaffolds, flexible electronics, electrochemical interfaces, micro-optics, mechanical and optical metamaterials, and other functional micro- and nanostructures.

The work, reported Oct. 3 in the journal Science, was done by researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Sourabh Saha, the paper’s lead and corresponding author, is now an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Space bacteria — they’re tiny, invisible, and potentially harmful; even if no one is sure that they actually exist. But for most of the Space Age, NASA and other agencies have treated the possibility of pathogens from space carefully, both during our exploration of other worlds and because of the havoc they could conceivably wreak on Earth. Nowadays, though, there’s a new factor: Elon Musk.

The billionaire entrepreneur dreams of settling thousands of humans on the planet Mars and, oh yeah, he happens to own a rocket company that is slowly building the capability to do so. Musk and other leaders in the commercial space industry are looking at opening up previously unexplored possibilities — asteroid mining, private space stations, package delivery to the moon’s surface. Laudable as these goals are, they are also forcing governments around the world to rethink their space regulations and consider whether they’re up to these impending challenges.

As ever more players enter the space arena it’s time to make sure that everybody is following the best planetary protection practices. Exploring the universe should happen for the benefit of all, including future generations.

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A new study is the first to report evidence that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin may lessen the adverse effects of air pollution exposure on lung function. The team of researchers from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, Harvard Chan School of Public Health, Boston University School of Medicine published their findings in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The researchers analyzed a subset of data collected from a cohort of 2,280 male veterans from the greater Boston area who were given tests to determine their lung function. The average age of participants was 73 years. The researchers examined the relationship between test results, self-reported NSAID use, and ambient particulate matter (PM) and black carbon in the month preceding the test, while accounting for a variety of factors, including the health status of the subject and whether or not he was a smoker. They found that the use of any NSAID nearly halved of the effect of PM on lung function, with the association consistent across all four weekly air pollution measurements from same-day to 28 days prior to the lung function test.

Because most of the people in the study cohort who took NSAIDs used aspirin, the researchers say the modifying effect they observed was mainly from aspirin, but add that effects of non-aspirin NSAIDs are worthy of further exploration. While the mechanism is unknown, the researchers speculate that NSAIDs mitigate inflammation brought about by air pollution.

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A year old, and this video is titled with the “I-word”. But a very interesting talk.

It’s not every day that I get to post a video where I feel like I’m involved with something that may seriously improve and extend lives. I’m so grateful that somehow, I was brought into this process.

The ForbiddenKnowledgeTV newsletter and website attract a large number of physicians and health-practitioner subscribers and it’s been a real joy to make friends with the doctors on my list over the years. One leading physician who first contacted me, way back in August 2011 was Dr. Ron Klatz, Founder-President of the American Academy of Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (A4M).

Last week, he asked me to edit this video of the first round table discussion of the American Association of Stem Cell Physicians, which had been live-streamed on August 11th and which he’d helped to moderate. It was shot completely unstaged and it was very rough-and-tumble and it needed a little cleaning-up. I said sure, without fully realizing what a treat I was in for, with this incredibly dynamic and inspiring group of scientists and physicians; who don’t normally speak to each other – let alone on camera – in a totally live, unscripted setting!

In 1996, Dr. Klatz and the A4M predicted that medical advancements were on pace to achieve life expectancies of 120 years or more, or what they call “Practical Immortality” by 2029. With the latest developments in stem cell technology and nutritional medicine, among others, this prediction is well on track.

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An international team of researchers recently placed an entire molecule into a state of quantum superposition. This huge breakthrough represents the largest object to ever be observed in such a state – essentially occupying two places at once. And it may just be the eureka moment that defines our species’ far-future technology.

Quantum physics is about as close to a faith-based field of scientific study as there is. It’s not our fault, the universe is infinite and complex and we’ve been here for a relatively short amount of time. It’s excusable that we still don’t understand all the rules and, in lieu of a blueprint, we’re forced to come up with theories to explain the things we don’t know.

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