Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists seem to be close to creating a “one-and-done” vaccine that can protect against any strain of a virus with just one shot.

In a press release from the University of California — Riverside, one of the researchers behind the new RNA vaccine, Rong Hai, explained why he and his colleagues are so excited about their experimental — and allegedly universal — shot.

“What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said Hai, a virologist and coauthor of a new paper on the vaccine candidate in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people.”

Scientists have demonstrated that facial recognition technology can predict a person’s political orientation with a surprising level of accuracy.

Researchers have demonstrated that facial recognition technology can predict political orientation from neutral expressions with notable accuracy, posing significant privacy concerns. This finding suggests our faces may reveal more personal information than previously understood.

Many of these are freely available to read online!

We lost a really great human today – philosopher Daniel C. Dennett.

Dan was a kind, honest, generous guy. He had a brilliant mind – insightful, critical, with an encyclopedic knowledge of pithy analogies and clinical examples (“intuition pumps” he called them), as well as who came up with them. And despite all of his experience and accomplishments, he always had a kind of childish excitement about new ideas, and new experiments. What he liked best was new insights, wild ideas, honest argument. I first heard the concept of “steel-manning” from him (opposite of “straw man” – putting forth the strongest, best version of an argument you want to critique). He was not interested in cheap wins or rhetorical bullying – he wanted to get to the best version of every story about nature and about ourselves.

I first came into contact with Dan through his books. As a teenager, Brainstorms, Elbow Room, and The Intentional Stance were a fantastic introduction to the most interesting questions, and ways of thinking about them. My dad and I would hit the bookstores every Saturday and there was no way a Dennett book would escape us if a new one came out. We had lots of great times discussing the topics in his books. I eventually was able to ask Dan to sign a few of them for dad, as birthday presents.

From Carnegie Mellon and Meta.

TriForce.

Lossless Acceleration of Long Sequence Generation with Hierarchical Speculative Decoding.

Continue reading “Paper page — TriForce: Lossless Acceleration of Long Sequence Generation with Hierarchical Speculative Decoding” »

Humanoid robots are robots that resemble and act like humans. Typically engineered to imitate authentic human expressions, interactions and movements, these robots are often outfitted with an array of cameras, sensors and, more recently, AI and machine learning technologies.

While more humanoid robots are being introduced into the world and making a positive impact in industries like logistics, manufacturing, healthcare and hospitality, their use is still limited, and development costs are high.

Continue reading “Top 22 Humanoid Robots in Use Right Now” »

T-Cell Priming Immunotherapies To Provide Broad And Robust, Long-Term Immunity — Prof. Dr. Thomas Rademacher, MD, PhD — CEO & Co-Founder, Emergex Vaccines

Professor Dr. Thomas Rademacher, MD, PhD, is CEO and Co-Founder of Emergex (https://emergexvaccines.com/), a company that has developed a novel nanoparticle-based vaccine technology to deliver synthetic viral fragments via microneedles on a skin-adhesive patch. Emergex’s approach works on the principle of priming immune T-cells, opening the door for the development of universal vaccines against highly mutagenic viruses such as the seasonal flu and covid. T-cell priming offers a superior inoculation strategy over traditional vaccines, which rely on the body’s generation of antibodies and fail to keep up with seasonal mutations.

Continue reading “Prof. Dr. Thomas Rademacher, MD, PhD — CEO & Co-Founder, Emergex — T-Cell Priming Immunotherapies” »

Is the Founder and CEO of Torigen Pharmaceuticals (https://www.torigen.com/), a company dedicated to researching and developing novel immuno-oncology products and services specifically for the veterinary market, with a focus on autologous cancer vaccines.

Torigen Pharmaceuticals is a start‑up that resulted from Ashley’s graduate thesis project at the University of Notre Dame, as she was working on her Masters in Engineering, Science and Technology Entrepreneurship in collaboration with Dr. Mark Suckow (https://www.research.uky.edu/staff/ma…). Ashley also received an undergraduate degree in Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology from University of Connecticut.

Elon Musk and Tesla are confident in their advancements in autonomous driving and robot taxis, with Musk emphasizing the importance of trusting his vision and long-term planning for the success of the company.

Questions to inspire discussion.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Vision for Autonomous Driving and Robot Taxis” »