Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 9396

Researchers spot the signatures of nuclear fusion in a table-top-sized setup commonly used to study the plasmas found in stars and other astrophysical objects.

Future nuclear fusion reactors promise the possibility of supplying Earth with an unlimited source of clean energy. Attempts to create these reactors typically involve building-sized contraptions to generate the hot plasma needed to initiate fusion reactions. Now Yue Zhang at the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues have successfully ignited sustained fusion using a setup that is small enough to sit on a table.

Read more

The discovery of a fossilized, 42-million-year-old, four-legged whale is shedding new light on the evolution and geographical spread of these aquatic mammals.

The ancestors of modern whales and dolphins evolved from a small, four-limbed hoofed animal that lived in south Asia around 50 million years ago, during the Eocene. Fossil evidence suggests these aquatic mammalian pioneers reached North America by 41.2 million years ago, swimming from West Africa across the Atlantic. The surprise discovery of a previously unknown, 42.6-million-year-old quadrupedal whale along the coast of Peru has resulted in an important addendum to this story: Ancient whales made South America, and not North America, their first home in the New World. Details of this discovery were published today in Current Biology.

Read more

We recently attended the Undoing Aging Conference in Berlin and had the opportunity to interview Professor Vittorio Sebastiano of Turn. Bio, a company developing partial cellular reprogramming techniques to reverse cellular aging.

As we age, our cells experience changes to their epigenetic markers, and this, in turn, changes gene expression, which is proposed to be a primary reason we age. Recently, there has been considerable interest in resetting these epigenetic markers to reverse cellular aging; induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) creation uses similar techniques.

However, unlike iPSCs, which are totally reprogrammed back to a developmental state and can become any other cell type in the body, the goal of partial cellular reprogramming is to reset the epigenetic aging markers in the cells without erasing cell identity. Researchers believe that exposing aged cells to reprogramming factors only for a very short time may be enough to reset cellular aging without causing the cells to forget their current roles.

Read more

More details on Intel Capital’s new investments in 14 disruptive startups:

Disrupting Artificial Intelligence

Untether AI (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is developing ultra-efficient, high-performance AI chips that will be the foundation for the next wave of innovation in AI. Untether AI has invented an entirely new type of chip architecture that is specifically designed for neural net inference by eliminating bottlenecks in data movement. This unique architecture moves data 1,000 times faster than traditional architectures, resulting in extreme performance and efficiency. The company was founded by a team of scientists, engineers and experienced entrepreneurs who have successfully brought to market more than 1 billion chips.

Read more

Humans could build a permanent settlement on Mars where a new branch of human civilization and social order could be created, said a Mars exploration advocate on Thursday.

“We could easily have humans on Mars in 10 years or faster if it is an international project,” Robert Zubrin, the Mars Society president, told the Global Times in an exclusive interview on Thursday in Beijing.

By then, human beings could go back and forth between Mars and Earth anytime by taking reusable rockets and the technology would be cheaper and cheaper as the spaceflight frequency to Mars increases, he said.

Read more

Following is a transcript of the video.

The truth is, you’re going to die. We all are. That’s because unlike whooping cough or strep throat, death has no cure. But thanks to the latest medical breakthroughs we’re closer than ever to finding one. In fact, some experts predict that we’ll be able to live up to 20% longer over the next 100 years. That means children today might live until they’re 145 years old. And what about immortality? Well, even that’s not out of the question.

History is littered with unusual attempts to defy death. In 1920, for example, a Russian scientist thought he could prolong life by sewing a piece of monkey testicle to a human’s. And even more shockingly, the idea caught on. At least 300 people underwent the procedure. Ouch.

Read more

IBM’s A.I. is so advanced, it can predict when you’re planning to leave your job — even before you know it.

IBM AI can predict with 95 percent accuracy when an employee is about to leave their job. That should not scare workers, but human resource managers in today’s tight labor market that do not understand how to keep employees on a clear career path.

Read more