Lifeboat Foundation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Sd-zLdC7qc

We live in an age of incredible technological innovation. Innovation that has the potential to do great good or great harm to society. Prince Harry, sat down with one of the most celebrated figures in Artificial Intelligence, Demis Hassabis, British artificial intelligence researcher, neuroscientist, computer game designer, entrepreneur, the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, to discuss the responsibility that big tech firms have to ensure that change to society is positive. The Artificial Intelligence Channel.

The end of the year is approaching, and as we prepare for the celebrations for the new year, what could be better than sitting down with a warm drink and recapping 2017 in the world of rejuvenation biotechnology?

Winter kick-off

Continue reading “Looking Back at 2017: A Year in Rejuvenation Biotechnology” »

Usually, when we’ve referred to Crispr, we’ve really meant Crispr/Cas9—a riboprotein complex composed of a short strand of RNA and an efficient DNA-cutting enzyme. It did for biology and medicine what the Model T did for manufacturing and transportation; democratizing access to a revolutionary technology and disrupting the status quo in the process. Crispr has already been used to treat cancer in humans, and it could be in clinical trials to cure genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia as soon as next year.

But like the Model T, Crispr Classic is somewhat clunky, unreliable, and a bit dangerous. It can’t bind to just any place in the genome. It sometimes cuts in the wrong places. And it has no off-switch. If the Model T was prone to overheating, Crispr Classic is prone to overeating.

Even with these limitations, Crispr Classic will continue to be a workhorse for science in 2018 and beyond. But this year, newer, flashier gene editing tools began rolling off the production line, promising to outshine their first-generation cousin. So if you were just getting your head around Crispr, buckle up. Because gene-editing 2.0 is here.

Virgin Hyperloop One set a test speed record of nearly 240 miles per hour during its third phase of testing at its site in Nevada.

The company also tested a new airlock which helped transition test pods between atmospheric and vacuum conditions during a test campaign which was completed on December 15, 2017.

Continue reading “Virgin Hyperloop One just broke its speed record” »

Automation of the Transportation Industry, expect the big roll out around 2022’ish.

Once thought of as a distant fantasy, autonomous trucks are moving toward commercial reality on Canadian highways as companies look to boost productivity amid a driver shortage and governments seek to reduce deadly crashes.

They are not yet driving themselves out of warehouses and down the highways, but companies of all sizes —including General Motors, Google and Uber — are testing out the technology.

Continue reading “Driverless trucks moving closer to commercial reality on Canadian highways” »

Germany has spent $200 billion over the past two decades to promote cleaner sources of electricity. That enormous investment is now having an unexpected impact — consumers are now actually paid to use power on occasion, as was the case over the weekend.

Power prices plunged below zero for much of Sunday and the early hours of Christmas Day on the EPEX Spot, a large European power trading exchange, the result of low demand, unseasonably warm weather and strong breezes that provided an abundance of wind power on the grid.

Such “negative prices” are not the norm in Germany, but they are far from rare, thanks to the country’s effort to encourage investment in greener forms of power generation. Prices for electricity in Germany have dipped below zero — meaning customers are being paid to consume power — more than 100 times this year alone, according to EPEX Spot.

Continue reading “Power Prices Go Negative in Germany, a Positive for Energy Users” »

https://becomingasuperhuman.com/mother-nature-superhuman-ira-pastor-bioquark/

But the dream of the nanofabricator is not yet dead. What is perhaps even more astonishing than the idea of having such a device—something that could create anything you want—is the potential consequences it could have for society. Suddenly, all you need is light and raw materials. Starvation ceases to be a problem. After all, what is food? Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulphur. Nothing that you won’t find with some dirt, some air, and maybe a little biomass thrown in for efficiency’s sake.

Equally, there’s no need to worry about not having medicine as long as you have the recipe and a nanofabricator. After all, the same elements I listed above could just as easily make insulin, paracetamol, and presumably the superior drugs of the future, too.

What the internet did for information—allowing it to be shared, transmitted, and replicated with ease, instantaneously—the nanofabricator would do for physical objects. Energy will be in plentiful supply from the sun; your Santa Clause machine will be able to create new solar panels and batteries to harness and store this energy whenever it needs to.

Continue reading “How a Machine That Can Make Anything Would Change Everything” »

We still don’t have male birth control.