Lifeboat Foundation

The sun fired off yet another powerful solar flare yesterday (Sept. 10), its seventh in seven days.

The flare, which peaked at 12:06 EDT (1606 GMT), covered North and South America in high-energy light. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) released a statement that warned of strong, high-frequency radio blackouts and navigation-system disruption, potentially lasting up to an hour.

Like the six other flares observed since Sept. 4, this one came from a sunspot known as Active Region (AR) 2673, which is currently turning away from Earth and will soon be out of sight.

Continue reading “Monster Solar Flare Marks 7th Powerful Sun Storm in 7 Days” »

Is big tech a savior or an insidious and dangerous force? A new book argues the latter.

R obots will begin replacing teachers in the classroom within the next ten years as part of a revolution in one-to-one learning, a leading educationalist has predicted.

Sir Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said intelligent machines that adapt to suit the learning styles of individual children will soon render traditional academic teaching all but redundant.

The former Master of Wellington College said programmes currently being developed in Silicon Valley will learn to read the brains and facial expressions of pupils, adapting the method of communication to what works best for them.

Continue reading “‘Inspirational’ robots to begin replacing teachers within 10 years” »

This is not about creating zombies-those so-called living (or walking) dead that are very popular and make a really great theme for TV shows and movies.

Even the Game of Thrones has its version of the living dead with them nasty creatures called White Walkers and Wights.

But then again, that’s only science fiction, isn’t it? Well, maybe not. In fact, this science-fiction plot could soon play out in real life. Read on.

Continue reading “Brain Dead Patients Could Be Brought ‘Back to Life’ in Groundbreaking Stem Cell Therapy” »

A little known biotech company has developed an effective and affordable cardiovascular disease detection device that could save millions of lives and billions of dollars in medical expenses.

Short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, CRISPR is a revolutionary gene editing technique that’s taken the scientific world by storm. Both ultra-precise and easy to access, CRISPR could be the next step towards wiping out genetically inherited diseases and even curing cancers. A host of exciting CRISPR concepts are currently undergoing clinical trials and proof-of-concept experiments, with one particularly controversial focus — human embryos.

A “cut and paste” concept

While there have been rumours coming out of China for years, US scientists have now confirmed that the first attempts to create genetically modified human embryos have been a success. Led by researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, the study used CRISPR to change the DNA of multiple one-cell human embryos. Basically, this allowed them to “snip” out segments of a particular genome and switch them with customised replacements. As in previous cases, the embryos were terminated several days after creation to prevent them from developing into foetuses.

Continue reading “Is Human Genetic Modification Possible?” »

Professor whose study suggested technology can detect whether a person is gay or straight says programs will soon reveal traits such as criminal predisposition.

Using the CRISPR gen-editing technique, a team of researchers altered the flowers on morning glory plants from purple to white. This is the first time it’s been used to change a plant’s color.

The joy and pain of artificial intelligence was already apparent in the 1920s.