Lifeboat News #285

• 8th World Aging & Rejuvenation Conference
• Free Software Foundation
• IMSU Longevity 2026
• Space Renaissance International IV World Congress
• Center for Existential Safety
• Planetary Societal Engineering: Education Program
• Videos
• Papers
• Books
• Blog
• Growing Membership

8th World Aging & Rejuvenation Conference

The 8th World Aging & Rejuvenation Conference will be held June 18–19 in Prague, Czech Republic.
 
Our Barry L. Bentley will be giving a keynote.
 
Learn more at https://aging-geriatrics.com

Free Software Foundation

Our Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and a pioneer of the modern free software movement, will be speaking at The University of Texas at Austin on April 15.
 
Richard has spent decades advocating for software that respects users’ freedom to run, study, modify, and share the programs they use. His work has shaped major initiatives including the GNU Project and has had a lasting impact on computing, digital rights, and technology policy.
 
This special lecture offers a rare opportunity to hear from one of the most influential and provocative figures in computing.
 
Learn more at https://apps.cs.utexas.edu/calendar/rooms/327918

IMSU Longevity 2026

IMSU Longevity 2026 will be held June 24–25 at Imo State University, Nigeria.
 
Our Ojochogwu Abdul, Aubrey de Grey, Ósìnàkáchì Ákùmà Kálù, Stephen Oguji, Brenda Ramokopelwa, and Natasha Vita-More will be speaking/participating.
 
Learn more at https://imsulongevity.taffds.org

Space Renaissance International IV World Congress

The Space Renaissance International IV World Congress will be held June 30–July 4 in Cyberspace.
 
Our Alfred Anzaldua, Isaac Arthur, Adriano V. Autino, Gary Barnhard, Veronica Chiaravalli, Bernard Foing, Corrinne Graham, Werner Grandl, Michelle Hanlon, Susan Jewell, Robert Katz, Tom Matula, Haroon Oqab, Joe Pelton, Amalie Sinclair, Madhu Thangavelu, Rick Tumlinson, Paul Werbos, Frank White, Steve Wolfe, and Bob Zubrin will be speaking/participating.

Center for Existential Safety

Learn about the Center for Existential Safety, founded by our James Norris at https://existentialsafety.org
 
We need to act now to ensure our existential safety. Everyone can and should do their part. Collectively, we can increase the odds that we not only survive, but thrive. We all deserve a safe and bright future.

Planetary Societal Engineering: Education Program

Why do most societal reforms fail? They often fail because they never reach the minimum threshold required for systemic stability. Societies are complex adaptive systems; if the reform is not structural, the system either absorbs or expels it. Our Sylvain Rochon is launching a program designed to address this problem directly: Planetary Societal Engineering.
 
He will be delivering this online course in collaboration with IMIX, leveraging the power of AI, strategic foresight processes, and IMIX’s proprietary scientific method.
 
The online course culminates with a capstone project: A Blueprint for Systemic Stability. The strongest project will receive seed funding of $1,800 USD ($32,500 MXN) to initiate real-world implementation.
 
Learn more at https://www.ceimix.com/en/product-page/...netarias

Videos

Watch “Colonizing Brown Dwarfs — Life Around Failed Stars” by our Isaac Arthur at https://youtu.be/hDJpPf7uFoA
 
Watch “U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Ariel Feinerman – Improved Audio” where our Ariel Feinerman explains the core framework of regenerative medicine and discusses its current organizational and investment challenges at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99tuIc8rZgo

Papers

Read “The AI Mirror” by our Ahmed Bouzid at https://lifeboat.com/pdfs/the.ai.mirror.pdf
 
The deeper lesson of this moment is not that we have created machines that can think, but that we are beginning to understand thinking itself as something that can arise from connection. If that insight is taken seriously, it does not end with technology. It extends to how we organize ourselves, how we make decisions, and how we imagine the future of collective life.
 
The question is whether we are willing to follow that insight to its logical conclusion, or whether we will remain, even now we seem to be sliding into catastrophe, more committed to preserving our hierarchies than to reimagining them.
 
Read “All you need for Intelligence is… What?: Not attention or scaling or RAG or whatever, but Theory” by our Peter Voss at https://petervoss.substack.com/p/all-yo...gence-is
 
Read “Healthy Life Extension: Geroscience’s north star” by our David Barzilai at https://www.aging-us.com/article/206359/text
 
Read “Human creativity and critical thinking will always have a place in the future, so long as we actively maintain those abilities and recognize our distinct advantages over AI” by our Jeremy Pesner at https://imaginingthedigitalfuture.org/w...0.26.pdf
 
Read “A Necessary Precaution: Anticipatory Governance and the Case for a United Nations Special Session on Artificial General Intelligence” by our Lydia Allison Fucsko at https://lifeboat.com/pdfs/a.necessary.p....agi.pdf
 
Read “Neurite Outgrowth and Gene Expression Profile Correlate with Efficacy of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Dopamine Neuron Grafts”, coauthored by our Jeanne F. Loring at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10398740
 
Read “A Non-Incinerator Method for Making Storable Syngas via Induction-Heated Municipal Waste Gasification” by our H. Keith Henson at https://lifeboat.com/pdfs/syngas.storage.paper.pdf
 
Read the free “Symphony for a Conscious Cosmos: A Visionary Contribution to the Next Era of Human Evolution” by our Marco Santini and also Gemini at https://lifeboat.com/pdfs/symphony.for....smos.pdf
 
Read “The Perils of Meta-Reasoning AIs” by our Ahmed Bouzid at https://lifeboat.com/pdfs/the.perils.of....ais.pdf
 
Read “Review of David Horton, Hammering on the Mind’s Door” by our Lydia Allison Fucsko at https://lifeboat.com/pdfs/https://lifeb...csko.pdf
 
Read “TREM2 in neurodegeneration and diseases”, coauthored by our Domenico Pratico at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380&...;03505-7
 
Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) is a cell surface transmembrane receptor from the TREM receptor family, predominantly expressed on the microglia in the central nervous system (CNS).
 
TREM2-initiated signaling plays a crucial role in regulating neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration, particularly in the context of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), through the activation of downstream signaling pathways and transcriptional regulation of relevant genes.

Books

Read “100 Years to Extinction: The Tyranny of Technology and the Fight for a Better Future” by our Peter R. Solomon at https://amzn.to/4ccJurG
 
Read “AIlien Minds: Advice about (and for) our natural, AI & hybrid heirs”, by our David Brin at https://amzn.to/3NZdIVO
 
Read “Gold Dust” by our Catherine Asaro at https://amzn.to/3O6erog
 
The worlds of three interstellar civilizations vie for honors in the Olympics. The more populous worlds have always dominated the Games. The team from Raylicon, a dying world of scorching temperatures, has never won honors.
 
But Mason, the coach for the Raylicon track and field team, makes a startling discovery: in the Undercity, a place where crushing poverty exists alongside a culture of dramatic beauty, a group of spectacular runners has existed for millennia.
 
The Dust Knights are the best of those marvels. With the help of Major Bhajaan, an Undercity native, Mason recruits the Knights. The Undercity faces a civilization they’ve never trusted, one that sees them as barely even human. Now, they must all learn to work together.
 
Read “Molecular Manufacturing: The Future of Nanomedicine”, edited by our Frank Boehm at https://amzn.to/4cbsphM
 
Read “Transaction Denied: Big Finance’s Power to Punish Speech”, by our Rainey Reitman at https://amzn.to/4sGeq9K

Blog

Recent interesting blog posts include:
 
“A Cancer Treatment That Does More Than Scientists Thought” by Nicholi Avery at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/04/a-can...-thought
 
“A new way to communicate with neurons using focused ultrasound stimulation” by Shubham Ghosh Roy at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/a-new...mulation
 
“A Parasite Carried by Billions Has a Secret Life Inside the Brain” by Shubham Ghosh Roy at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/a-par...he-brain
 
“A Startup Has Been Quietly Pitching Cloned Human Bodies to Transfer Your Brain Into” by Arthur Brown at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/a-sta...ain-into
 
“A Virus Designed in the Lab Could Help Defeat Antibiotic Resistance” by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/a-vir...sistance
 
“The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness” by Cecile G. Tamura at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/the-a...iousness
 
“Age Reversal 2026: Why Getting Old Will Soon Be Optional” by Montie Adkins at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/age-r...optional
 
“Aging, Cancer, And Rejuvenation (Featuring Drs. Michael Levin And Leo Pio-Lopez)” by Mike Lustgarten at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/aging...io-lopez
 
“Artificial intelligence in medicine: How it works, how it fails” by Kelvin Dafiaghor at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/artif...it-fails
 
“Astronomers shocked by how these giant exoplanets formed” by Natalie Chan at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/astro...s-formed
 
“Atom-sized gates could transform DNA sequencing and neuromorphic computing” by Dan Breeden at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/atom-...omputing
 
“Aubrey de Grey — How close are we to robust mouse rejuvenation, and why does that matter?” by Adam Ford at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/aubre...t-matter
 
“Behavioral scientists found that people without children develop a relationship to mortality that is psychologically distinct. Without biological continuation” by The Neuro-Network at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/behav...inuation
 
“CERN Discovers New Particle After Upgrading Large Hadron Collider” by Paul Battista at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/cern-...collider
 
“Eyal Aharoni — Breaking the Moral Turing Test” by Adam Ford at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/eyal-...ing-test
 
“How Intelligent People Deal with Stupid People — Schopenhauer” by Chris Smedley at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/how-i...penhauer
 
“How to design a space station: Meet the Seattle company that’s helping define the look of the final frontier” by Genevieve Klien at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/how-t...frontier
 
“Hybrid Cosmopsychism: A Bold New Answer to the Mystery of Consciousness” by Dan Breeden at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/hybri...iousness
 
“Infant Heart Surgery Mends Brain Networks Too” by The Neuro-Network at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/infan...orks-too
 
“Inside voice: what can our thoughts reveal about the nature of consciousness?” by The Neuro-Network at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/insid...iousness
 
“Is Big Tech Teaching Machines To Be Conscious? Google Mind’s Move To Hire A Philosopher Raises Eyebrows” by Brent Ellman at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/04/is-bi...eyebrows
 
“Lunar regolith simulant used to grow chickpeas” by Laurence Tognetti at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/lunar...hickpeas
 
“MGem: AAV, from almost a virus to an awesome vector—or is it?” by Logan Thrasher Collins at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/mgem-...or-is-it
 
“Microscopic robots that sense, think, act, and compute” by Logan Thrasher Collins at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/micro...-compute
 
“MIT Scientists Shrink Terahertz Light To Reveal Hidden Quantum ‘Jiggles’” by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/mit-s...-jiggles
 
“New sun-powered device extracts lithium while desalinating seawater” by Genevieve Klien at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/new-s...seawater
 
“Nvidia’s Jensen Huang warns DeepSeek running on Huawei chips would be ‘horrible outcome’ for America” by Cecile G. Tamura at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/04/nvidi...-america
 
“Perovskite crystals can host qubits, challenging long-held assumptions” by Shailesh Prasad at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/perov...umptions
 
“Physicists achieve near-zero friction on macroscopic scales” by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/physi...c-scales
 
“Q-Day: Catastrophic For Businesses Ignoring Quantum-Resistant Encryption” by Chuck Brooks at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/q-day...cryption
 
“Researchers Build High-Dimensional Quantum Logic Gate” by Shubham Ghosh Roy at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/resea...gic-gate
 
“Scientists De-Aged Cells—And Found the Key to Turning Back the Clock, New Research Suggests” by Quinn Sena at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/scien...suggests
 
“Scientists Discover Molecular ‘Switch’ That Could Stop Breast Cancer From Spreading” by Quinn Sena at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/scien...preading
 
“Scientists find a new therapeutic target present on up to half of all tumors” by Natalie Chan at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/04/scien...l-tumors
 
“Six-state clock physics in an atomically thin antiferromagnet” by Michael LaTorra at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/six-s...romagnet
 
“Space Station Microbes Harvest Metals from Meteorites” by Laurence Tognetti at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/space...teorites
 
“Study on DNA-water interactions in drug binding recognized in prestigious journal collection” by Yuta Aoki at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/study...llection
 
“‘Thermodynamic computer’ can mimic AI neural networks — using orders of magnitude less energy to generate images” by Jose Ruben Rodriguez Fuentes at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/therm...e-images
 
“These Billionaires Plan To Bring Self-Driving Tech To Everything That Moves” by Kelvin Dafiaghor at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/these...at-moves
 
“Ultrafast quantum chemistry engine could speed up the development of new medicines and materials” by Yuta Aoki at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/02/ultra...aterials
 
“Why Intelligent People Disappear From Society — Carl Jung” by Chris Smedley at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/why-i...arl-jung
 
“Your Cells Can ‘Remember’—Meaning Your Entire Body Could Be Conscious, Some Researchers Suggest” by Genevieve Klien at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2026/03/your-...-suggest