Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: education – Page 120

The landmass that was swallowed by a tsunami more than 8200 years ago is called Doggerland, and now a team of archaeologists inspecting the area along the Dutch coastline has gathered enough data to piece together what Doggerland looked it.

According to a report from The Guardian, more than 200 objects from Doggerland were discovered by archaeologists, and those objects included things such as a deer bone that had an arrowhead embedded in it, fossils, mammoth molars, and a skull fragment from a young Neanderthal.

Dr. Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof, assistant curator of at the National Museum of Antiquities prehistory department in Leiden said, “We have a wonderful community of amateur archaeologists who almost daily walk these beaches and look for the fossils and artefacts, and we work with them to analyse and study them.”

Read more | >

Private sector solutions to major social problems — stephanie smith — director, humanitarian & development, mastercard.

Stephanie Smith is a Director, in the Humanitarian & Development group, at Mastercard (https://www.mastercard.us), the American multinational financial services corporation.

Stephanie is responsible for operations of the Humanitarian & Development group at Mastercard, and ensuring the team’s efficient, consistent, and effective delivery against their vision to provide digital tools and access for education, health, commerce, and other critical services for marginalized individuals and communities. The Humanitarian & Development group is focused on driving commercially sustainable social impact in collaboration with governments, NGOs, and other private sector companies.

After graduating from Oxford University, Stephanie began her professional career at a rapidly growing technology company, Applied Predictive Technologies / APT (acquired by Mastercard) delivering analytics software and consulting engagements to Fortune 500s.

Stephanie is particularly passionate about diversity & inclusion and solving social problems, and has experience delivering projects and technologies that drive a lasting social impact.

Continue reading “Stephanie Smith — Director, Humanitarian & Development, Mastercard” | >

Inspiration4 is getting its own documentary. Netflix said Tuesday it would be releasing a five-part series on the mission, its first documentary to cover an event “in near real-time,” in five parts in September.

“Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space” will follow the first all-civilian Inspiration4 crew as they prepare for and undergo a three-day flight to low Earth orbit. The private flight is being funded by — surprise! — a billionaire: Jared Isaacman, the CEO and founder of payment processor Shift4 Payments. He will be joined by Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and a pediatric bone cancer survivor; Christopher Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin engineer and Air Force veteran; and professor of geoscience Sian Proctor.

Isaacman has committed to donating $100 million to St. Jude’s out of his own funds, in addition to the public donation drive that was used to select Sian Proctor’s seat. As of March, the donation drive raised an additional $13 million for the children’s hospital.

Read more | >

The image shows an elongated galaxy sandwiched, and stretched, between two galaxies. A long tail is visible in the galaxy on the right in this image: Called a “tidal tail,” this can occur when stars and gases are “stripped” from the outside arms of galaxies during a merger, according to Cosmos.

Tweet may have been deleted

The Hubble Space Telescope — the size of a large school bus — is over 30 years old. The solar-powered telescope takes detailed images of far-off cosmic objects, like Arp 195, yet the legendary instrument is wearing down with age, most recently exemplified by a computer problem that sent Hubble offline for weeks. Still, NASA expects “Hubble will last for many more years and will continue making groundbreaking observations, working in tandem with other space observatories including the James Webb Space Telescope to further our knowledge of the cosmos.”

Read more | >

Google uses artificial intelligence technology to find millions of buildings on the satellite map that were previously difficult to locate. These can now be used for humanitarian aid or other purposes. Google utilized its building detection model (Continental-Scale Building Detection from High Resolution Satellite Imagery) to create an Open Buildings dataset, containing locations and footprints of 516 million buildings with coverage across most African continent countries.

In this data set, there are millions of buildings that have not been discovered in the past. These newly-discovered building materials will help the outside world understand African populations and where they live, facilitating health care services such as education or vaccination to their communities.

Google’s team of developers built a training set for their building detection model by manually labeling 1.75 million buildings in 100k images to make the most accurate identification possible, even when dealing with rural or urban environments that have vastly different properties and features. The need to identify what kind of dwelling place is being captured was especially difficult during scoping missions in remote areas where natural landmarks were plentiful. At the same time, dense surroundings made it hard to differentiate between multiple structures on an aerial image at once.

Read more | >

Making Power Wheelchair Technologies “Smarter” — Barry Dean, CEO, LUCI

Barry Dean is an award-winning songwriter turned smart wheelchair technology company founder.

As CEO of LUCI (https://luci.com/), a company re-imagining mobility for power wheelchairs, Barry sets the strategic vision and leads the company towards its goal of providing security, stability and connectivity for power wheelchairs. He founded the company with his brother, Jered, in 2017 with hopes of building a smarter solution for his daughter Katherine and all power wheelchair riders.

Barry has written multiple No. 1 singles including “Pontoon” (Little Big Town), “Day Drinking” (Little Big Town), ” Somebody’s Daughter” (Tenille Townes), and “Think a Little Less” (Michael Ray), along with a Top 40 hit with “Girls Chase Boys” (Ingrid Michaelson). He has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Song on Tim McGraw’s “Diamond Rings and Old Barstools.”

Barry is a founding writer at Creative Nation Music, Recording Academy (GRAMMY) Nashville Chapter Governor, and has previously served two terms as a board member of the Nashville Songwriters Association International. Prior to becoming a songwriter, he led market strategy and product development for a leading education technology company.

Continue reading “Barry Dean, CEO, LUCI — Making Power Wheelchairs Smarter” | >

Improving Quality Of Life & Health, For Hundreds Of Millions Globally, Suffering Food Allergies & Intolerances — Lisa Gable, Chief Executive Officer, Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE)

Lisa Gable is the Chief Executive Officer, of Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE — https://www.foodallergy.org), an organization with a mission to improve the quality of life and the health of 85 million Americans with food allergies and food intolerances, including 32 million of those are at risk for life-threatening anaphylaxis, and to provide them hope through the promise of new treatments. To date FARE has turned over $100 million in donor gifts into ground-breaking research and has provided a voice for the community, advocating on its behalf and offering hope for a better tomorrow.

Ms. Gable has served four U.S. presidents and two governors, counseled Fortune 500 CEOs, and represented global public-private partnerships and non-profits with an end goal of moving organizations to higher levels of performance.

As the former President of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, Ms. Gable created and led a coalition of food and beverage industry corporations and public health and government agencies, resulting in the reduction of 6.4 trillion calories from the American diet.

Ms Gable was appointed the first female U.S. Commissioner General to the 2005 Aichi World EXPO, holding the personal rank of Ambassador, served as a U.S. Delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and served both in the Reagan White House and Defense Department, serving as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chief of Staff.

Continue reading “Lisa Gable — Chief Executive Officer — Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE)” | >

Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) provide bidirectional communication between the brain and output devices that translate user intent into function. Among the different brain imaging techniques used to operate BCIs, electroencephalography (EEG) constitutes the preferred method of choice, owing to its relative low cost, ease of use, high temporal resolution, and noninvasiveness. In recent years, significant progress in wearable technologies and computational intelligence has greatly enhanced the performance and capabilities of EEG-based BCIs (eBCIs) and propelled their migration out of the laboratory and into real-world environments. This rapid translation constitutes a paradigm shift in human–machine interaction that will deeply transform different industries in the near future, including healthcare and wellbeing, entertainment, security, education, and marketing. In this contribution, the state-of-the-art in wearable biosensing is reviewed, focusing on the development of novel electrode interfaces for long term and noninvasive EEG monitoring. Commercially available EEG platforms are surveyed, and a comparative analysis is presented based on the benefits and limitations they provide for eBCI development. Emerging applications in neuroscientific research and future trends related to the widespread implementation of eBCIs for medical and nonmedical uses are discussed. Finally, a commentary on the ethical, social, and legal concerns associated with this increasingly ubiquitous technology is provided, as well as general recommendations to address key issues related to mainstream consumer adoption.

Read more | >