Lifeboat Foundation

How does inanimate matter come to breathe, thrive and reproduce? Explaining this magic means overhauling nature’s laws, says physicist Paul Davies

By Paul Davies

THERE is something special – almost magical – about life. Biophysicist Max Delbrück expressed it eloquently: “The closer one looks at these performances of matter in living organisms, the more impressive the show becomes. The meanest living cell becomes a magic puzzle box full of elaborate and changing molecules.”

Continue reading “Life’s secret ingredient: A radical theory of what makes things alive” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4&feature=share

Among many things I like here, at 112 min David mentions 20 top scientists in the field are working together.

Current medical treatment boils down to six words: Have disease, take pill, kill something. But physician Siddhartha Mukherjee points to a future of medicine that will transform the way we heal.

I have heard the term Sh… Bricks, but never thought I would live the day to hear it literally. Waste is an issue, and a growing global population will create more waste, and it needs to be addressed. The supply of waste is endless. People who find innovatiive ways to use it as a raw material will prosper Once sewage is drained of water, treated, and dried – what the heck do you do with it? Well, some of it ends up as fertiliser, but a massive 30 percent of our poop leftovers is sent to landfill to rot, or just sits in storage. What a waste.

Especially when, according to researchers from Australia’s RMIT University, using these ‘biosolids’ in bricks could be a surprisingly effective way of repurposing all that former sludge.

The surprise discovery of ancient crustaceans and a tardigrade emerged from a rare mission to drill into a lake sealed off by a kilometre of ice.

We could send messages by vibrating the structure of the vacuum of empty space — but they could only be read by a powerful laser that rips the vacuum apart.

Wise reasoning does not necessarily require uniform emotional control or suppression, says Igor Grossmann, professor of psychology at Waterloo and lead author of the new study. Instead, wise reasoning can also benefit from a rich and balanced emotional life.

A person’s ability to reason wisely about a challenging situation may improve when they also experience diverse yet balanced emotions, say researchers from the University of Waterloo.

The finding clarifies millennia of philosophical and psychological thinking that debates how wisdom is related to the effective management of emotionally charged experiences.

Continue reading “In test of wisdom, new research favours Yoda over Spock” »

Exponentials at play (and in future contact lenses): increasingly smaller, cheaper & more powerful computation, sensors & cameras will open a realm of possibilities… #xMed

Scientists from The University of Manchester have found a way to trick the eye into thinking the world is brighter than it actually is.