Lifeboat Foundation

While many have claimed to fix politics, very few even came close. Centuries have come and gone with their empires and ideals. Despite the many attempts to reform and improve the political landscape, the issues at hand remain largely unchanged. Corruption, inequality, and moral decay continue to plague governments around the world. It is clear that simply implementing new systems or electing the same leaders is not enough to address these longstanding issues. To truly reform and reverse the decay we see will need more. It will take a multifaceted approach that involves both systemic changes and individual actions, and some radical new ideas.

Many people find themselves today in countries that are repeating history. Inflation that only taxes the working class. Scandals from politicians that care not for the country nor the people they claim to represent. Lies of taxing the wealthy while continuing to burden all others with the shackles of debt. Fear and alarm echoed through every channel of state media that does nothing but leave the public despondent and hopeless about their future. Constant pandering and pilfering by people who see the nation they reside in as nothing but a sinking ship to be looted and left.

Fixing political systems has been a problem prominent in my mind for a long time. With the current order and systems of governance collapsing globally many have begun to ponder this as well. Unfortunately for the simple-minded, I foresee the rise of autocracy, be it communism, socialism, republicanism, or fascism. Such a thing cannot be averted and in fact, many people I doubt would even want it to be. The world has cried out far too long for order, and sooner or later every society will heed that call. Proof enough of this observation would be the nationalist movements that have gained widespread traction in 2022. While I won’t name them such parties and movements have spawned in virtually every western nation. The reason for this is painfully simple: democracy has failed in many people’s lives. It has failed to increase wages or lower housing costs, or even provide reasonable public services.

The largest moon of Saturn is an unique habitat in our Solar System. It appears to be a world different from our own, with its methane-filled lakes, freezing volcanoes, and underground tunnels.

However, Titan’s first geomorphological map demonstrates that, while its landscape is spectacular and diverse, these elements actually make it surprisingly similar to Earth.

Through a $57 million contract with NASA, ICON, a company out of Austin, is working to do just that. ICON wants to put a broad spectrum of infrastructure on the moon, which isn’t the easiest place to build.

“First of all, you need to be able to protect the astronauts from the lunar environment which is really a nasty place to live and work. Vacuumed environment, extreme temperature swings, radiation environment, micro-meteoroids, dust protection,” Clinton said. “To produce things like landing pads and roads and blast shields and shelters and habitats.”

Continue reading “Texas-based 3D printing company teaming up with NASA to put buildings on the moon” »

“The domestic transportation sector presents an enormous opportunity to drastically reduce emissions that accelerate climate change and reduce harmful pollution.”

In what can be hailed a significant and impactful move, the U.S. Department of Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency released a Blueprint on how to decarbonize the entire U.S. transport system. The strategy is hoped to cut all greenhouse emissions from the transportation sector by 2050.

The Biden administration unveiled a comprehensive blueprint for decarbonizing the transportation sector, which accounts for the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Have you ever been cut off while driving and found yourself swearing and laying on the horn? Or come home from a long day at work and lashed out at whoever left the dishes unwashed? From petty anger to the devastating violence we see in the news, acts of aggression can be difficult to comprehend. Research has yielded puzzling paradoxes about how rage works in the brain. But a new study from Caltech, pioneering a machine-learning research technique in the hypothalamus, reveals unexpected answers on the nature of aggression.

The hypothalamus is a brain region linked to many innate survival behaviors like mating, hunting, and the fight-or-flight response. Scientists have long believed that neurons in the hypothalamus are functionally specific—that is, certain groups of neurons correlate to certain specific behaviors. This seems to be the case in mating behavior, where neuron groups in the medial preoptic area (MPOA) of the hypothalamus, when stimulated, cause a male mouse to mount a female mouse. These same neurons are active when mounting behavior occurs naturally. The logical conclusion is that these neurons control mounting in mice.

But when looking at the analogous neurons that control aggression in another part of the hypothalamus, the VMHvl, researchers found a different story. These neurons could be stimulated to cause a male mouse to attack another male mouse, yet they did not show specific activity when the same neurons were observed in naturally fighting mice. This paradox indicated that something distinct was happening when it came to aggression.

On January 2023, 60 minutes interviewed Paul Ehrlich, the author of the 1968 Population Bomb.

Although I agree with some of the points, like the destruction of habitat, and climate change, and those points indeed need addressing. the overpopulation arguments in the book and the interview have already been proven wrong, repeatedly.

Continue reading “Overpopulation myth — Having kids will not destroy the planet. Perhaps it can even help” »

Despite the 10-second lag, two astronauts had a lot to say about tech for space at CES 2023.

Today (Jan. 06), the International Space Station (ISS), which is the only location where people can investigate the long-term effects of living without gravity, completed the first call ever made in 4K to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023.

In the first instance, the discussion was unsurprisingly focused on what it’s like to be living in space now. After all, it’s not every day you get to watch two astronauts in real-time casually floating a mic between each other to answer our pressing earthly questions.

You may have come home with it after a recent trip to New England. Or you may have gotten it from that friend or family member who flew in from New York over the holidays.

The newest Omicron subvariant of concern is XBB.1.5, and it has arrived in Southern California. This version of the coronavirus is more contagious and more resistant to existing immunity than any of its predecessors.

“It’s just the latest and greatest and most infectious variant,” said Paula Cannon, a virologist at USC. “It’s amazing to me that this virus keeps finding one more trick to make itself even more infectious, even more transmissible.”

The world’s oldest lake can be found in southeastern Siberia where it’s believed to have existed for around 25 million years. As well as being the great great grandad of lakes, Baikal is also the deepest at 1,700 meters (5,600 feet). The impressive accolade means it’s home to around 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater reserves, and in a pond that massive you can expect a fish or two.

Lake Baikal is known as the “Galapagos of Russia” for the many weird and diverse species that call it home. Despite being covered by a thick layer of ice for five months each year, the ecosystem that has developed in the lake is astonishing and like few others. It is estimated that 80 percent of plants and animals that live in it are found nowhere else on the planet.

Among them is the Baikal oilfish, also known as the golomyankas. They’re scale-less fish with translucent bodies that can stretch to around 21 centimeters (8.3 inches). There are two species in the Comephorus genus, C. baikalensis and C. dybowski.