Lifeboat Foundation

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“The whole idea of lifestyle choices as something everyone can tap into is misleading, when in fact that choice is constrained by what is available to people,” he said. “This is where policy solutions or investments into these neighborhoods to make up for historical disinvestment becomes so important.”

Summary: The neighborhood you live in could have an impact on your brain and cardiovascular health, a new study reports.

Continue reading “Where You Live Can Greatly Affect Your Heart and Brain Health” »

Olympic stadiums can be costly and wasteful. Some have argued for a single, more sustainable, location that can be used year after year.

The summer Olympics have been a quadrennial tradition ever since the late 1800s—when modern sports and rivalries freshened up the ancient tradition. Since COVID-19 crashed the schedule for last years’ events, now the world is gearing up again for another round of competition in Tokyo.

Transporting athletes and fans from all over the world and to cities hosting the Olympic games comes with a gigantic carbon footprint, for example, the 2021 London Olympics had an estimated footprint of over 400 thousand tons of CO₂ emissions. Constantly building brand-new stadiums every few years that often go unused after the games, with very few exceptions, is also extremely wasteful. The 2016 Rio Olympics whipped up a whopping 3.6 million tonnes of carbon when including all that went into infrastructure. Eerie listicles of decaying stadiums, including Rio’s, litter the internet with costly examples of the wasted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of labor and materials that go into just one site.

Continue reading “The argument for a permanent Olympic City” »

Robots have a hard time improvising, and encountering an unusual surface or obstacle usually means an abrupt stop or hard fall. But researchers have created a new model for robotic locomotion that adapts in real time to any terrain it encounters, changing its gait on the fly to keep trucking when it hits sand, rocks, stairs and other sudden changes.

Although robotic movement can be versatile and exact, and robots can “learn” to climb steps, cross broken terrain and so on, these behaviors are more like individual trained skills that the robot switches between. Although robots like Spot famously can spring back from being pushed or kicked, the system is really just working to correct a physical anomaly while pursuing an unchanged policy of walking. There are some adaptive movement models, but some are very specific (for instance this one based on real insect movements) and others take long enough to work that the robot will certainly have fallen by the time they take effect.

The team, from Facebook AI, UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University, call it Rapid Motor Adaptation. It came from the fact that humans and other animals are able to quickly, effectively and unconsciously change the way they walk to fit different circumstances.

Continue reading “Stumble-proof robot adapts to challenging terrain in real time” »

When you put these three factors together—the bounty of technological advances, the compressed restructuring timetable due to covid-19, and an economy finally running at full capacity—the ingredients are in place for a productivity boom. This will not only boost living standards directly, but also frees up resources for a more ambitious policy agenda.

AI and other digital technologies have been surprisingly slow to improve economic growth. But that could be about to change.

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration launched an initiative Thursday aiming to make more government data available to artificial intelligence researchers, part of a broader push to keep the U.S. on the cutting edge of the crucial new technology.

The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force, a group of 12 members from academia, government, and industry led by officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation, will draft a strategy for creating an AI research resource that could, in part, give researchers secure access to stores of anonymous data about Americans, from demographics to health and driving habits.

They would also look to make available computing power to analyze the data, with the goal of allowing access to researchers across the country.

Continue reading “U.S. Launches Task Force to Study Opening Government Data for AI Research” »

Microsoft has galvanised policy makers across seven Asia-Pacific markets, including Singapore and Indonesia, in a bid to facilitate the sharing of threat intelligence and resources amongst their respective public sector. The US software vendor says “collective” efforts across the region are critical in combating cybersecurity threats, which are inevitable in an increasingly interconnected world.

It noted that Asia-Pacific saw malware and ransomware attacks at higher frequencies, clocking 1.6 and 1.7 times higher, respectively. than the global average. Citing numbers from its 2019 threat report, Microsoft said developing markets such as Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka were most vulnerable to such threats that year.

It added that cybercrime not only resulted in financial losses and brought down operations, but also posed risks to national security and eroded trust in digital economies.

Continue reading “Microsoft wants to unite APAC governments with cybersecurity council” »

Senior director, milken institute center for the future of aging, milken institute; executive director, alliance to improve dementia care.

Nora Super is the Senior Director of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging (CFA) (https://milkeninstitute.org/centers/center-for-the-future-of-aging) and the Executive Director of the Milken Institute Alliance to Improve Dementia Care (https://milkeninstitute.org/centers/center-for-the-future-of…tia-care).

Continue reading “Nora Super — Milken Institute — Center for the Future of Aging — Alliance to Improve Dementia Care” »

Engineering A Safer World For Humans With Self Driving Cars, Drones, and Robots — Dr. Missy Cummings PhD, Professor, Duke University, Director, Humans and Autonomy Laboratory, Duke Engineering.

Dr. Mary “Missy” Cummings, is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the Pratt School of Engineering, at Duke University, the Duke Institute of Brain Sciences, and is the Director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory and Duke Robotics.

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Pediatrician, Medical Innovator, Educator — Dr. Jamie Wells, MD, FAAP — Director, Research Science Institute (RSI), Center for Excellence in Education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — Professor, Drexel University School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems.

Dr. Jamie L. Wells, MD, FAAP, is an Adjunct Professor at Drexel University’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, where she has been involved in helping to spearhead the nation’s first-degree program focused on pediatric engineering, innovation, and medical advancement.

Continue reading “Dr Jamie L. Wells, MD — Director, Research Science Inst — Pediatrician, Medical Innovator, Educator” »