Lifeboat Foundation

Ryleigh Taylor found a rare, 475-million-year-old trilobite fossil while fishing with her family in Dandridge, Tennessee.

The University of Everywhere is on the horizon.

It’s going to emerge while the current generation of young people mature into adulthood.

This is what it will look like and what attending it will mean:

Continue reading “Are we about to see the end of universities as we know them?” »

Computer security specialists must understand the beast they are up against before they can hope to defeat it.

If cybersecurity experts are to combat malevolent artificial intelligence, they will need to know how such a system can emerge, say computer scientists.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5yFZAPdYCck

While it just missed its goal of making its maiden manned voyage at January’s CES event, Ohio-based company Workhorse’s SureFly hybrid-electric helicopter has finally lifted off for its first untethered flight. Well, it got a few feet off the ground, at least.

“A five-foot hover might not seem like a big deal, but what it does is to answer the question: Will it fly, yes or no?” CEO Steve Burns told Digital Trends.

Continue reading “Watch the SureFly two-person hybrid-electric copter make its maiden hover” »

Artificial intelligence has the potential to create trillions of dollars of value across the economy—if business leaders work to understand what AI can and cannot do.

In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui and MGI chairman and director James Manyika speak with McKinsey Publishing’s David Schwartz about the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.

David Schwartz: Hello, and welcome to the McKinsey Podcast. I’m David Schwartz with McKinsey Publishing. Today, we’re going to be journeying to the frontiers of artificial intelligence. We’ll touch on what AI’s impact could be across multiple industries and functions. We’ll also explore limitations that, at least for now, stand in the way.

Continue reading “The real-world potential and limitations of artificial intelligence” »

https://www.wired.com/…/biology-will-be-the-next-great-comp…

In some ways, Synthego looks like any other Silicon Valley startup. Inside its beige business park facilities, a five-minute drive from Facebook HQ, rows of nondescript black server racks whir and blink and vent. But inside the metal shelving, the company isn’t pushing around ones and zeros to keep the internet running. It’s making molecules to rewrite the code of life.

Crispr, the powerful gene-editing tool, is revolutionizing the speed and scope with which scientists can modify the DNA of organisms, including human cells. So many people want to use it—from academic researchers to agtech companies to biopharma firms—that new companies are popping up to staunch the demand. Companies like Synthego, which is using a combination of software engineering and hardware automation to become the Amazon of genome engineering. And Inscripta, which wants to be the Apple. And Twist Bioscience, which could be the Intel.

Continue reading “Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform” »

A compelling study from a team of researchers at the University of Copenhagen has demonstrated a way to completely stop a body’s ability to store fat. In experiments with mice, the team showed that genetically deleting a single enzyme resulted in the animal not being able to gain weight, even when fed a fatty diet.

An enzyme dubbed NAMPT has been connected to obesity in both human and animal models by several studies. Its presence in fat tissue has been found to increase metabolic functionality in numerous body tissues, including fat tissue, which enhances the body’s ability to store fat.

“NAMPT in fat tissue was likely once an extraordinary benefit to our ancestors but in today’s society full of high-fat, calorically-dense foods, it may now pose a liability,” says Zachary Gerhart-Hines, a corresponding author on the study.

Continue reading “Deletion of single enzyme stops mice getting fat, no matter the diet” »

Hughes, 34, now devotes his time to evangelizing for higher taxes on the rich, such as himself. He’s proposing that the government give a guaranteed income of $500 a month to every working American earning less than $50,000 a year, at a total cost of $290 billion a year. This is a staggering number, but Hughes points out that it equals half the U.S. defense budget and would combat the inequality that he argues is destabilizing the nation.

Chris Hughes thinks $290 billion a year is a small price to pay for equality.

They’re ready to handle everything from satellite defense to extraterrestrial attacks.