Lifeboat Foundation

What a world we live in.

Of the many ‘white whales’ that theoretical physicists are pursuing, the elusive magnetic monopole — a magnetic with only one pole — is one of the most confounding.

Compared to the Higgs boson in terms of its potential impact on modern physics, the magnetic monopole has been on scientists’ minds for even longer. And now our best shot at finding it just got weird — two phenomena that resemble the magnetic monopole have become one.

If you’re unfamiliar with the magnetic monopole, it’s a hypothetical particle that’s long been predicted by quantum physics, but no one has ever been able to prove that it exists.

Continue reading “Our Quest to Find a One-Sided Magnet Just Took an Unexpected Turn” »

Being a pilot, you get to see a bunch of beautiful sights from above. Being a pilot for a South American airline, you also get to witness the stunning phenomena of storms as your job requires flying over regions that experience them.

Meet Santiago Borja Lopez — a Quito, Ecuador-based pilot who works for Ecuador Airlines. Whenever the pilot is off-duty, he pulls out his camera to capture the magnificent sights he witnesses in air. From incredible storms to even lightning bolts — the photos he captures are truly magnificent. Keep on scrolling to take a look and follow Santiago’s journey on Instagram. You can read more about one of Santiago’s shots in our previous article.

As well as beating us at board games, driving cars, and spotting cancer, artificial intelligence is now generating brand new sounds that have never been heard before, thanks to some advanced maths combined with samples from real instruments.

Before long, you might hear some of these fresh sounds pumping out of your radio, as the researchers responsible say they’re hoping to give musicians an almost limitless new range of computer-generated instruments to work with.

The new system is called NSynth, and it’s been developed by an engineering team called Google Magenta, a small part of Google’s larger push into artificial intelligence.

Continue reading “Now Artificial Intelligence Is Inventing Sounds That Have Never Been Heard Before” »

• Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Harvard’s commencement, saying that basic income is an “idea worth exploring.”
• With his endorsement of UBI, Zuckerberg joins a growing list of experts and innovators who believe supporting basic human needs must precede innovation.

This week Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the latest class of Harvard graduates, offering advice about the future and inspiration to grow on. Among his ideas was the notion that universal basic income (UBI), a standard base “salary” for each member of society that can help meet our basic needs regardless of the work we do, is worth exploring.

Tech world innovator and serial entrepreneur, Naveen Jain, has just launched VIOME, a product that has the potential to forever change the way we look after our health. Riding on the growing awareness in the West that gut health is the foundation for all health, VIOME is a tech product with an artificial intelligence component used towards the in-depth analysis of the gut and metabolic flexibility.

What does that mean? It means that you will know exactly what’s going on in the gut, monitor it quarterly via a simple in-home test, and then employ the recommendations VIOME provides to reach your optimal healthiest living to—ultimately—live a better, longer life free of chronic illness.

But, wait. There’s more.

Continue reading “Reverse Aging And Live A Longer, Healthier Life With This New High-Tech Tool” »

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When I saw this for the first time, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Well, I still kind of don’t…

Nitinol is a metal alloy of nickel and titanium, where the two elements are present in roughly equal atomic percentages.

Shape memory is the ability of nitinol to undergo deformation at one temperature, then recover its original, undeformed shape upon heating above its “transformation temperature”.

Continue reading “Nitinol – an alloy that remembers its shape” »

Microsoft wants to start storing data in DNA.