Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

A new DNA test will look for 190 diseases in your newborn’s genetic code

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in biotech/medical, genetics

Feb 12
2018

But not all parents may want to know the results.

How the United States Plans to Reclaim Its Supercomputer Dominance

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in neuroscience, supercomputing

Feb 12
2018

It’s a tight race between the U.S. and China for who will build the next supercomputer, set to be as powerful as the human brain.

Penn State University

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in biotech/medical

Feb 12
2018

Because of how much it impairs the ability to breathe, a seemingly simple injury—a broken rib—is the second leading cause of trauma deaths. A team of Penn State surgeons and a biomedical engineer have invented a better way to help broken ribs heal.

The libraries of the future will be made of DNA

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in biotech/medical, futurism

Feb 12
2018

There are 6,000 tweets sent a second. In the time you have read this sentence, 42,000 tweets will have been sent. At an average of 34 characters per tweet that’s 1,428,000 characters.

Edible QR Codes Could Deliver Exactly What Your Body Needs to Heal

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in biotech/medical, food, mobile phones

Feb 12
2018

A new study suggests that printing drugs on a QR code that patients can scan with their phones could pave the way for personalized medicine.

How Swarm Intelligence Is Making Simple Tech Much Smarter

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in biotech/medical, bitcoin, food, robotics/AI

Feb 12
2018

As a group, simple creatures following simple rules can display a surprising amount of complexity, efficiency, and even creativity. Known as swarm intelligence, this trait is found throughout nature, but researchers have recently begun using it to transform various fields such as robotics, data mining, medicine, and blockchains.

Ants, for example, can only perform a limited range of functions, but an ant colony can build bridges, create superhighways of food and information, wage war, and enslave other ant species—all of which are beyond the comprehension of any single ant. Likewise, schools of fish, flocks of birds, beehives, and other species exhibit behavior indicative of planning by a higher intelligence that doesn’t actually exist.

It happens by a process called stigmergy. Simply put, a small change by a group member causes other members to behave differently, leading to a new pattern of behavior.