Lifeboat Foundation

Games to help fight obesity?

Innovative research uses technology to help people with a sweet-tooth lose weight. Researchers believe they can train the brain to better resist temptation and warn people of an unhealthy urge before the temptation occurs.

Specifically, Drexel University psychologists have created a computer game aimed at improving users’ inhibitory control. Additionally, the investigators are also rolling out a mobile app that used in conjunction with the Weight Watchers app, will alert users on unhealthy urges before they strike.

Continue reading “New Gaming Software Hopes to Train Brain to Resist Sweets” »

I thought they already had one.

Alasdair Gray, the acclaimed Glaswegian writer and artist, penned a phrase now engraved on a wall of the Scottish Parliament: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.”

Michael Gove, the controversial Caledonian Brexiteer, journalist and Conservative politician, has in turn declared his intention to seek the leadership of the UK Tory Party and thus become the Prime Minister, to “reboot democracy” in a new “start-up nation”.

Continue reading “Michael Gove says Britain needs to create its own DARPA” »

But those don’t address the electrical circuitry at work in the brain, which scientists hope will provide a more precise option for treatment.

“We’ve focused a lot on the chemical side, because in the mid-20th century, we began to develop the first medications that affected neurotransmitters,” said Dr. Darin Dougherty, director of the division of neurotherapeutics and the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The other side, the electrical, that’s been less exploited as a treatment potential.”

Dougherty and others are working to change that. With funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, scientists are working to build new ways to treat psychiatric disorders, like PTSD, through deeper understandings of the electrical signals in our brains.

Continue reading “Treating psychiatric disorders through neuron stimulation” »

Now, here is a longer term concept. Could we see a day soon where we have some model of an EPA in Space due to the already junk material (namely abandoned/ broken satellites, etc.) and mining? Wonder who will get the contracts for space cleanup?

DARPA recently said that it had finished integrating seven space-watching networks that will feed tons of new Earth-orbiting junk data into what the agency calls “the largest and most diverse network of space situational awareness networks ever assembled.”

+More on Network World: NASA’s hot Juno Jupiter mission +

Continue reading “DARPA unified space-sensor networks help keep orbiting junk from slamming into something important” »

Like the USPS; could we see a day when DARPA and IARPA positioned to be revenue generators like big tech? Granted these 2 programs are tax payer funded; however, so is USPS. One option is to for a contracted service fee; could DARPA &/ or IARPA charge fees to tech companies and others for using their technologies?

Two of the most important technological advances that helped fueled much of the country’s record economic growth in the post-WW II era were ubiquitous computing devices and modern communications technologies.

Indeed, most of the companies covered on TechCrunch certainly would not exist if not for the development and commercialization of microprocessors and the internet.

Continue reading “Capitalizing on foundations of innovation” »

Has anyone seen “The Yes Men” youtube video where they present to the WTO their proposed employee monitoring suit to ensure employees were working and performing while the supervisor is at the beach. This reminds me a little of that same scenario; except this time it’s the employees wearing the wearable monitor to measure & track their performance.

Working in the intelligence community can be stressful. The IC’s research arm wants to use sensors to evaluate how people respond to the demands of the job.

As we continue to improve cell circuitry, we will see this is going to be more and more important to our tech future. I believe once we have the underlying infrastructure improved with QC that we will see more advancement made in Biocomputing as well as opportunities to adopt on multiple levels including Singularity.

Cells that are electrically active and that also produce light for easy voltage monitoring could lead to new studies of heart arrhythmias and possibly bio-computing.

The human heartbeat is produced by electrical pulses that propagate through cardiac tissue, causing rhythmic muscle contraction. Researchers have previously engineered cells to create an artificial tissue capable of producing coordinated electrical activity, and now a team has added the ability to monitor their electrical state by detecting fluorescent emission. They have also fashioned the cells into “living circuits” that might act as model systems for studying heart behavior.

Thomas Aquinas and other ludicrous pseudo-philosophers (in contradistinction with real philosophers such as Abelard) used to ponder questions about angels, such as whether they can interpenetrate (as bosons do).

Are today’s mathematicians just as ridiculous? The assumption of infinity has been “proven” by the simplest reasoning ever: if n is the largest number, clearly, (n+1) is larger. I have long disagreed with that hare-brained sort of certainty, and it’s not a matter of shooting the breeze. (My point of view has been spreading in recent years!) Just saying something exists, does not make it so (or then one would believe Hitler and Brexiters). If I say:” I am emperor of the galaxy known as the Milky Way!” that has a nice ring to it, but it does not make it so (too bad, that would be fun).

Given n symbols, each labelled by something, can one always find a new something to label (n+1) with? I say: no. Why? Because reality prevents it. Somebody (see below) objected that I confused “map” and “territory”. But I am a differential geometer, and the essential idea there, from the genius B. Riemann, is that maps allow to define “territory”:

Continue reading “MND: Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory” »

Nice read.

Is quantum technology the future of the 21st century? On the occasion of the 66th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, this is the key question to be explored today in a panel discussion with the Nobel Laureates Serge Haroche, Gerardus ’t Hooft, William Phillips and David Wineland. In the following interview, Council Member Professor Rainer Blatt, internationally renowned quantum physicist, recipient of numerous honours, and Scientific Co-Chairman of the 66th Lindau Meeting, talks about what we can expect from the “second quantum revolution”.

Blatt has no doubt: quantum technologies are driving forward a technological revolution, the future impact of which is still unclear. Nothing stands in the way of these technologies becoming the engine of innovations in science, economics and society in the 21st century. Early laboratory prototypes have shown just how vast the potential of quantum technologies is. Specific applications are expected in the fields of metrology, computing and simulations. However, substantial funding is required to advance from the development stage.

Continue reading “Quantum technologies to revolutionise 21st century — Nobel Laureates discuss at Lindau” »