Lifeboat Foundation

Should we send robots on space missions instead of humans?

The cost differences are huge. In fact, NASA could pursue dozens of robotic missions for the cost of a single human mission. Also worth considering–wealthy entrepreneurs have made great advances recently with private space efforts.

Given the large ambitions for private human space flight, isn’t it time to phase out NASA’s human missions? The private sector has gained ground, and so the government should yield.

Continue reading “Should we send robots on space missions” »

In over six decades since the first satellite, the mode of communication hasn’t changed. Now, this technology will herald a new era of secure, faster connections.

Cryptocurrency scammers are using deep fake videos of Elon Musk and other prominent cryptocurrency advocates to promote a BitVex trading platform scam that steals deposited currency.

This fake BitVex cryptocurrency trading platform claims to be owned by Elon Musk, who created the site to allow everyone to earn up to 30% returns on their crypto deposits.

This scam campaign started earlier this month with threat actors creating or hacking existing YouTube accounts to host deep fake videos of Elon Musk, Cathie Wood, Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Saylor, and Charles Hoskinson.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) says that state-backed threat actors used five zero-day vulnerabilities to install Predator spyware developed by commercial surveillance developer Cytrox.

In these attacks, part of three campaigns that started between August and October 2021, the attackers used zero-day exploits targeting Chrome and the Android OS to install Predator spyware implants on fully up-to-date Android devices.

“We assess with high confidence that these exploits were packaged by a single commercial surveillance company, Cytrox, and sold to different government-backed actors who used them in at least the three campaigns discussed below,” said Google TAG members Clement Lecigne and Christian Resell.

THE #QUANTUM #PHYSICISTS Sandu Popescu, Yakir Aharonov and Daniel Rohrlich have been troubled by the same scenario for three decades.

It started when they wrote about a surprising #wave #phenomenon called #superoscillation in 1990. “We were never able to really tell what exactly was bothering us,” said Popescu, a professor at the University of Bristol. “Since then, every year we come back and we see it from a different angle.”

Finally, in December 2020, the trio published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explaining what the problem is: In #quantumsystems, superoscillation appears to violate the law of conservation of #energy. This law, which states that the energy of an isolated system never changes, is more than a bedrock physical principle. It’s now understood to be an expression of the fundamental symmetries of the universe—a “very important part of the edifice of physics,” said Chiara Marletto, a physicist at the University of Oxford.

Continue reading “Puzzling Quantum Scenario Appears Not to Conserve Energy” »

“This mission heralds the dawn of a new era of space exploration.”

Ten years ago on May 22, 2012, Elon Musk’s SpaceX made history. The company became the fourth entity, after the United States, Russia, and China, to launch a spacecraft into orbit and, on May 31 of that year, return it back to Earth. The achievement fundamentally altered the course of the next decade of space exploration.

Continue reading “10 years ago, one SpaceX launch showed NASA they could work with Elon Musk” »

The field of female reproductive longevity and inequality is getting more and more attention. In fact, it is one of the hottest areas of the emerging longevity biotechnology industry, and every venture firm in the field is either investing, incubating, or looking for projects in this area. Companies like BOLD Capital, Future Ventures, LongeVC, and iconic biotechnology investors including Bob Nelsen and Christian Angermayer, are all active and significant partners in this area of science. While females generally live longer than men, their reproductive period is limited—something that is often overlooked. A female’s peak reproductive years are between the late teens and late 20s. Fertility starts to decline by age 30, and this decline becomes more rapid once women reach the mid-30s. By 45, fertility declines so much that getting pregnant naturally is unlikely for most women. Likewise, women begin life with a fixed number of eggs in their ovaries, usually around one million. This number decreases as women age. Ovaries age faster than the rest of a woman’s body—an understudied phenomenon of a neglected organ. None of us would be here without them. Yet surprisingly little is known about the avocado-shaped organ that’s nestled inside half of all humans.

The ovaries also influence a woman’s overall health and well-being. This includes how they age, since this organ tends to lose its function with age faster than any other tissue. This is called asynchronous aging, and it’s one reason why a woman’s fertility declines, and menopause strikes, while they are still relatively young.

In one of my previous articles, I wrote about Gameto, a biotechnology company that is translating the impact of ovarian aging to develop solutions to improve fertility and stop the impact of menopause on female health. Gameto’s co-founder and CEO Dina Radenkovic told me about her intention to redefine the narrative around female reproductive longevity and making it more around health and longevity. Gameto is building a platform for ovarian therapeutics to address menopause and improve assisted fertility. Dina told me she hopes it will make women suffer fewer health problems in their later lives. Neglecting the ovaries—except for their crucial role in IVF treatments—has been part of a general disregard for many aspects of women’s health in the biomedical world.