Lifeboat Foundation

Back in November, we heard about Uber’s plans to add flying-car-like air taxis to its existing transport system. At the time, it wasn’t clear just what form those vehicles would take. This Tuesday, however, the company announced that it has selected Virginia-based Aurora Flight Sciences as a partner to develop an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for its Uber Elevate Network – and a functioning model of it has already been flown.

The concept combines technologies from several other projects that Aurora has been working on.

Continue reading “Here’s what Uber’s air taxis may look like” »

Even our most imaginative expectations of AI are only primitive — but as neuroscience understands the brain more deeply, it will unlock the full potential of hybrid intelligence.

A robot just taught another robot how to read…

Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop — much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus — but right now, it has only been tested on sheep.

It’s appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it’s important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today’s study. “It’s complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there,” he says.

Instead, the point of developing an external womb — which his team calls the Biobag — is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.

Continue reading “An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next” »

Quercetin may be able to influence apoE and could be a potential therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease.

The Apolipoprotein E connection

The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease and as the average life expectancy has risen in recent decades so has the occurrence of this and other neurodegenerative diseases. Aging is the primary risk factor for Alzheimer’s and researchers are searching for new ways to combat this devastating disease.

Continue reading “Possible approach for treating Alzheimer’s” »

What you do on the Internet is nobody’s business but yours. At ProxySite.com, we stand between your web use and anyone who tries to sneak a peek at it. Instead of connecting directly to a website, let us connect to the website and send it back to you, and no one will know where you’ve been. Big Brother (or other, less ominous snoops) won’t be able to look over your shoulder and spy on you to see what you’re reading, watching or saying.

Project RAMA is an idea to turn asteroids into automated spacecraft. It sounds crazy, but it’s amazingly possible.

The Oxyde would carry robots to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, opening up access to rare space metals.

We know which way the dark matter wind should blow. Now we just have to find it.