Lifeboat Foundation

The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition. Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain — which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer.

Isher’s hypothesis faces the same daunting obstacle that has plagued microtubules: a phenomenon called quantum decoherence. To build an operating quantum computer, you need to connect qubits — quantum bits of information — in a process called entanglement. But entangled qubits exist in a fragile state. They must be carefully shielded from any noise in the surrounding environment. Just one photon bumping into your qubit would be enough to make the entire system “decohere,” destroying the entanglement and wiping out the quantum properties of the system. It’s challenging enough to do quantum processing in a carefully controlled laboratory environment, never mind the warm, wet, complicated mess that is human biology, where maintaining coherence for sufficiently long periods of time is well nigh impossible.

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In future, greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could be removed from the atmosphere by deploying a new biological method. A team headed by Tobias Erb, Leader of a Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, has developed a synthetic but completely biological metabolic pathway based on the model of photosynthesis that fixes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere 20% more efficiently that plants can photosynthetically. The researchers initially planned the new system, which they presented in the magazine Science this week, on the drawing board and then turned it into reality in the laboratory.

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of our time. The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere owing to human activities has continually risen since the start of the Industrial Revolution. All scientific evidence indicates that this increase is exacerbating the greenhouse effect and changing the climate. The consequences are already clearly evident. To overcome the environmental as well as the social challenge of climate change, “we must find new ways of sustainably removing excessive CO2 from the atmosphere and turning it into something useful,” underlined Erb, who leads a Junior Research Group at the Max Planck Institute in Marburg.

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In Brief

• Researchers have discovered that placing synthetic genetic circuits in liposomes prevents them from interfering with one another, while still allowing them to communicate.
• Not only could this new form of “modular” genetic circuits lead to more complex engineered circuits, it could also provide insight as to how the earliest life on Earth formed.

By applying engineering principles to biology, researchers can create biological systems that don’t exist naturally. A problem of synthetic biology, however, is that these engineered genetic circuits can interfere with each other. While beneficial on their own, some of these man-made circuits become useless when they come in contact with each other, and this bars them from being used to solve complex biological problems.

Continue reading “Researchers Just Solved One of the Biggest Problems in Synthetic Biology” »

There weren’t many people who had heard of bioterrorism before 9/11. But shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, a wave of anthrax mailings diverted the attention of the public towards a new weapon in the arsenal of terrorists—bioterrorism. A US federal prosecutor found that an army biological researcher was responsible for mailing the anthrax-laced letters, which killed 5 and sickened 15 people in 2001. The cases generated huge media attention, and the fear of a new kind of terrorist warfare was arising.

However, as with every media hype, the one about bioterrorism disappeared quickly.

But looking toward the future, I believe that we may not be paying as much attention to it as we should. Although it may be scary, we have to prepare ourselves for the worst. It is the only way we can be prepared to mitigate the damages of any harmful abuses if (and when) they arise.

Continue reading “The Future of Extremism: Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Biology Will Transform Terrorism” »

2 key areas to never lose focus on when it comes to NextGen tech — Biocomputing and QC. I also would add that what we have been seeing in crystalized formations found synthetic diamonds and other structures is a core piece as well.

EMN is a world-class collective of award-winning journalists and researchers whose mission is to be the leading online live streaming news network for alternative news and information. This news and research-driven force will be the recognized source for inquiring minds. From the paranormal to the supernormal, inner space to outer space, whether groundbreaking scientific discoveries or research into the world of the unexplained; EMN is the gateway for inquiring minds uniting a formidable community of truth-seekers worldwide led by the most respected industry leaders committed to the highest level of integrity.

Light-sheet microscopy is one of the most powerful method for imaging the development and function of whole living organisms. However, achieving high-resolution images with these microscopes requires manual adjustments during imaging. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden together with colleagues at Janelia Research Campus (HHMI) have developed a new kind of light-sheet microscope that can ‘drive’ itself automatically by adapting to the challenging and dynamic optical conditions of large living specimens. This new smart microscope combines a novel hardware design and a smart ‘AutoPilot’ system that can analyze images and automatically adjust and optimize the microscope. This framework enables for the first time long-term adaptive imaging of entire developing embryos and improves the resolution of light-sheet microscopes up to five-fold.

Light sheet microscopy is a novel microscopy technique developed in the last ten years that is uniquely suited to image large living organisms. In a light-sheet microscope, a laser light sheet illuminates the sample perpendicularly to the observation along a thin plane within the sample. Out-of-focus and scattered light from other planes—which often impair image quality—is largely avoided because only the observed plane is illuminated.

The long-standing goal of microscopy is to achieve ever-sharper images deep inside of living samples. For light-sheet microscopes this requires to perfectly maintain the careful alignments between imaging and light-sheet illumination planes. Mismatches between these planes arise from the optical variability of living tissues across different locations and over time. Tackling this challenge is essential to acquire the high-resolution images necessary to decipher the biology behind organism development and morphogenesis. “So far, researchers had to sit at their microscope and tweak things manually—our system puts an end to this: it is like a self-driving car: it functions autonomously”, says Loïc Royer, first author of the study. This smart autonomous microscope can in real-time analyze and optimize the spatial relationship between light-sheets and detection planes across the specimen volume.

Anyone who does not have QC as part of their 5+Yr Roadmap for IT are truly exposing their company as well as shareholders and customers. China, Russia, Cartels, DarkNet, etc. will use the technology to extort victims, destroy companies, economies, and complete countries where folks have not planned, budget, skilled up, and prep for full replacement of their infrastructure and Net access. Not to mention companies who have this infrastructure will provide better services/ CCE to svc. consumers.

In a recent article, we highlighted a smart beta ETF called the “Sprott BUZZ Social Media Insights ETF” that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to select and weight stocks. If we stop and think about that for a moment, that’s a pretty cool use of AI that seems well ahead of its time. Now we’re not saying that you should go out and buy this smart beta ETF right away. It uses social media data. We know that on social media, everyone’s an expert and many of the opinions that are stated are just that, opinions. However some of the signals may be legitimate. Someone who just bought Apple is likely to go on telling everyone how bullish they are on Apple shares. Bullish behavior is often accompanied by bullish rhetoric. And maybe that’s exactly the point, but the extent to which we’re actually using artificial intelligence here is not that meaningful. Simple scripting tools go out and scrape all this public data and then we use natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to determine if the data artifacts have a positive or negative sentiment. That’s not that intelligent, is it? This made us start to think about what it would take to create a truly “intelligent” smart beta ETF.

What is Smart Beta?

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The field, or at least the widely used term, of synthetic biology (synbio) started nearly two decades ago. As the field has matured, two PLoS ONE papers have analyzed the publishing data to look at trends, language, and connections among synbio researchers. This data provides snapshots of who’s publishing, what kind of research is being published, when it’s being published, and where it’s being published. The question of why is certainly open for interpretation but the growth dynamics of synthetic biology publishing can give some sense of why a the term has stuck as a useful unifying term.

In 2012, researchers used Thomson Reuters Web of Science publishing data to map where people are publishing synbio research, how those people are connected, and who’s funding it. More recently, three French researchers also used data from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science to assess how synthetic biology the different areas of synthetic biology have grown and interacted.

Both of these papers draw interesting pictures of how new terms and ideas spread within an new umbrella term for a kind of research. Together these two papers paint give us some answers to the ‘Who, What, When, Where, & Why’ of synthetic biology.

Why compliance exist.

Gingko Bioworks launched their new laboratory last month—an automated “factory” that mass-produces genetically modified organisms. The organism company’s tagline is “Biology By Design,” and it aims to deliver just that in their second foundry, which is equipped with numerous robots that mash together huge batches of genes to churn out new and exotic lifeforms […] Gingko is ambitiously working through the complexities of biology and genetics to create these experimental organisms. The company boasts of a design-build-test cycle: gene-enzyme mixes designed from the company’s scientific database is put together in a hundred different ways, and the “mashup” that services a client’s needs best is accepted as the new organism’s genetic profile. Their new liquid-handling robots like the Echo 525 make large-scale experimentation possible. (READ MORE)

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