Lifeboat Foundation

“Very dependent on volume, but I’m confident moving to Mars (return ticket is free) will one day cost less than $500k & maybe even below $100k,” he wrote. “Low enough that most people in advanced economies could sell their home on Earth & move to Mars if they want.”

The extraordinary ambition of Musk’s prediction wasn’t lost on some Twitter users. “Fyre Festival Part Deux,” one replied.

Maybe that skepticism is why, in a follow –up reply, Musk seemed to hedge his bets.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: A Round-Trip Ticket to Mars Will Cost Just $100,000” »

The global population aged 60 or over is growing faster than all younger age groups and faces the tide of chronic diseases threatening their quality of life and posing challenges to healthcare and economy systems. To better understand the underlying biology behind healthspan — the healthy period of life before the first chronic disease manifestation — the scientists from Gero and MIPT collaborated with the researchers from PolyOmica, the University of Edinburgh and other institutes to analyze genetic data and medical histories of over 300,000 people aged 37 to 73 made available by UK Biobank.

The study published today in Communications Biology was lead by Dr. Peter Fedichev and Prof. Yurii Aulchenko. It shows that the most prevalent chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, dementia, and some others apparently share the common underlying mechanism that is aging itself.

«According to Gompertz mortality law, the risk of death from all causes increases exponentially after the age of 40 and doubles approximately every 8 years», explains Peter Fedichev, founder and CSO of Gero. «By analyzing the dynamics of disease incidence in the clinical data available from UKB, we observed that the risks of age-related diseases grow exponentially with age and double at a rate compatible with the Gompertz mortality law. This close relation between the most prevalent chronic diseases and mortality suggests that their risks could be driven by the same process, that is aging. This is why healthspan can be used as a natural proxy for investigation of the genetic factors controlling the rate of aging, the “holy grail” target for anti-aging interventions».

The United States and China both see quantum technologies as key to national security and economic progress.

The researchers found that people have a moral preference for supporting good causes and not wanting to support harmful or bad causes. However, depending on the strength of the monetary incentive, people will at one point switch to selfish behavior. When the authors reduced the excitability of the rTPJ using electromagnetic stimulation, the participants’ moral behavior remained more stable.

“If we don’t let the brain deliberate on conflicting moral and monetary values, people are more likely to stick to their moral convictions and aren’t swayed, even by high financial incentives,” explains Christian Ruff. According to the neuroeconomist, this is a remarkable finding, since: “In principle, it’s also conceivable that people are intuitively guided by financial interests and only take the altruistic path as a result of their deliberations.”

Our actions are guided by moral values. However, monetary incentives can get in the way of our good intentions. Neuroeconomists at the University of Zurich have now investigated in which area of the brain conflicts between moral and material motives are resolved. Their findings reveal that our actions are more social when these deliberations are inhibited.

Continue reading “Morals versus money: How we make social decisions” »

US$190 million in investors’ money has been locked since Cotten died in December. His widow says she doesn’t know his passwords.

About US$190 million in cryptocurrency has been locked away in a online black hole after the founder of a currency exchange died, apparently taking his encrypted access to their money with him.

Investors in QuadrigaCX, Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, have been unable to access their funds since its founder, Gerald Cotten, died last year.

Continue reading “Canadian cryptocurrency fund boss Gerald Cotten died – and US$190million of his investors’ money may be encrypted forever” »

Behold the new black gold. Dark and warm, it oozes water and teems with beneficial properties. It even harbors precious metals.

And boy does it stink.

Call it the excrement economy. Between the rise of fecal transplants and water strained from latrine sludge, the poop market is hot. Besides removing toxic waste, the commodification of crap could mean big bucks, especially in the developing world. Sounds crazy, but look at what happened with used cooking oil — now processed into biofuel instead of dumped into landfills — which went from being worth nothing in the early 2000s to $3.30 a gallon in 2011, according to the Utah Biodiesel Supply.

Continue reading “Turning manure into gold: The excrement economy” »

A Chicago-based entrepreneur says many industrial power users can save money, get more electricity, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by using the energy they already consume more efficiently. It’s called recycling energy — capturing waste heat and turning it into power.

The theme for this year’s gathering is Globalization 4.0 – how we’re handling the changes wrought on the world by the increasing interconnectedness of cultures and economies.

We must also reckon with the future. Digitization, Big Data, and the migration of IT services to the cloud are driving change now but we’re also starting to see the opportunities that will lead to Globalization 5.0.

These are the themes that will dominate the Davos gatherings of the future, says General Atlantic’s Bill Ford.

Continue reading “Here’s what everyone will be talking about at Davos in 2020 and beyond” »

“Human players must explicitly manage an ‘economy of attention’ to decide where to focus the camera,” said the DeepMind team. “However, analysis of AlphaStar’s games suggests that it manages an implicit focus of attention. On average, agents ‘switched context’ about 30 times per minute,” the team wrote, which was similar to Komincz’s and Wünsch’s behaviors.

Ultimately, the DeepMind team concluded that AlphaStar won against both pros because of “superior macro and micro-strategic decision-making, rather than superior click-rate, faster reaction times, or the raw interface.”