Lifeboat Foundation

“The Future: A Very Short Introduction” (OUP, 2017) by Dr. Jennifer M Gidley.

Oxford University Press has just released a wonderful little animation video centring on my book “The Future: A Very Short Introduction” published in 2017. In an entertaining way it shows how the concept of the future or futures is central to so many other concepts — many of which are the subject of other OUP Very Short Introductions. The VSI Series now has well over 500 titles, with ‘The Future’ being number 516.

To watch the video click here.

Continue reading “An Introduction to the Future with Oxford VSI” »

You may recognize the anglerfish from its dramatic appearance in the hit animated film Finding Nemo, as it was very nearly the demise of clownfish Marlin and blue-tang fish Dory. It lives most of its life in total darkness more than 1,000 meters below the ocean surface. Female anglerfish sport a glowing lure on top of their foreheads, basically a pole with a light bulb on its end, where bioluminescent bacteria live. The light-emitting lure attracts both prey and potential mates to the fish.

Despite its recent fame, little is known about anglerfish and their symbiotic relationship with these brilliant bacteria, because the fish are difficult to acquire and study.

For the first time, scientists have sequenced and analyzed the genomes of bacteria that live in anglerfish bulbs. The bacteria were taken from fish specimens collected in the Gulf of Mexico.

Continue reading “Glowing bacteria on deep-sea fish shed light on evolution, ‘third type’ of symbiosis” »

Researchers isolated several mutations leading to melanoma and reproduced them in the lab using CRISPR.

Two papers authored by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco described the genetic changes that turn harmless moles into malignant melanomas and the experiment they devised to recreate the step-by-step evolution of normal skin cells into cancer cells [1], [2].

Summary ([1])

Continue reading “Two Papers Trace The Steps Leading From Moles to Melanomas” »

To understand our future evolution we need to look to our past.

Will our descendants be cyborgs with hi-tech machine implants, regrowable limbs and cameras for eyes like something out of a science fiction novel?

Continue reading “What will humans look like in a million years?” »

You might assume that evolution gave Charles Darwin enough to ponder during his five year voyage on The Beagle.

But of all the phenomena the naturalist encountered circumnavigating the globe, it was the flight of spiders which continued to puzzle him.

Darwin noticed that hundreds of spiders would inexplicably land on the Beagle even on a calm day without any wind to blow them on board.

Continue reading “Mystery of Charles Darwin’s flying spiders solved — they harness electricity” »

Bizarre fossils from China are revealing our species’ Asian origins and rewriting the story of human evolution.

By Kate Douglas

DECEMBER 1941. Japan has just entered the second world war. China, already fighting its neighbour, is in the firing line. At the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Hu Chengzhi carefully packs two wooden crates with the world’s most precious anthropological artefacts. Peking Man – in reality some 200 fossilised teeth and bones, including six skulls – is to be shipped to the US for safekeeping. This is the last anyone ever sees of him.

Continue reading “Asia’s mysterious role in the early origins of humanity” »

For the first time, astronomers have directly observed the magnetism in one of astronomy’s most studied objects: the remains of Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), a dying star that appeared in our skies over thirty years ago.

In addition to being an impressive observational achievement, the detection provides insight into the early stages of the evolution of supernova remnants and the cosmic magnetism within them.

“The magnetism we’ve detected is around 50,000 times weaker than a fridge magnet,” says Prof. Bryan Gaensler. “And we’ve been able to measure this from a distance of around 1.6 million trillion kilometres.”

Continue reading “Astronomers observe the magnetic field of the remains of supernova 1987A” »

Today we will be taking a look at some of the stories people tell themselves to help them pretend aging is not a problem.

If you ask most people what they think about aging, they will shrug their shoulders and say that it is a natural process. With complete tranquility on their faces, they will agree that, yes, in old age, we are haunted by many diseases, but nothing can be done about it, so it makes no sense to worry about it while you are young and healthy. Just live your life.

Then, the conversation will turn towards an even stranger direction: they will start looking for something good about aging – for example, that it ensures a change of generations, prevents society from becoming stuck in obsolete ideas, and, in general, is the engine of evolution. They’ll explain that the notion of death gives meaning to life and makes us accomplish as much as possible in the little time we have.

Continue reading “Is aging not scary? The children’s tales that are killing us” »

Telecom experts are going so far as to herald the arrival of 5G as the advent of the fourth industrial revolution. There are an ever-expanding number of high-tech devices out there trying to connect to the internet every day, many of which require extensive bandwidth, and companies across the board will leverage 5G capabilities to better reach consumers.

“The application of 5G technology will result in massive changes for both consumers and enterprises,” said Jeff Weisbein, founder and CEO of digital media company Best Techie. “5G networks will offer consumers incredible broadband speeds at home (up to 20Gb/s). It will also enable companies to make advancements such as even smarter, better connected cars, advancements in medical technologies and improved retail experiences through personalization.”

5G refers to 5th-Generation Wireless Systems and uses additional spectrum in the existing LTE frequency range to build on the capabilities of 4G, which is often used interchangeably with 4G LTE by marketers. LTE denotes Long Term Evolution, and is a term that was deployed with early 4G networks that presented a substantial improvement on 3G, but did not fully qualify as 4G, meaning 4G LTE is essentially first-generation 4G.

Continue reading “The Shift From 4G to 5G Will Change Just About Everything” »