Lifeboat Foundation

Dr. Oliver Medvedik Vice President of LEAF appears in this new TED interview where he talks about aging research and the possibilities of future medicine.

Aging happens to all of us, but scientists still don’t know the mechanism behind it. We need to focus on finding an answer, says molecular biologist Oliver Medvedik.

If given the option, would you choose to live forever? Many of us would say “yes,” but with one major caveat: just as long we don’t age. In scientific terms, aging means “a progressive loss of fitness in an organism over time,” says molecular biologist and TED Fellow Oliver Medvedik. What causes this loss of fitness in humans is multifaceted, although scientists are exploring different theories including — and these are just a few of the many avenues of research — the deterioration of the health of our telomeres (the ends of our chromosomes), changes in cell mitochondria, inefficient clearance of damaged cell proteins, and the senescence of stem cells, leading to chronic inflammation and a depletion of stem cells.

Continue reading “A crowdfunding platform aims to solve the puzzle of aging” »

Next, the technology maturation process, unfolds in a linear fashion with the ultimate objective of transitioning to the NASA program that established the requirement. This process sacrifices science and the ability to iterate fast; does not incentivize providers to develop affordable and systematic capabilities, and the consideration of economic intelligence and market pull is anything but strategic (engagement model with industry is secondary, i.e “work for hire” contracts, and commercialization is serendipitous). As the sole customer, NASA/the government needs to maintain the unique infrastructure needed for these missions and maintains large per mission costs.

While science missions are largely competitive and outcome focused, human missions start by establishing a destination — the political choice of Moon or Mars — often becoming a solution in search of a problem. Since the Apollo era, the overall result of this “swing” approach has basically resulted in “grounding” the human space program, negatively affecting the morale of the working force, and making many feel that it is little more than a job welfare program.

From an HR perspective, NASA, like any other government organization, is a great example of Peter’s principle, structured and incentivized by the slogan “the hierarchy needs to be preserved by all costs”, frequently leading to the alienation or outright removal of highly competent people focused on problem solving and with a desire of seeing accelerated progress.

Continue reading “From ‘flags and footprints’ to having a routine presence in space” »

Imagine having your government declare fast internet a basic human right.

But such talk has little currency in Sweden or its Scandinavian neighbors, where unions are powerful, government support is abundant, and trust between employers and employees runs deep. Here, robots are just another way to make companies more efficient. As employers prosper, workers have consistently gained a proportionate slice of the spoils — a stark contrast to the United States and Britain, where wages have stagnated even while corporate profits have soared.

In a world full of anxiety about the potential job-destroying rise of automation, Sweden is well placed to embrace technology while limiting human costs.

Despite being battered by Hurricane Maria, and facing a decrease in funding from the U.S. government, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico is still going strong, and is now up and running again, following a series of repairs. And with the near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon having just flown by our planet, Arecibo has just sent back images that are supposed to represent the highest-resolution photos of the asteroid, which help reveal some important details about the object.

According to a press release from NASA, the radar images were taken by the Arecibo Observatory Planet Radar last Saturday, December 16, and generated the day after, as asteroid Phaethon 3200 had its close encounter with Earth. At the time of its closest approach, the object was only 1.1 million miles away from Earth, or less than five times the distance separating our planet from the moon. The images have resolutions estimated at about 250 feet per pixel, making them the best-quality photos of the asteroid that are currently available, Phys.org added.

Based on Arecibo’s radar images, scientists believe that 3200 Phaethon is substantially larger than once estimated, with a diameter of approximately 3.6 miles, or 0.6 miles larger than what previous studies had suggested. That also makes Phaethon the second largest near-Earth object classified as a “potentially hazardous asteroid,” or a comparatively large asteroid that orbits much closer to Earth than most others do. The images also suggest Phaethon has a spheroidal shape, with a number of peculiar physical features that scientists are still trying to understand in full. These features include a concave area believed to be several hundred meters wide, and a dark, crater-like area located near one of its poles.

Continue reading “Arecibo Radio Telescope Snaps Photos Of 3200 Phaethon, Reveals New Information On Near-Earth Asteroid” »

The US federal government has lifted an enforced moratorium on funding research into how to make viruses deadlier and more transmissible.

The moratorium, which was imposed three years ago, froze funding for what’s called “gain of function” research: controversial experiments seeking to alter pathogens and make them even more dangerous. Now, the money is back on the table, giving those trials the green light once more.

The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis S. Collins, announced the lifting of the moratorium on Tuesday, saying gain of function (GOF) research with viruses like influenza, MERS, and SARS could help us “identify, understand, and develop strategies and effective countermeasures against rapidly evolving pathogens that pose a threat to public health”.

Continue reading “The US Just Ended Its Own Ban on Engineering Deadly Viruses in The Lab” »

“The top five government contracts disputes that could be be decided this upcoming year concern:”

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The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has awarded $1.85M contract to the University of Waterloo for the Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) mission.

The QEYSSat mission was one of two projects cited in the 2017 budget when it was unveiled in March of this year. In April, the government sent Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED) Minister Navdeep Bains to the CSA’s headquarters to formally announce the funding for the QEYSSat mission along with funding for a radar instrument that will be developed for a future orbiter mission to Mars and to announce the Canadian CubeSat Project. The $80.9M of funding would be over five years.

A short history of the QEYSSat mission.

Continue reading “Canadian QEYSSat Quantum Satellite Program Gets Next Round of Funding” »

The internet may be an international system of interconnecting networks sharing a rough global consensus about the technical details of communicating through them – but each country manages its own internet environment independently. As the U.S. debate about the role of government in overseeing and regulating the internet continues, it’s worth looking at how other countries handle the issue.

As the U.S. weakens its protections for internet users, it risks falling behind the rest of the world.

• By Sascha Meinrath, Nathalia Foditsch, The Conversation US on December 14, 2017