Lifeboat Foundation

Improving Lives Curing Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) — Dr. Sanjoy Dutta, Ph.D. — Chief Scientific Officer, JDRF

Dr. Sanjoy Dutta, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer at JDRF International (https://www.jdrf.org/) a nonprofit organization that funds Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) research, provides a broad array of community and activist services to the T1D population, and actively advocates for regulation favorable to medical research and approval of new and improved treatment modalities.

Continue reading “Dr. Sanjoy Dutta, Ph.D. — CSO, JDRF International — Improving Lives Curing Type 1 Diabetes (T1D)” »

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) — A single activist helped turn the tide against NSO Group, one of the world’s most sophisticated spyware companies now facing a cascade of legal action and scrutiny in Washington over damaging new allegations that its software was used to hack government officials and dissidents around the world.

It all started with a software glitch on her iPhone.

An unusual error in NSO’s spyware allowed Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul and privacy researchers to discover a trove of evidence suggesting the Israeli spyware maker had helped hack her iPhone, according to six people involved in the incident. A mysterious fake image file within her phone, mistakenly left behind by the spyware, tipped off security researchers.

The Future Of Space Tech & Innovation — Dr. Joel Mozer Ph.D., Director of Science, Technology & Research, United States Space Force.

Dr. Joel Mozer is the Director of Science, Technology, and Research, United States Space Force (https://www.spaceforce.mil/).

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Previously, aircraft ✈️ had to fly at 1,500 to 5,000 feet for airborne radars to detect illegal activity in our seas 🌊. With SeaVue Multi-Role, pilots can fly as… See more.

In some parts of the world, the sea is lawless, fraught with piracy, smuggling and illegal fishing.

To help navies and coastal authorities combat illegal activity, Raytheon Intelligence & Space has developed the SeaVue family of airborne radars, which detect small maritime targets such as illegal fishing vessels, go-fast boats and stateless ships—ships not registered to a country or government, on the high seas. RI&S engineers have added a new, upgraded radar to the family called SeaVue Multi-Role.

Continue reading “Monitoring the high seas at high altitude” »

Poor value of long-delayed biomass project leads Tory peer to say ‘the Government is backing a dead horse’ in sustainability drive.

When the koala fur trade began during the late 19th century, as many as 10 million koalas are thought to have existed in Australia. Since then, they have declined to a fraction of their historic range and numbers. Between 2000 and 2016, the states of Queensland and New South Wales bulldozed at least 885,000 hectares of forest and bushland that provided habitat for koalas, based on analyses of vegetation loss derived from satellite imagery.

Having previously classified the animal as “Least Concern” on its Red List, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) uplisted the koala to “Vulnerable” in 2016. A report by the WWF in 2017 found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland and a 26% decline in New South Wales.

Estimates of their exact numbers vary considerably, but the Australian government has just published a new detailed analysis, showing the rapid and ongoing decline of koala populations in Eastern Australia. Following the disastrous wildfires of 2019–2020, they have now dipped below 100,000 to approximately 92,000 and are projected to fall by another third in this region during the next decade, possibly reaching 63,000 by 2032.

Urban air pollution exposure is an ongoing critical challenge for humanity today because the majority of us live in cities. A just-published study in The Lancet Planetary Health reports that 2.5 billion live in urban areas where particulate matter levels exceed World Health Organization (WHO) safety guidelines causing more than 1.8 million attributed deaths annually. The study reports that “the global health burden of ambient fine particulate matter is increasing annually” and is associated with mortality from cardiovascular, respiratory, and lung diseases including cancer. And in terms of chronic diseases, particulate matter in the air contributes to asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, and seen as the leading environmental risk humans face today.

What is particulate matter? The Canadian government defines it as airborne particles that can be solid or liquid. Particulate matter comes from natural and human sources. The natural ones can be seen when volcanoes erupt spewing ash and other aerosols high into the atmosphere. But far more dangerous because of the sheer volume, is human-produced particulate matter coming from smokestacks, tailpipes, power plants, recently tilled fields, tires running across asphalt and concrete roads, and other human activities that release fine particles into the wind. The lighter and smaller the particle, the greater the threat. That’s because fine particulate matter is easier to inhale. It’s also easier to enter the pores of leaves in plants, and easier as liquid aerosols to bind to our buildings and bridges and other infrastructure where its acidic nature causes corrosion.

A particle of 2.5 micrometres (equivalent to 0.00009843 inches) or less is a public health threat. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tracks aerosol pollution at this size and on its site notes that particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometres has been declining for two decades. The Lancet study contradicts this finding noting that globally levels of airborne particulate matter have changed very little in twenty years. And where’s the greatest rise? In the cities of Southeast Asia.

Tesla is planning to build its new design center in Beijing later this year, according to a new document released by the Chinese government.

Shortly after announcing Gigafactory Shanghai, Tesla made it clear that it not only wants to tap into China’s incredible capacity in manufacturing, but it also wants to take advantage of the country’s incredible engineering and design talent.

In early 2020, Tesla announced plans to establish a new R&D center and a new design center in China to build “a Chinese-style” electric car.

IBM has just announced a partnership with the Government of Quebec to create the Quebec-IBM Discovery Accelerator in Bromont, Quebec. The accelerator will focus on using quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High-Performance Computing (HPC) to develop new projects, business/scientific/academia collaborations, and skills-building initiatives in research areas including energy, life sciences (genomics and drug discovery), new materials development, and sustainability. This is the fourth such center that IBM has announced. The three previously announced partnerships are with Cleveland Clinic, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council Hartree Centre. IBM’s formal mission statement for these Discovery Accelerators is: “Accelerate scientific discovery and societal impact with a convergence of AI, quantum, and hybrid cloud in a community of discovery with research, academic, industry, startup, and government organizations working together.” IBM’s formal mission statement for these Discovery Accelerators is:

“Accelerate scientific discovery and societal impact with a convergence of AI, quantum, and hybrid cloud in a community of discovery with research, academic, industry, startup, and government organizations working together.”

In addition, the company has developed individual mission statements for each of the four Discovery Accelerators: