Lifeboat Foundation

[This article is drawn from Ch. 8: “Pedagogical Love: An Evolutionary Force” in Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures.]

“There is nothing more important in this world than radical love” as Paolo Freire told Joe Kincheloe over dinner.

- Joe Kincheloe. Reading, Writing and Cognition. 2006.

Continue reading “What’s Love got to do with Education?” »

We live in an age of incredible technological innovation. Innovation that has the potential to do great good or great harm to society. Prince Harry, sat down with one of the most celebrated figures in Artificial Intelligence, Demis Hassabis, British artificial intelligence researcher, neuroscientist, computer game designer, entrepreneur, the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, to discuss the responsibility that big tech firms have to ensure that change to society is positive. The Artificial Intelligence Channel.

Each year, Science’s editors and writers highlight a top research achievement as their Breakthrough of the Year. For 2017, the honor goes to the first full observation of a neutron-star merger, made possible by detecting gravitational waves created by the stars as they spiraled into each other. But there a lot of other advances to talk about, from the oldest ice to the newest ape. Check them all out in this video rundown.

A video compilation of some of the biggest advances of 2017.

Continue reading “The biggest scientific breakthroughs of the year, now in video form!” »

Roads of the future could be lit by glowing trees instead of streetlamps, thanks to a breakthrough in creating bioluminescent plants. Experts injected specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, which caused it to give off a dim light for nearly four hours. This could solve lots of problems.

The chemical involved, which produced enough light to read a book by, is the same as is used by fireflies to create their characteristic shine. To create their glowing plants, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) turned to an enzyme called luciferase. Luciferase acts on a molecule called luciferin, causing it to emit light.

Continue reading “MIT Just Created Living Plants That Glow Like A Lamp, And Could Grow Glowing Trees To Replace Streetlights” »

Gene therapy is the process of replacing defective genes with healthy ones, adding new genes to help the body fight or treat disease, or deactivating problem genes. It holds the promise to transform medicine and create options for patients who are living with difficult, and even incurable, diseases. Learn how this innovative therapy works.

Summary: Aubrey de Grey’s SENS foundation is both controversial and inspirational. Watch a 3-minute video of Aubrey, followed by a discussion of Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s revolutionary plans to reverse aging. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts.com. Author: Brady Hartman. Follow us on Reddit | Google+ | Facebook. ]

Aubrey de Grey is on a mission to reverse aging and has a large group of followers who think he might do it.

Continue reading “Do Aubrey de Grey’s Revolutionary Plans to Reverse Aging Make SENS? (video)” »

It’s that time of the year again … the Science news writers and editors are homing in on the “Breakthrough of the Year,” their choice of the most significant scientific discovery, development, or trend in 2017. That selection, along with nine runners-up, will be announced when the last issue of the year goes online on 21 December.

Now, you can get in on the action! Pick your favorite breakthrough from the list of candidates below by 3 December. Then check back the next day, when we will start a second round of voting with your four top picks. We will announce your winner—the People’s Choice—along with Science’s choice on 21 December.

From cancer advances to the cosmos, what’s your top choice?

“Former Executive Secretary to UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres has laid down a challenge to UNEP FI’s banking members, and the wider finance industry to increase their allocations to low carbon investments to avoid a 2 degrees scenario. Watch her recording which she made for participants at UNEP FI’s Europe Regional Roundtable on Sustainable Finance which took place in October 2017.”

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As digital innovations continue to transform the way we live, a lot of things we once took for granted are falling by the wayside. Paper money and coins could soon be among them.

The use of digital payments in all forms is fast becoming commonplace. A cashless society, once considered remote if not unimaginable, is now more imminent, with staggering amounts of transactions being digitally processed daily. In Nordic countries, especially Sweden and Denmark, the majority of all transactions are now made through electronic or digital means.

Governments around the world are working to prepare their citizens to fully benefit from a digital future. India, for example, has hundreds of millions of people in the database of its Aadhaar biometric identity and payment system. But the country’s Supreme Court recently ruled that the system could compromise citizens’ fundamental right to privacy, underscoring one of the key concerns about the new digital era.