Lifeboat Foundation

Congratulations to Osinakachi Gabriel for his launch of the first publication the TAFFD’s “Magazine of the Future” — Also thanks for the Bioquark (page 37) and Regenerage (page 72) profiles — https://issuu.com/taffds/docs/taffd_s_magazine_2019 #Futurism #Longevity #Transhumanism #Biotechnology #Health #Wellness #Regeneration #LifeExtension #Aging #Immortality #IraPastor #Bioquark #Regenerage #Ideaxme #Singularity #Consciousness #AI #JasonSilva #ArtificiaIIntelligence #SENS

In this first issue by Trandisciplinary Agora For Future Discussions, we approach reality from a transdisciplinary perspective in order to find unity and greater understanding of the world as we enter a new paradigm in technological advancements that will lead us to transcending our own biology while enhancing our mental and physical limitations. We explore all topics that relate to transhumanism, cybernetic singularity, energy, consciousness, international policy, electromagnetic forces, language, AI, digitalization, ethics, philosophy, biotechnology, futurism and more.

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PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb 5 (Reuters) — The Federal Reserve is looking at a broad range of issues around regulations and protections for digital payments and currencies, including the costs and potential benefits of issuing its own digital currency, Governor Lael Brainard said on Wednesday.

“By transforming payments, digitalization has the potential to deliver greater value and convenience at lower cost,” Brainard said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The speech did not touch on interest rates or the current economic outlook.

“But there are risks,” Brainard said, in a partial reprisal of her own and other global central bankers’ worries about the rise of private digital payment systems and currencies, including Facebook’s Libra digital currency project. “Some of the new players are outside the financial system’s regulatory guardrails, and their new currencies could pose challenges in areas such as illicit finance, privacy, financial stability, and monetary policy transmission.”

The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an object of empirical study and as an opportunity for theoretical innovation. They can play an important role in facilitating the development of research that is socially relevant, that incorporates cultural norms and expectations around microbes and that investigates how social and biological lives intersect. This is a propitious moment to establish lines of collaboration in the study of the microbiome that incorporate the concerns and capabilities of the social sciences and the humanities together with those of the natural sciences and relevant stakeholders outside academia. This paper presents an agenda for the engagement of the social sciences with microbiome research and its implications for public policy and social change. Our methods were informed by existing multidisciplinary science-policy agenda-setting exercises. We recruited 36 academics and stakeholders and asked them to produce a list of important questions about the microbiome that were in need of further social science research. We refined this initial list into an agenda of 32 questions and organised them into eight themes that both complement and extend existing research trajectories. This agenda was further developed through a structured workshop where 21 of our participants refined the agenda and reflected on the challenges and the limitations of the exercise itself. The agenda identifies the need for research that addresses the implications of the human microbiome for human health, public health, public and private sector research and notions of self and identity. It also suggests new lines of research sensitive to the complexity and heterogeneity of human–microbiome relations, and how these intersect with questions of environmental governance, social and spatial inequality and public engagement with science.

President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to roll back established constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to use landmines overseas despite the weapons’ long history of killing and maiming civilians around the world.

More than 160 nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the stockpiling, production, and use of landmines. The United States is one of just 32 U.N. member states that have not ratified the treaty.

“Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.”

Continue reading “‘Absolutely Horrific’: Trump Preparing to Roll Back Restrictions on US Military Use of Landmines” »

There’s a short list of weapons that should never be used in war. Landmines are high on that list.

“Mr Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines,” said Jody Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel peace prize for her work campaigning against the weapons.

“Mr Trump’s landmine move would be in line with all of his other moves to undercut arms control and disarmament in a world much in need of them.”

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The World Economic Forum on Friday announced the first global consortium focused on designing a framework for the governance of digital currencies, including stablecoins.

The Global Consortium for Digital Currency Governance will aim to increase access to the financial system through innovative policy solutions that are inclusive and interoperable.

The opportunities for financial inclusion will only be unlocked if the space is regulated properly and includes public-private cooperation across developed and high growth markets, the WEF said while announcing the new initiative on the last day of its 50th annual meeting after extensive consultation with the global community.

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Closed-door reviews of risks and benefits of studies should be made public, some scientists say.

The hype about artificial intelligence is unavoidable. From Beijing to Seattle, companies are investing vast sums into these data-hungry systems in the belief that they will profoundly transform the business landscape. The stories in this special report will deepen your understanding of a technology that may reshape our world.

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This year marks the Eighth Review Conference (RevCon) of the Biological Toxins and Weapons Convention (BWC). At the same time, ongoing international efforts to further and more deeply investigate the brain’s complex neuronal circuitry are creating unprecedented capabilities to both understand and control neurological processes of thought, emotion, and behavior. These advances have tremendous promise for human health, but the potential for their misuse has also been noted, with most discussions centering on research and development of agents that are addressed by existing BWC and Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) proscriptions. In this article, we discuss the dual-use possibilities fostered by employing emergent biotechnologic techniques and tools—specifically, novel gene editors like clustered regular interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)—to produce neuroweapons. Based on our analyses, we posit the strong likelihood that development of genetically modified or created neurotropic substances will advance apace with other gene-based therapeutics, and we assert that this represents a novel—and realizable—path to creating potential neuroweapons. In light of this, we propose that it will be important to re-address current categorizations of weaponizable tools and substances, so as to better inform and generate tractable policy to enable improved surveillance and governance of novel neuroweapons.

Keywords: : CRISPR, Gene editing, Neuroweapon, Neurotherapeutic pathways, Dual-use neuroscience, Biosecurity policy.

T his year marks the Eighth Review Conference (RevCon) of the Biological Toxins and Weapons Convention (BWC), the purpose of which is to ensure that the convened parties’ directives continue to be relevant to and viable for prohibiting the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons in the face of newly emerging scientific advancements and biotechnologies. Apropos of issues raised at previous RevCons and elsewhere, there are growing concerns about current and future weaponization of neurobiological agents and tools (ie, “neuroweapons”^1–6).