Lifeboat Foundation

On October 1 2021, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) BepiColombo spacecraft successfully performed its first flyby of the solar system’s innermost planet, Mercury. The flyby is the first in a set of six such events BepiColombo will complete before entering orbit around Mercury in late 2025.

Following the flyby, initial science returns from different instruments onboard BepiColombo revealed interesting details about the environment surrounding Mercury, as well as details on the planet itself.

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UNDRR

The waters are rising! Japan is using Augmented Reality to teach children about the dangers of flash floods 🌊

Continue reading “Status of Science and Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction in Asia-Pacific 2020” »

Many people reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. Lee McIntyre argues that anyone can and should fight back against science deniers.
Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/2jTiXCLzMv4
Lee’s book “How to Talk to a Science Denier” is out now: https://geni.us/leemcintyre.

“Climate change is a hoax—and so is coronavirus.” “Vaccines are bad for you.” Many people may believe such statements, but how can scientists and informed citizens convince these ‘science deniers’ that their beliefs are mistaken?

Continue reading “How to Talk to a Science Denier — with Lee McIntyre” »

SparkBeyond, a company that helps analysts use AI to generate new answers to business problems without requiring any code, today has released its product SparkBeyond Discovery.

The company aims to automate the job of a data scientist. Typically, a data scientist looking to solve a problem may be able to generate and test 10 or more hypotheses a day. With SparkBeyond’s machine, millions of hypotheses can be generated per minute from the data it leverages from the open web and a client’s internal data, the company says. Additionally, SparkBeyond explains its findings in natural language, so a no-code analyst can easily understand it.

The product is the culmination of work that started in 2013 when the company had the idea to build a machine to access the web and GitHub to find code and other building blocks to formulate new ideas for finding solutions to problems. To use SparkBeyond Discovery, all a client company needs to do is specify its domain and what exactly it wants to optimize.

Circa 2019

Most people don’t give a second thought to the poop they flush away. But perhaps they should, because the energy contained within our repellent remains is impressive.

If you let poop fester—and you probably shouldn’t in polite company—bacterial digestion will produce a methane-rich ‘biogas’ that can be harnessed for energy. You can also dehydrate a deuce to make powdery fuel or combustible bricks with a similar energy content to coal. These schemes may sound outlandish, but wastewater plants all over the developed world take advantage of this salvageable energy to subsidize their operations. One UK-based treatment plant, for example, gets 50 percent of its power using poop.

Isaac Asimov won the Hugo award for Best All-Time Series for his Foundation books, which follow a future human civilization through an apparently inevitable upheaval. The story begins amid a vast galactic empire in decline. Hari Seldon, a mathematician, develops the practice of psychohistory, a method of predicting future events using statistics.

Seldon predicts the fall of the galactic empire lasting 300,000 years. By his calculations, there’s no preventing the oncoming storm, but they can shift its trajectory. With a few small changes, humanity can reduce the period of recovery to just 1,000 years. Seldon is confident enough in his predictions that he convinces the authorities to let him create two gatherings of minds. Collections of scientists who will preserve humanity’s collected knowledge and lift future generations out of the looming dark age, known as the Foundations.

Continue reading “Predicting the end of humanity with maths: The Science of ‘Foundation’” »

Every year, a few hundred scientists in the United Kingdom try to establish new labs from scratch; globally, thousands of researchers become heads of their own labs. From the outset, it’s a chase for money and a time of intense pressure as scientists try to build research programmes while juggling teaching, fundraising, publishing and family life. Ali began her lab with just £15,000 in grants to cover equipment and experiments; Dan had £20,000. Both need to recruit PhD students, and Dan must also devise and deliver a programme of lectures.

Two researchers. Three years. One pandemic.

Disaster sciences, digital twins & artificial intelligence — craig fugate, chief emergency management officer, one concern.

Mr. Craig Fugate is the former Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA — an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, whose primary purpose is to coordinate the response to disasters that have occurred in the United States and that overwhelm the resources of local and state authorities.)

Continue reading “Craig Fugate, Chief Emergency Management Officer, One Concern — Disaster Science, Digital Twins, AI” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln1x3A9TuYg

Pollution creates particulate matter (tiny floating particles) and aerosols that can be harmful to our health. With missions like the Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA), public health officials can start to map this particulate matter around the world, understand its effect on diseases, and know where the most risk is. In this month’s talk, we’ll chat with the instrument operations systems engineer for MAIA and discuss how vital positions like hers are for mission success and for making sure important data gets back to us on Earth.

Speaker: janelle wellons, instrument operations systems engineer, NASA/JPL

Continue reading “Instrumental: Engineers Who Make Science Possible (Live Public Talk)” »