Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Month: January 2019

The bacteria that live in our bodies have a pivotal role in the maintenance of our health, and can influence a range of conditions, such as obesity and cancer. Perhaps the most important role for the community of microorganisms that live in our gut — termed the microbiota, which include bacteria, fungi and archaea — is to aid immune-system development. Writing in Nature, Tanoue et al. report the identification of 11 strains of bacteria that reside in the guts of some healthy humans and that can boost immune responses that fight infection and cancer.

Microorganisms in the human gut can affect immune-system cells. Gut bacterial strains have been discovered that boost immune cells that have cell-killing capacity and that can target cancer and protect against infection. Human gut bacteria boost immune cells that have cell-killing capacity.

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“For A New Crypto Legal System”

Earlier this week (on Sunday night, in fact), I came across a definition and understanding of “legal systems” that has really cleared up a lot of things that have been weighing heavily on my mind for a long time. Here it is:

Legal systems are protocols for the management of disputes.

This includes protocols for preventing disputes and for managing the whole lifecycle of disputes, from inception to resolution. It captures both descriptions of these protocols (“legal code”) and their execution (“operation of law”). It might need to be refined, but it’s useful enough as given here.

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A team of researchers at Columbia University has developed a speech brain-computer interface system that translates brain signals into intelligible, recognizable speech. By monitoring someone’s brain activity, the system can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. The breakthrough, reported in the journal Scientific Reports, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain, and lays the groundwork for helping people who cannot speak.

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Jan. 10 (UPI) — Scientists have developed a single dose treatment that has shown promise for combating all forms of the Ebola virus, a study says.

The new medication successfully blocked a strain of the deadly virus in nonhuman primates and ferrets, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

The drug, a two-antibody combination called MBP134, was successful against several strains of Ebola, including the Zaire strain behind the current months-long outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Hansen’s disease, which is commonly known as leprosy, is among the leading causes of non-traumatic, peripheral neuropathies around the world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) initiated its ‘Leprosy Elimination Project’ during the 1980s with great results, curing more than 14 million cases.

Leprosy is caused by Mycobacterium leprae, with the infection progressing to cause disfiguration of the skin and mucous membranes, as well as progressive and irreversible nerve damage.

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Last year, Microsoft Corp.’s Azure security team detected suspicious activity in the cloud computing usage of a large retailer: One of the company’s administrators, who usually logs on from New York, was trying to gain entry from Romania. And no, the admin wasn’t on vacation. A hacker had broken in.

Microsoft quickly alerted its customer, and the attack was foiled before the intruder got too far.

Chalk one up to a new generation of artificially intelligent software that adapts to hackers’ constantly evolving tactics. Microsoft, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and various startups are moving away from solely using older “rules-based” technology designed to respond to specific kinds of intrusion and deploying machine-learning algorithms that crunch massive amounts of data on logins, behavior and previous attacks to ferret out and stop hackers.

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