Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: computing

In the heart of San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, which not long ago was dirt lots and warehouses, Emily Leproust is cooking up what she — and $209 million worth of investor cash — believes is the future of DNA production.

Leproust is CEO of Twist Bioscience, a 5-year-old biotech company striving to make the production of synthetic DNA — which is used in fragrances, genetically modified foods and pharmaceutical drugs — cheaper, faster and smaller.

The same lab-manufactured DNA, Leproust hopes, could also transform the way data, from music to medical records, is stored.

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A technique to manipulate electrons with light could bring quantum computing up to room temperature.

A team of researchers in Germany and at the University of Michigan have demonstrated how can shift electrons between two different , the classic 1 and 0, in a thin sheet of semiconductor.

“Ordinary electronics are in the range of gigahertz, one billion operations per second. This method is a million times faster,” said Mackillo Kira, U-M professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

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To sustain the growth of the power of microchips and keep Moore’s Law going, semiconductor engineers are exploring the path of “valleytronics”.

Moore’s Law may be coming to an end due to the physical limitations of silicone and other elements, but a research team may have found a solution: valleytronics.

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A Purdue University-affiliated startup that seeks to redefine “farm-to-table” when it comes to garden vegetables by delivering its first orders of an appliance that fits under a kitchen counter and grows produce year-round.

Heliponix LLC, founded by two Purdue University graduates, has begun taking orders on its GroPod, a dishwasher-sized device its creators believe will disrupt the landscape of how food is produced in the face of looming worldwide food shortages and increasing concerns about chemical runoff polluting water sources, rampant food waste and water supplies diminishing on a global scale.

“It’s great for consumers and for the environment,” said Scott Massey, CEO of Heliponix.

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On a recent BBC World Service program (News Hour Extra, 12.18.15), a group of space scientists were gathered to discuss these and other aspects of the post-human era. “What about the human soul”, the moderator asked, wondering whether or not these post-humans would still be human. None of the participants were particularly troubled by the question, since they all had assumed that the soul was no more than the particular configurations of DNA which resulted in varying degre…es of insight, intelligence, creativity, and sensitivity. Post-humans will be no different, they all agreed. Only their individual genomes will have been altered to produce a very different human reality – in other words a different human soul.

Once the human genome was completely sequenced; once efforts to recombine DNA had become a reality; and once a mind-computer interface had been realized, there was never any doubt that a post-human era was coming.

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So, since technology is only going to advance, the question is: what will be the most coveted skill of the future? In my opinion, it is creativity. Ultimately a computer lacks imagination or creativity to dream up a vision for the future. It lacks the emotional competent that a human being has. Thus, creativity will be the skill of the future.

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