Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: education

According to the U.S. Centers For Disease Control (CDC), in 2018, over 36,000 people were killed, and over 2 million were injured, from motor vehicle crashes, costing the nation $44 billion in medical expenses and work loss.

The American Automobile Association (pronounced “Triple A”) is a federation of motor clubs throughout North America, and is a privately held, not-for-profit national member association and service organization, with over 60 million members in the United States and Canada, and provides a variety of services to its members, including roadside assistance and others.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety is a not-for-profit, publicly supported charitable research and education organization dedicated to saving lives by preventing traffic crashes and reducing injuries when crashes occur.

Initially emphasizing projects related to safety patrols and driver education, today the Foundation has expanded its scope of work and has long been recognized as a leader in traffic safety, with a focus on four research priorities: Driver behavior and performance, Emerging technologies, Roadway systems and drivers, and Vulnerable road users.

Dr. David Yang, is Executive Director at AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety (and assumed this role in October 2016)

Previously, Dr. Yang worked for the U.S. Department of Transportation and private consulting firms.

Read more | >

Exciting momentum!! — Home Depot Founder, Bernie Marcus (age 91), and the Adolph Coors Foundation (beer family), putting millions of $$$ into comprehensive integrative health and wellness — Good to see the trend!!

The Marcus Institute of Integrative Health was established in Philadelphia in 2017 by Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, and a multi-million $$$ grant from the Marcus Foundation (headed by it’s Chairman, Bernie Marcus, Co-Founder of The Home Depot) to expand the research, education and clinical care profile of Jefferson’s integrative medicine program, and to set the international standard of excellence in evidence-based, patient-centered integrative care.

The institute features a novel curriculum focusing on the clinical applications of integrative medicine with an emphasis on functional biochemistry, nutrient-based therapies, mind-body neuroscience, novel mechanisms of healing and emerging therapies.

Dr. Daniel Monti, MD, MBA is the Founding Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health — Jefferson Health. He is also Professor and Founding Chair of the historic, first-ever Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University.

Dr. Monti received his MD from The State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine. His Postdoctoral work was in the Research Scholars Program, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, at Jefferson Medical College.

Dr. Monti works closely with his colleagues in the institute and department to continuously expand, refine, and define Integrative Medicine at Jefferson, including innovative clinical programs of excellence, cutting edge medical education, and world-class research. Dr. Monti has dozens of journal publications, international presentations, and media appearances.

He’s also an accomplished author with books including: “Integrative Psychiatry and Brain Health” (Weil Integrative Medicine Library) and “The Great Life Makeover: Weight, Mood, and Sex”.

His newest book, “Tapestry of Health: Weaving Wellness into Your Life Through the New Science of Integrative Medicine”, which was co-written with Dr. Anthony J. Bazzan, was just released in August 2020.

Read more | >

A 15-year-old Colorado high school student and young scientist who has used artificial intelligence and created apps to tackle contaminated drinking water, cyberbullying, opioid addiction and other social problems has been named Time Magazine’s first-ever “Kid of the Year.”

Gitanjali Rao, a sophomore at STEM School Highlands Ranch in suburban Denver who lives in the city of Lone Tree, was selected from more than 5,000 nominees in a process that culminated with a finalists’ committee of children, drinking in Flint, Michigan, inspired her work to develop a way to detect contaminants and send those results to a mobile phone, she said.

“I was like 10 when I told my parents that I wanted to research carbon nanotube sensor technology at the Denver Water quality research lab, and my mom was like, ” A what?” Rao told Jolie. She said that work ” is going to be in our generation’s hands pretty soon. So if no one else is gonna do it, I’m gonna do it.”

Read more | >

The racecars themselves will be partially designed by six teams of high school kids from across the country, as New Atlas reports. The best two teams emerging from a series of challenges “will win a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build and race two vehicles on the Moon,” according to a February press release.

“Competitors will then race their rovers remotely, navigating through harsh terrain, racing around a sphere of cameras, which will capture every aspect,” the statement reads.

Moon Mark CTO Todd Wallach told New Atlas that teams will have “near real time visuals, telemetry and command and control” of the racecars.

Read more | >

Global #connectivity lets for #digitalidentity for billions of people worldwide, giving them access to #telehealth, #education, #careers, #entertainment and #finance services, as well as raising #cybersecurity and #dataprivacy concernsRe-sharing. Starlink can help telemedicine become more reliable and available to people in need. Especially those in rurual or far flung locations.

Video Source/Credit: SpaceX Youtube Channel

One interesting sub-division of SpaceX is Starlink, which is Musk’s venture into increasing global connectivity. Starlink’s mission is to use a global network of low Earth orbit satellites to eventually “deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable.” While satellite internet itself is not a novel concept, most of the traditional systems use dated technology that have far less capabilities with regards to internet speed, connectivity, and sustainability. Starlink’s goal is to provide high-speed broadband internet, using cutting-edge satellite systems that will also not add to the space pollution created by traditional systems. As of now, the company states that it “is targeting service in the Northern U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021.”

Read more | >

Modern microscopes used for biological imaging are expensive, are located in specialized laboratories and require highly qualified staff. To research novel, creative approaches to address urgent scientific issues—for example in the fight against infectious diseases such as COVID-19—is thus primarily reserved for scientists at well-equipped research institutions in rich countries. A young research team from the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz IPHT) in Jena, the Friedrich Schiller University and Jena University Hospital wants to change this: The researchers have developed an optical toolbox to build microscopes for a few hundred euros that deliver high-resolution images comparable to commercial microscopes that cost a hundred to a thousand times more. With open-source blueprints, components from the 3D printer and smartphone camera, the UC2 (You. See. Too.) modular system can be combined specifically in the way the research question requires—from long-term observation of living organisms in the incubator to a toolbox for optics education. The research team presents its development on November 25, 2020 in the renowned journal Nature Communications.

The basic building block of the UC2 system is a simple 3D printable cube with an edge length of 5 centimeters, which can host a variety of components such as lenses, LEDs or cameras. Several such cubes are plugged on a magnetic raster base plate. Cleverly arranged, the modules thus result in a powerful optical instrument. An optical concept according to which focal planes of adjacent lenses coincide is the basis for most of the complex optical setups such as modern microscopes. With the UC2 toolbox, the research team of Ph.D. students at the lab of Prof. Dr. Rainer Heintzmann, Leibniz IPHT and Friedrich Schiller University Jena, shows how this inherently modular process can be understood intuitively in hands-on-experiments. In this way, UC2 also provides users without technical training with an optical tool that they can use, modify and expand—depending on what they are researching.

Read more | >

O,.o hungry babies.

Rat school is in session as fed-up New Yorkers try to learn how to deal with a surging rodent population.

Rats as big as bunnies are roaming the streets in broad daylight, nesting in trees and chewing through car engine wires that can cost thousands to fix. And there are so many that residents are kvetching about them every chance they get: Complaints about rats to the 311 hotline have totaled 12,632 so far this year, a third more than the 9,042 for all of 2019.

With the Upper West Side teeming with the hungry critters, Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal and the city Health Department sponsored the latest incarnation of “Rat Academy,” two hours of rat prevention training livestreamed Tuesday to nearly four dozen supers, tenants and homeowners. The city began such training sessions about 10 years ago.

Read more | >

When COVID-19 reared its ugly head, wreaking havoc on education for students all over the world, CSU’s human virtual reality program stepped up to meet the moment.

“We knew that teaching an entire human gross anatomy class remotely with only pictures would not be ideal for students,” said Tod Clapp, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and head of its human anatomy program.

Moving BMS 301, Human Gross Anatomy, to online-only instruction this summer meant that students would not only miss out on the chance to work with and learn from real human cadavers, they would also miss getting to experience the new 100-person virtual reality lab Clapp’s team built last fall.

Read more | >