Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Grassroots funding of fundamental science and private enterprize will lead the way in rejuvenation biotechnology not the traditional funding sources from Government which are shrinking every year.

It is important to understand that innovation and progress is unlikely to come from the Government and the traditional grant system which is shrinking every year. Rejuvenation biotechnology will likely be funded with a mix of fundraising for fundamental breakthrough technologies followed by private enterprize taking discoveries to market. This is why supporting science is critcial as relying on the Government to innovate and drive progress is unlikely to yield results anytime soon.

“Today, researchers compete for government grants at increasingly shorter intervals and with diminishing chances of success: Less than 1 in 5 grant applications succeeds. This inhibits risk taking.

By contrast, private investment in medicine has kept pace with the aging population and is the principal engine for advancement. More than 80% of new drug approvals originate from work solely performed in private companies. Note that such drug approvals come on average 16 years after the beginning of clinical trials, which typically cost $2.5 billion from start to finish. Even if grant-subsidized academics wanted to create a new drug, economic reality prevents it.”

#aging #crowdfundthecure

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Interesting approach.

Families who rely on food stamps may not be left out of the future of grocery shopping after all.

The pilot, which will run for two years, will launch on Shop.safeway.com in August.

The other retailers include Amazon, testing the program in New York, New Jersey and Maryland; Safeway, testing it in Maryland, Oregon and Washington; delivery service FreshDirect, testing in New York; and other regional and local grocers testing the program in New York and other East Coast states. As with the core program, SNAP participants will be able to use their benefits only to purchase eligible items online, not to pay for service or delivery charges. “Allowing consumers to use their SNAP benefits in the same way you would also use a credit or debit card to purchase groceries will lead to lower prices and greater options for consumers in every corner of this city and state”, said Diaz “I want to thank Congressman Maloney and our NY delegation, our partners in business and the health and hunger advocates who understood the need for this pilot program and joined our efforts to bring this important new program to NY”. “With the SNAP Pilot, we look forward to bringing the online purchasing option to SNAP clients and positively impacting all the communities that we serve”.

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DARPA’s Tactical Undersea Network Architecture (TUNA) program recently completed its initial phase, successfully developing concepts and technologies aimed at restoring connectivity for U.S. forces when traditional tactical networks are knocked offline or otherwise unavailable. The program now enters the next phase, which calls for the demonstration of a prototype of the system at sea.

TUNA seeks to develop and demonstrate novel, optical-fiber-based technology options and designs to temporarily restore radio frequency (RF) tactical data networks in a contested environment via an undersea optical fiber backbone. The concept involves deploying RF network node buoys—dropped from aircraft or ships, for example—that would be connected via thin underwater fiber-optic cables. The very-small-diameter fiber-optic cables being developed are designed to last 30 days in the rough ocean environment—long enough to provide essential connectivity until primary methods of communications are restored.

“Phase 1 of the program included successful modeling, simulation, and at-sea tests of unique fiber-cable and buoy-component technologies needed to make such an undersea architecture work,” said John Kamp, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office. “Teams were able to design strong, hair-thin, buoyant fiber-optic cables able to withstand the pressure, saltwater, and currents of the ocean, as well as develop novel power generation concepts.”

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For example, the market for hemostats in defence and civil forces alone is 2 crore units. While some startups have got some funding to fuel their expansion plans, not all investors may be keen to back companies targeting the defence market.

“Since the cost of failure is really high in this industry, one needs to invest significant time and effort to ensure development of a world-class product,” says Bhaniramka of the GIS solutions vendor VizExperts.

“This results in higher gestation periods, which typical investors shy away from.” Instead, he and other entrepreneurs argue, longer term investors may be more suited to this field. “This is where the government’s role in supporting innovative technology companies can be a game changer.”

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http://www.exogen.com/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/most_cost_effective_white_paper.pdf

Unit Cost : $2,950

A new battery-powered device could help thousands of Britons avoid surgery for a fracture.

The gadget, which is used for 20 minutes a day at home, sends pulses of ultrasound into the bone, which scientists believe kick-starts the body’s natural healing mechanisms.

The device has just been approved by Government body NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) for hard-to-heal fractures, and it says this could save the NHS £1,164 per patient.

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Has anyone besides NSA, NIST, DARPA, IARPA, etc. realize and thought about what type of cyber warfare will exist in a QC world? The skillsets alone will be so far advance than the techies that we have seen in most companies today as well as in most government agencies. Granted we’re simplifying things with the platform; however, skillsets will still need to be more advance than what we have seen with the standard techie.

Members of the cryptography community have expressed interest in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) recent call for an algorithm less susceptible to hacks from a computer that does not exist yet.

NIST announced a call for proposals for post-quantum cryptography standardization on Dec. 20. One or more of the proposed algorithms will ultimately replace some of NIST’s cryptographic standards that are most vulnerable to quantum computers. According to Dustin Moody, a mathematician at NIST, 40 people have joined the agency’s online cryptography forum since the call was announced two weeks ago. The forum had about 200 members before the call went out. Moody said that many people were anticipating the announcement, as cryptography enthusiasts tend to run in the same circles.

“Most people who are interested in the field already knew about it,” Moody said. “The call wasn’t a surprise.”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLr7E2Ms4Y4

“I’m a political theory researcher at Sciences Po, and this talk draws on modern political theories of liberalism, the latest transhumanist literature, and ancient Greek theories of the good life.”

The Transhumanist Paradox.

Deciding between technological utopias in a liberal state.

How does a pluralist society – a society built to accommodate our irreconcilable differences – make a choice about the technological future of mankind? How can a liberal state dedicated to upholding individual liberty interfere in technological progress, and why should it?

Do we really want to leave our technological futures in the hands of the major AI researchers – Google, Facebook, and the US Defense Department?

I argue that our political system is designed not to deal with the questions raised by the transhumanist movement, and that without a major overhaul of political liberalism, technological progress will escape democratic oversight.

For the first time in history we have the ability to choose what it means to be human, and yet our liberal pluralist societies preclude substantive debate about our collective future. Modern liberal states are based upon the assumption that there is no single best way to live, and that for the state to endorse a substantive vision of the good life is to open the door to totalitarianism. On matters of personal conviction – human nature, our place in the cosmos, and our ultimate goals – liberal states want us to agree to disagree.

However, we cannot simply agree to disagree about transhumanism because our individual choices will affect the entire species. If you decide to upload your brain onto a computer and abandon your biological body, you are choosing what is essential to humanity: you are defining human nature. If, on the other hand, the government bans technological enhancement, it is also imposing a vision of humanity. Thus, only once liberalism abandons the pretense of neutrality can we start imagining alternative technological futures and debating the underlying vision of the good life that will orient our choice.

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India is going to endorse a Universal Basic Income (UBI), according to a leading advocate of the system.

The world’s largest democracy will release a report in January stating that UBI is “basically the way forward,” according to Professor Guy Standing, who has worked on universal income pilot projects in India.

If implemented, India would join Finland in providing free money to citizens.

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N” A boom in consumer drone sales has spawned a counter-industry of start-ups aiming to stop drones flying where they shouldn’t, by disabling them or knocking them out of the sky.

Dozens of start-up firms are developing techniques — from deploying birds of prey to firing gas through a bazooka — to take on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are being used to smuggle drugs, drop bombs, spy on enemy lines or buzz public spaces.

The arms race is fed in part by the slow pace of government regulation for drones.

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Federal agencies of the US government are expanding their calls for quantum computing resistant encryption methods. In effect, the National Institute of Standards (NIST) recently announced a request for public-key post-quantum algorithms. This action follows warnings from the National Security Agency (NSA) about the risks of potential quantum-based cyberattacks and the NSA’s appeal for developing post-quantum algorithms.

Also read: New Developments in Quantum Computing Impact Bitcoin

Moreover, in the near future, it might possible for anyone to manipulate the awesome power of quantum computing. The astronomical price of a quantum computer would not be a limitation because, for example, IBM is offering to the general public quantum computing via the cloud.

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