Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: government

71 percent of the Earth is covered in water, but only 3 percent of that is freshwater. The effective desalination of seawater at a mass scale would clearly be a world-changing achievement, celebrated the world over.

With that goal in mind, London-based Solar Water PLC recently signed an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government as part of the country’s clean future $500 billion “NEOM” project. The company is building the “first desalination plant with solar dome technology”, a CNN Arabia report (translated on Solar Water PLC’s website) explains.

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While there are plenty of companies using insects to manage waste, including Goterra, Better Origin and AgriProtein, Insectta is extracting more than agricultural products from black soldier flies. With funding from Trendlines Agrifood Fund and government grants, Insectta is procuring high-value biomaterials from the byproducts of these larvae.

In Singapore, the amount of generated food waste has increased 20% over the past decade. Startup Insectta is turning to maggots to take a bite out of the problem.

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As the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) continues to expand, Congress, academics, and advocacy organizations have all highlighted the importance of developing a comprehensive understanding of how it is used by federal agencies.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has surveyed 24 federal agencies about their use of FRT. The performance audit ran from April2020through August 2021. 16 of the 24 agencies reported using it for digital access or cybersecurity, such as allowing employees to unlock agency smartphones with it, six agencies reported using it to generate leads in criminal investigations, five reported using FRT for physical security, such as controlling access to a building or facility, and 10 agencies said they planned to expand its use through fiscal year 2023.

In addition, both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of State reported using FRT to identify or verify travelers within or seeking admission to the United States, identifying or verifying the identity of non-U.S. citizens already in the United States, and to research agency information about non-U.S. citizens seeking admission to the United States. For example, DHS’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection used its Traveler Verification Service at ports of entry to assist with verifying travelers’ identities. The Traveler Verification Service uses FRT to compare a photo taken of the traveler at a port of entry with existing photos in DHS holdings, which include photographs from U.S. passports, U.S. visas, and other travel documents, as well as photographs from previous DHS encounters.

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The launch next month of the first all-civilian mission to orbit is an ambitious test for a burgeoning space industry’s futuristic dream of sending many more ordinary people to space in the next few years.

Why it matters: Companies and nations envision millions of people living and working in space without having to become professional, government-backed astronauts. Those hopes are riding on SpaceX’s next crewed mission, called Inspiration4.

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Article at gnews reports on announcement by Dr. Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association Greenlight for Ivermectin in Japan. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Since Tokyo summer Olympic Game ended on August 8 2021, the urgent status of the pandemic as Japan is now in its worst surge of the COVID-19 pandemic since the onset of the crisis in such a megacity of 14 million. Most recently, a record number of new cases were reported at 20,140 on August 14. Deaths aren’t as high as successive waves of the pandemic from February2021to the end of May, but nerves are frayed with record numbers of infections. Dr. Ozaki, The chairman of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association, recently led an emergency press conference on August 13 Dr. Haruo Ozaki shared those 18,000 new infections are reported daily. However, the death count has eased as compared to previous surges.

How to deal with the current dilemma is a huge challenge to Japanese government and medical agencies? Fortunately, India has an excellent testimonial. Since April 28 India medical officials started providing Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to its massive population. As India is the major pharmaceutical manufacture in the world, they were ready for this massive drug distribution. Miraculously, COVID cases have plummeted quickly since then thanks to the new rules.

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After successful completion of its final tests, NASA

Established in 1,958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. It’s vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.”

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Can this be true?

Elon Musk has criticized fellow centibillionaire and space cowboy Jeff Bezos for filing lawsuits against the former’s aerospace company SpaceX.

Earlier this month, Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin sued NASA after it lost a critical government contract to put astronauts on the Moon to SpaceX. This has had the effect of delaying SpaceX’s own work on the project. And now, this week, Amazon has urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to dismiss newly-submitted plans by SpaceX to launch another cluster of satellites to power its satellite internet service Starlink.

Replying to a story about the latter complaint, Musk tweeted: “Turns out Besos [sic] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX …”

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The mRNA vaccine success story is one of the few positives to emerge from COVID-19. But these vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are only the tip of the iceberg in the coming RNA medical technology revolution.

Australia, including our newly established UNSW RNA Institute, is well-placed to take a leading role in this revolution. With its eyes firmly set on making NSW a global force in the RNA industry, the NSW Government is backing a new RNA Bioscience Alliance between all the NSW Universities as well as funding a $15 million RNA production network between some of the state’s leading research organizations to bootstrap pre-clinical RNA research. UNSW’s RNA Institute is a key part of this drive, and with a $25 million investment brings together world-leading expertise to support the state and national agenda.

So beyond mRNA vaccines, what are these RNA therapeutics on the horizon? And what is the secret sauce that finally got mRNA vaccines to work after many years of trying? To understand this, let’s first tackle what RNA is and how it is used in medicine.

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El Salvador began installing Bitcoin ATMs, allowing its citizens to convert the cryptocurrency into U.S. dollars and withdraw it in cash, as part of the government’s plan to make the token legal tender.

The government will install 200 of the teller machines to initially accompany its digital wallet called Chivo, a local slang term for ‘cool,’ President Nayib Bukele said on Twitter. Transactions will be commission free, he said, adding that there will also be 50 financial branches across the country for withdrawing or depositing money.

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