Lifeboat Foundation

Group Facetime. I think this means we are closer to platforms that can support Virtual Reality… #Holodeck

Apple today released iOS 12.1, the first major update to the iOS 12 operating system designed for the iPhone and the iPad. iOS 12.1 comes more than a month after the September release of iOS 12 and a few weeks after iOS 12.0.1, a bug fix update.

Continue reading “Apple Releases iOS 12.1 With eSIM Support, Real-Time Depth Control, Group FaceTime, New Emoji and More” »

Rip Kepler 🕊

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary.

Officials announced the Kepler Space Telescope’s demise Tuesday.

Continue reading “Kepler telescope dead after finding thousands of worlds” »

Yale-NUS researchers discover drug cocktail that increases lifespan…

A community of learning, founded by two great universities, in Asia, for the world.

The October Journal Club will be focusing on a new study in worms where a combination of compounds acted in synergy to almost double lifespan.

SUMMARY There is growing interest in pharmacological interventions directly targeting the aging process. Pharmacological interventions against aging should be efficacious when started in adults and, ideally, repurpose existing drugs. We show that dramatic lifespan extension can be achieved by targeting multiple, evolutionarily conserved aging pathways and mechanisms using drug combinations. Using this approach in C. elegans, we were able to slow aging and significantly extend healthy lifespan. To identify the mechanism of these drug synergies, we applied transcriptomics and lipidomics analysis. We found that drug interactions involved the TGF-b pathway and recruited genes related with IGF signaling. daf-2, daf-7, and sbp-1 interact upstream of changes in lipid metabolism, resulting in increased monounsaturated fatty acid content and this is required for healthy lifespan extension. These data suggest that combinations of drugs targeting distinct subsets of the aging gene regulatory network can be leveraged to cause synergistic lifespan benefits.

Up for it?

The Pentagon will line your pockets if you lend a hand.

As multiple research groups around the world race to build a scalable quantum computer, questions remain about how the achievement of quantum supremacy will be verified.

Quantum supremacy is the term that describes a quantum computer’s ability to solve a computational task that would be prohibitively difficult for any classical algorithm. It is considered a critical milestone in quantum computing, but because the very nature of quantum activity defies traditional corroboration, there have been parallel efforts to find a way to prove that quantum supremacy has been achieved.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have just weighed in by giving a leading practical proposal known as random circuit sampling (RCS) a qualified seal of approval with the weight of complexity theoretic evidence behind it. Random circuit sampling is the technique Google has put forward to prove whether or not it has achieved quantum supremacy with a 72-qubit computer chip called Bristlecone, unveiled earlier this year.

One of the main methods of producing hydrogen for fuel cells is to use artificial photosynthesis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but these devices still suffer from some efficiency issues. Now a new hybrid device may be able to recover some of the energy that would otherwise go to waste, by producing both hydrogen and electricity.

Before standardization, units of measurement were often manipulated by tyrants to cheat peasants and steal land.

It may soon be possible to diagnose Alzheimer’s in a matter of seconds using a noninvasive eye scanner that simply examines a person’s retina.