Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: existential risks – Page 59

The nuclear bombs and missiles market is set to witness growth in this decade as market capitalization will reach $126 billion, Allied Market Research said in a recent report.

Back in 1994, Ukraine had signed on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and declared itself a non-nuclear state. Even after the annexation of Crimea, the country remained committed to its non-nuclear status and found itself at a disadvantage with Russia threatening to attack its borders. Given that the Ukrainian conflict has continued unabated for over a month now, it is likely that countries will move toward nuclear weapons adversaries. Although a nuclear war would be catastrophic for one and all, the weapon serves as a good deterrence measure during periods of uncertainty.

Read more | >

Back in 1,859, long before the internet, a massive geoelectrical storm knocked out the telegraph systems in the world. Reports were given of telegraph operators being shocked, the paper catching fire, and the equipment being operated without the batteries being connected. This was caused by the massive surge of electrical power caused by the storm. These storms occur when a bubble of superheated gas from the sun hits the earth. These storms cause massive damage to our solar system. This occurrence causes a massive surge in electrical activity and damage. Scientists studying these events have concluded that they occur every 500 years. The event in 1,859, known as the Carrington Event, was the most recent. This could mean that in the year 2,359, another storm would wipe out the entire internet.

The Carrington Event was the largest recorded geoelectrical storm, but it wasn’t the first to happen. An even bigger storm happened in our solar system in A.D. 774, based on readings taken from ice core samples in the Antarctic. The solar flare that was launched from the sun during this event in the Antarctic caused the fastest and biggest rise in carbon-14. Carbon-14 is an isotope of Carbon, which is created from the sun and contains highly radioactive material. Though the Carrington Event was measured via observatories at the time, scientists were able to read the rings in the ice taken from the Antarctic event, which is now known as the Miyake event. Based on those readings, the Miyake event was even greater than the Carrington event. The readings of the ice showed a 14% increase in carbon-14. The Carrington event only saw an increase of less than 1% in carbon-14 readings.

Scientists have a rating system that measures the level of geoelectrical storms based on a scale of 1 to 5. The geoelectrical storms are then given a designation of G1 to G5 based on their intensity. The Carrington event was rated a G5. That would have meant the Miyake event was even more catastrophic in our solar system. A storm that was three times smaller than the Carrington event occurred in 1989. This event took place in Quebec, Canada, and caused the full collapse of the Hydro-Quebec electrical grid. The geoelectrical storm was so powerful that it also caused damage to a circuit breaker in New Jersey. This resulted in the grid’s circuit breakers going off, which caused five million people being without power for nine hours. Should an electrical storm like this occur in currently, the damage would be immeasurable.

Read more | >

Earthlings 800 years from now can breathe a little easier.

A fresh assessment of a distantly risky asteroid brings good news: it’s even less of a threat than astronomers had feared.

The chances of an asteroid dubbed 1950 DA crashing into Earth were always tiny and long in the future: As of 2015, scientists had calculated that the object had a 1 in 8,000 chance of impacting Earth in the year 2880. But a new analysis released on Tuesday (March 29) knocks the asteroid out of the top spot of NASA’s list of known asteroids that are most potentially hazardous to Earth.

Read more | >

Glutamate decarboxylase 67-kDa isoform (GAD67), which is encoded by the GAD1 gene, is one of the key enzymes that produce GABA. The reduced expression of GAD67 has been linked to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Additionally, the excitatory glutamatergic system plays an important role in the development of this disorder. Animal model studies have revealed that chronic blockade of NMDA-type glutamate receptors can cause GABAergic dysfunction and long-lasting behavioral abnormalities. Based on these findings, we speculated that Gad1 haplodeficiency combined with chronic NMDA receptor blockade would lead to larger behavioral consequences relevant to schizophrenia in a rat model. In this study, we administered an NMDAR antagonist, MK-801 (0.2 mg/kg), to CRISPR/Cas9-generated Gad1+/− rats during adolescence to test this hypothesis. The MK-801 treated Gad1+/− rats showed a shorter duration in each rearing episode in the open field test than the saline-treated Gad1+/+ rats. In contrast, immobility in the forced swim test was increased and fear extinction was impaired in Gad1+/− rats irrespective of MK-801 treatment. Interestingly, the time spent in the center region of the elevated plus-maze was significantly affected only in the saline-treated Gad1+/− rats. Additionally, the MK-801-induced impairment of the social novelty preference was not observed in Gad1+/− rats. These results suggest that the synergistic and additive effects of Gad1 haplodeficiency and NMDA receptor blockade during adolescence on the pathogenesis of schizophrenia may be more limited than expected. Findings from this study also imply that these two factors mainly affect negative or affective symptoms, rather than positive symptoms.

γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system (Obata, 2013). Post-mortem brain studies on schizophrenia have shown that GABAergic disturbances are part of the pathophysiology of the disorder (Lewis and Sweet, 2009). In particular, the expression level of the GABA-synthesizing enzyme glutamate decarboxylase 67-kDa isoform (GAD67) is lower in the cerebral cortex of patients with schizophrenia than in that of healthy subjects (Guidotti et al., 2000; Volk et al., 2000; Hashimoto et al., 2003; Hashimoto et al., 2008; Curley et al., 2011). GAD67 is encoded by the GAD1 gene, whose SNPs are also suggested to be risk factors for schizophrenia (Addington et al., 2005). We previously reported that Gad1−/− rats displayed some schizophrenia-relevant behaviors, including working memory, which is important for the functional outcome of schizophrenia (Fujihara et al., 2020a).

Read more | >

We — educators, scientists, psychologists — started an educational non-profit Earthlings Hub, to help out the kids, affected by the war. We talk to them about STEM, but also about the complexity of the world, philosophy of science, future, and existential risks. We also offer psychological help to their parents. Our advisory board includes NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, lead AI researcher Joscha Bach, Professor of Learning and Cognition, author of Netlogo language Uri Wilensky, lead early math educator Maria Droujkova and others. Please share, participate, donate! https://www.earthlingshub.org/

Read more | >

It claims the ICBM is the largest ever launched.

Reports are in that North Korea have just test-launched their new” Hwasong-17” intercontinental ballistic missile. The longest-range missile platform developed to date by the country, it has been developed, by all accounts, to help “contain” U.S. military threats.

The test launch was guided by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the 24th of March 2022.

Read more | >

Wed, Mar 23 at 10 PM CDT.

GUEST SPEAKERS:

Kelly fast, near-earth object observations program manager, NASA

Lindley johnson, planetary defense officer, NASA

VIRTUAL ASTRONOMY TALK:

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun like the planets, but with orbits that can bring them into Earth’s neighborhood. An asteroid impact is the only natural disaster that could be prevented, so early identification of any potential impact threat is key. NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to manage its ongoing mission of planetary defense – from projects to discover, track, and characterize NEOs to the first test mission of an asteroid deflection technique with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). Hear the latest on the DART mission and on NASA’s efforts to find asteroids… before they find us!

Continue reading “Planetary Defense at NASA” | >

Is he planning to burn everything down if he can’t win?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly ordered a nuclear war evacuation drill amid the war in Ukraine. A nuclear war evacuation drill is the process in which people are taken to safe places to prepare for the eventuality of nuclear war. The purported directive comes amid fears of President Putin resorting to extreme measures to force a decisive victory in the Ukraine war.
#russia #russiaukrainewar #nuclearwar.

00:00 — Introduction.
00:28 — Putin Orders A Nuclear War Evacuation Drill.
01:06 — Kremlin Generals ‘Shocked’ By Order.
02:21 — Putin’s Nuclear Threats And Speculation About Family.
04:03 — Russia’s Hypersonic Missile Attacks In Ukraine.

Follow CRUX on Instagram (@crux.india): https://bit.ly/3qSFx1K
Follow CRUX on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2Lte7iF
#GetCloserToTheNews with latest headlines on politics, sports and entertainment on news18.com https://bit.ly/2Y4QccL

Also watch:

Continue reading “Russia May Hold Nuclear Evacuation Drill l After Hypersonic Weapons, Putin To Use Nukes In Ukraine?” | >

De-extinction grabbed our imagination in the 90s with Jurassic Park. Scientists have since asked: how possible is it?

According to a new study, nearly impossible. But wait—it’s not all bad news. While bringing back a faithful copy of an extinct species may be impossible, we could bring back a hybrid species that’s a genetic mix between an extinct species and its modern descendant.

Published in Current Biology, the study eschews the grandiose mammoth, instead focusing on a tiny test case: the Christmas Island rat. Hefty in size and loudly vocal when invading docked ships and their cargo, the rodents were last seen in the 1900s. With a stroke of luck, the team recovered DNA from two well-preserved museum samples and compared them against a close relative: the Norway brown rat, a popular lab model for genetic studies today.

Read more | >