Lifeboat Foundation

Energy is a critical resource that powers our homes and businesses, and also supports every facet of the U.S. economy and our nation’s security. As technology advances and we become more connected, the likelihood that there will be a successful cyber or physical attack on critical infrastructure increases.

This month we recognize National Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Month, which is a great time to reinforce that our nation’s electric companies are working across the industry and with our government partners to protect the energy grid and ensure that customers have access to the safe and reliable energy they need. We also are focusing on strategies to mitigate the potential impact of an attack and to accelerate recovery should an incident occur.

We know that cyberattacks constantly are evolving and increasing in sophistication. As the vice president for security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the association that represents all U.S. investor-owned electric companies, I have a deep appreciation for how any threat to the energy grid endangers our communities and the national and economic security of our country.

As the threat of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure such as power grids ramps up, the Securing Energy Infrastructure Act (SEIA) is taking technology back to its retro roots. But is it a good idea?

New Delhi: Six central forensic laboratories in the country will soon be upgraded for carrying out efficient and scientific investigation in serious and heinous crimes, officials said on Sunday.

The central forensic science laboratories (CFSLs) which will be upgraded with capacity enhancement are located at Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Pune and Guwahati.

“The Ministry of Home Affairs has decided to enhance the capacity of six CFSLs under the Directorate of Forensic Science Services in the area of forensic psychology involving external experts,” an official said.

Human-animal hybrids are set to be developed at the University of Tokyo after the Japanese government recently lifted a ban on the controversial stem-cell research.

Hiromitsu Nakauchi—director for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Tokyo and team leader at Stanford’s Nakauchi Lab—is the first to receive approval for the questionable experiments which will attempt to grow human cells in rat and mouse embryos before being brought to term in a surrogate animal.

Despite many feeling that such studies are the equivalent of playing God, scientists say that the objective is far from sinister. It’s theorized that developing animals with organs constructed from human cells will create organs that can then be used for transplants in humans, cutting the long organ donation waitlists.

Approval could arrive in as few as six months.

At the start of this decade, the federal government called out consumer DNA testing as a burgeoning scam industry. Little did we know how it would explode in popularity.

In 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published an investigative report that bashed consumer DNA test companies for misleading the public. It accused them of deceptively claiming their products could predict the odds of developing more than a dozen medical conditions; some even went as far to offer equally dubious dietary supplements. The report had followed a similar lambasting of the industry by the GAO in 2006.

The American X-plane series has a long and storied history stretching all the way back to the Bell X-1 that made supersonic flight a reality. NASA, the Air Force, and other parts of the government have used X-planes to explore the flight mechanics of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), movable wings, and much more. Now, NASA is working on the first manned X-plane in decades, the all-electric X-57 Maxwell.

NASA started working on the X-57 in 2015, but it’s not building its electric plane from the ground up. The team started with a Tecnam P2006T twin-engine propeller plane, which it is modifying in stages. NASA hasn’t flown the aircraft yet, but it has deemed the X-57 ready for its public debut. The press was allowed to view the X-57 last week at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards Air Force Base.

The X-57 is currently in its “Mod II” configuration, which is the first featuring entirely electric flight hardware. The plane has electric cruise motors where two combustion motors were in the original aircraft. Mod III and IV will complete the X-57’s transformation from a noisy combustion plane to a quieter, more efficient electric one.

“Demonstrate That Top Financial and Tech Corporations Are Committed to Longevity”

This week two Landmark International Longevity Summits in London attracted the attention of scientists, government officials, major financial corporations, insurance companies, investment banks, and technology companies from around the world. The Landmark AI for Longevity Summit and the First International Longevity Policy and Governance Summit at King’s College London are expected to become the world-leading forums for the Longevity Industry.

There’s reason to think fruits of the collaboration may interest the military. The Pentagon’s cloud strategy lists four tenets for the JEDI contract, among them the improvement of its AI capabilities. This comes amidst its broader push to tap tech-industry AI development, seen as far ahead of the government’s.

Microsoft’s $10 billion Pentagon contract puts the independent artificial-intelligence lab OpenAI in an awkward position.