Lifeboat Foundation

In this post I outline my journey creating a dynamic NFT on the Ethereum blockchain with IPFS and discuss the possible use cases for scientific data. I do not cover algorithmic generation of static images (you should read Albert Sanchez Lafuente’s neat step-by-step for that) but instead demonstrate how I used Cytoscape.js, Anime.js and genomic feature data to dynamically generate visualizations/art at run time when NFTs are viewed from a browser. I will also not be providing an overview of Blockchain but I highly recommend reading Yifei Huang’s recent post: Why every data scientist should pay attention to crypto.

W h ile stuck home during the pandemic, I’m one of the 10 million that tried my hand at gardening on our little apartment balcony in Brooklyn. The Japanese cucumbers were a hit with our neighbors and the tomatoes were a hit with the squirrels but it was the peppers I enjoyed watching grow the most. This is what set the objective for my first NFT: create a depiction of a pepper that ripens over time.

How much of the depiction is visualization and how much is art? Well that’s in the eye of the beholder. When you spend your days scrutinizing data points, worshiping best practices and optimizing everything from memory usage to lunch orders it’s nice to take some artistic license and make something just because you like it, which is exactly what I’ve done here. The depiction is authentically generated from genomic data features but obviously this should not be viewed as any kind of serious biological analysis.

Many people reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. Lee McIntyre argues that anyone can and should fight back against science deniers.
Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/2jTiXCLzMv4
Lee’s book “How to Talk to a Science Denier” is out now: https://geni.us/leemcintyre.

“Climate change is a hoax—and so is coronavirus.” “Vaccines are bad for you.” Many people may believe such statements, but how can scientists and informed citizens convince these ‘science deniers’ that their beliefs are mistaken?

Continue reading “How to Talk to a Science Denier — with Lee McIntyre” »

AI can detect signals that are informative about mental health from questionnaires and brain scans.

A study published today by an interdisciplinary collaboration, directed by Denis Engemann from Inria, demonstrates that machine learning from large population cohorts can yield “proxy measures” for brain-related health issues without the need for a specialist’s assessment. The researchers took advantage of the UK Biobank, one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive biomedical databases, that contains detailed and secure health-related data on the UK population. This work is published in the open access journal GigaScience.

Mental health issues have been increasing worldwide, with the WHO determining that there has been a 13% increase in mental health conditions and substance abuse disorders between 2007 and 2017. The burden these diseases place on society is extensive, negatively impacting nearly every area of life: school, work, family, friends, and community engagement. Among the many issues impeding the ability of society to address these disorders is that diagnoses of such health issues requires specialists; the availability of which ranges drastically across the globe. The development of machine learning methodology for the purposes of facilitating mental-health assessments could provide a much needed additional means to help detect, prevent and treat such health issues.

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Papers referenced in the video:
Chocolate consumption and all-cause and cause-specific mortality in a US population: a post hoc analysis of the PLCO cancer screening trial.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34329196/

Continue reading “Chocolate Intake Is Associated With Reduced All-Cause And Cause-Specific Mortality Risk” »

Ask a manufacturing company what their current top headaches are, and supply chain disruptions and staff shortages will probably top the list. Vecna Robotics might have the solution for both.

Vecna Robotics develops autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) used in distribution, logistics, warehousing and manufacturing (the company first cut its teeth in hospitals and other health care facilities). Their secret sauce is the software; after all, explains founder and Chief Innovation Officer Daniel Theobald, robotics is 90–95% software. Vecna Robotics implants its software brains in existing equipment like forklifts and pallet trucks, making them autonomous – though the company does build some hardware of its own.

What sets Vecna Robotics apart is the combination of an ambitious vision with a pragmatic attitude, articulated in three key principles:

RENO, Nev. (KOLO) — Over the last 15 months, some of the world’s most advanced spinal care has taken place in Northern Nevada.

In July of 2,020 Spine Nevada’s Dr. James Lynch was the first surgeon in the country to use Augmedics Xvision in a community hospital. He’s now the first to reach 100 cases using the cutting-edge technology, which essentially allows surgeons to look through a patients’ skin using a pre-loaded CT scan and virtual headset.

“A long fusion that would’ve taken us an hour before can be done in about 15 minutes,” said Dr. Lynch. “The proof is in the pudding. The last 100 patients, most of them have done very well and benefited from this technology.”

So there is no practical application of Time Crystal for human cells?

Time crystal was conceived in the 1970s as an autonomous engine made of only clocks to explain the life-like features of a virus. Later, time crystal was extended to living cells like neurons. The brain controls most biological clocks that regenerate the living cells continuously. Most cognitive tasks and learning in the brain run by periodic clock-like oscillations. Can we integrate all cognitive tasks in terms of running clocks of the hardware? Since the existing concept of time crystal has only one clock with a singularity point, we generalize the basic idea of time crystal so that we could bond many clocks in a 3D architecture. Harvesting inside phase singularity is the key. Since clocks reset continuously in the brain–body system, during reset, other clocks take over. So, we insert clock architecture inside singularity resembling brain components bottom-up and top-down.

Researchers at Delft University of Technology have found a new way to cool radio waves all the way down to their quantum ground state. To do so, they used circuits that employ an analog of the so-called laser cooling technique that is frequently used to cool atomic samples. The device used a recently developed technique the researchers call photon pressure coupling, which is predicted to be of use in detecting ultra-weak magnetic resonance (MRI) signals or for quantum-sensing applications that can help the search for dark matter. The results have been published in Science Advances.

The radio waves we usually encounter in our daily lives, such as those that we listen to in our car or those that send signals to our baby monitors in our house, are hot: they contain noise that comes from the random motion of the atoms in the things they are emitted from and even in the antenna you are using to listen to them. This is one of the reasons why you hear static when you tune the radio in your car to a frequency that has no radio station.

I’m confused. At 34:20 he says he says people in clinical trials had there age reversed 2 years (I assume he is talking about thymus rejuvenation) and it is additive so people who had it 4 times went back 8 years. Ok. AND?! I mean am I missing something here? Is this not what we are after? I’m 50 now, so if I did it 13 times will I be 24 again?

My guest today is a revolutionary thinker and ground-breaking scientist who’s on a mission to make you younger. He’s Australian biologist and Harvard professor David Sinclair, author of Lifespan: Why We Age – And Why We Don’t Have To. David is one of the world’s leading scientific authorities on longevity, ageing and how to slow its effects.

Continue reading “HEALTH EXPERT Reveals The Secret To AGING IN REVERSE | David Sinclair” »