Lifeboat Foundation

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You’ve got the Lamborghini and the Learjet, the houses and quite possibly the palaces; Erdem designs your dresses and you’ve got heaps of diamonds. What next? Well, adornment can only take you so far: what good is that Lech heli-skiing pad when your knees are shot? What’s the point in building a multibillion-pound business when you’re unwittingly courting a heart attack? As technology evolves ever more rapidly, ultra high net worth individuals are turning their attention inward, investigating how to stall the ageing process, and spending serious money to load their dice against death.

Across the road from Harrods sits Omniya clinic, a calm, contemporary white space amid the hustle of Knightsbridge. At street level it is a luxuriously reimagined pharmacy, whose curated selection includes recent launches from Hollywood’s favourite ‘cosmeceutical’ brands Zo Skin Health and Dr Levy. ‘I wanted to create a place that brings the newest advancements in medical and regenerative health to London,’ says co-founder Danyal Kader, a former lawyer, radiant with bien-être. He was so depressed by the difficulty of finding the best medical treatment for his father, who suffers from a heart condition, that he decided to create his own one-stop conduit to wellness. ‘We optimise the lives our clients can lead, body, mind and soul.’ To this end, he has brought together a team of leading specialists who analyse the health of their clients in the most minute and sophisticated detail — a kind of space-age human MOT.

One of these is cellular ageing specialist Dr Mark Bonar. As his title suggests, Bonar is passionate about the very specific degradations that happen in the cells of the body as we age — and still more excited about the new ways he can use to slow such deterioration. Consider, for example, telomeres. ‘Telomeres are the caps on the ends of our DNA,’ Bonar explains. ‘A bit like the plastic on the end of a shoe lace, they prevent the ends from fraying. By measuring their length in the lab we can determine how well the body is ageing’ — for instance, if at 30, you show the wear and tear you’d expect in a 40-year-old. ‘The length can also inform you about your risk of various kinds of disease such as breast or bowel cancer.’

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According to international treaties, no country is allowed to own things like moons or asteroids. But what about a company?

A new bill would allow space mining companies to own pieces of space. Although they couldn’t own a whole asteroid, for example, the bill would ensure that space mining businesses would legally own the resources they extract from that asteroid.

Last week the bill passed in the Senate with a few amendments, and yesterday those amendments were accepted in the House of Representatives. Now the bill is off to the Oval Office, where space policy experts predict President Obama will sign it into law.

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Transparent walls and customized cabins may be ahead, according to Airbus.

If you think in-flight Wi-Fi and lie-flat seats are cutting edge, just wait until 2050. That’s when aircraft cabins will feature holographic pop-up gaming displays and seats that adjust to each passenger’s size and shape, according to Airbus. In its vision for the future, Airbus predicts that the cabin walls of planes will be transparent, providing amazing views of the earth. Those with vertigo could block the view with an opaque hologram around their seat. Themed zones will replace first, business and economy classes, so individuals could choose areas in which to relax, play games, interact with other passengers or hold business meetings with people on the ground. This could even top the flying car.

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“The subtitle to this post is a variation of William Gibson’s famous remark: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” An obvious follow up question is: if the future is already here, where can I find it?”

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“Companies around the world are bracing themselves for an avalanche of cyber security regulation, as governments scramble to introduce rules forcing corporate groups to build stronger defences against catastrophic hacks.”

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“For those struggling to understand what Apple is up to, it might be best to imagine the Apple logo as a giant, rose gold-colored apple sculpture that’s being polished beyond perfection, to some sort of ideal, a level of quality that is so undeniable that no competitor dares forget it.”

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Using a touch-screen ordering station instead of speaking to a human while ordering a Panini at Panera is in the imminent future, reports Business Insider.

According to Panera founder and CEO Ron Shaich, a robot revolution will take over companies as labor prices increase and what he calls “digital utilization” goes up, according to the report.

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The local delivery market is worth approximately £150bn in the UK alone. This includes parcel and delivery companies (20 pc) and personal shopping trips by people (80 pc). Starship said that robot deliveries are potentially five to fifteen times cheaper than current “human-powered” delivery services.

“It does not take the whole delivery chain from an Amazon warehouse to your doorstep, it only takes the last few miles. But right now the last few miles are the most difficult part for the delivery vans. They need to find parking spaces and so forth, so our robot is taking care of that,” said Mr Heinla.

“For the large e-commerce companies it helps to reduce the costs. For the local businesses it opens up new possibilities, allowing people to order deliveries over the internet rather than coming to the store physically.”

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