Lifeboat Foundation

A Navy SEAL, broad-chested and strongly built, floats peacefully on the water, as his recent deployment to a war-torn country becomes a distant memory.

Sealed inside a pitch-black sensory deprivation tank in the Mind Gym at Navy SEALs headquarters in Norfolk, Va., electrodes attached to his head, he has reached an altered state of consciousness referred to as “ecstasis” or “stepping outside oneself.”

It’s a state achieved by many others throughout time. High-performance athletes are in ecstasis when they ski down huge mountains or surf giant waves. Monks attain it after years of meditation. Mystics feel it when they have visions. And the US government uses it to try to reset their most elite warriors after brutal battles abroad.

Continue reading “Science can help you reach enlightenment -- but will it mess with your head?” »

Gets too advanced for me, but still interesting.

As the world transitions to a low-carbon energy future, near-term, large-scale deployment of solar power will be critical to mitigating climate change by midcentury. Climate scientists estimate that the world will need 10 terawatts (TW) or more of solar power by 2030—at least 50 times the level deployed today. At the MIT Photovoltaics Research Laboratory (PVLab), teams are working both to define what’s needed to get there and to help make it happen. “Our job is to figure out how to reach a minimum of 10 TW in an economically and environmentally sustainable way through technology innovation,” says Tonio Buonassisi, associate professor of mechanical engineering and lab director.

Their analyses outline a daunting challenge. First they calculated the growth rate of solar required to achieve 10 TW by 2030 and the minimum sustainable price that would elicit that growth without help from subsidies. Current technology is clearly not up to the task. “It would take between $1 trillion and $4 trillion of additional debt to just push current technology into the marketplace to do the job, and that’d be hard,” says Buonassisi. So what needs to change?

Continue reading “Mechanical engineers leading effort to detect defects that reduce efficiency” »

In Brief

• Canada is spending millions to ensure all citizens have access to home internet with download speeds of at least 50Mbps and upload speeds of 10Mbps in the next 10 to 15 years.
• At a time when so many things we used to do in person or via a physical medium are done digitally, living without the internet inherently puts a person at a disadvantage.

Canada is making some major moves to ensure that every citizen in the country has access to fast broadband speeds. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced this week that it was setting up a fund of $750 million available over the next five years to expand internet access.

The CRTC is implementing a standard of universal availability of home internet with download speeds of at least 50Mbps and upload speeds of 10Mbps with the option of unlimited data. In doing so, the Canadian government is declaring that broadband internet is a basic telecommunications service, akin to phone service.

Continue reading “Canada to Spend $750 Million to Ensure All Citizens Have Internet Access” »

Last week, the US Patent and Trademarks Office ruled on the most-watched patent proceeding of the 21st century: the fight for Crispr-Cas9. The decision was supposed to declare ownership of the rights to the revolutionary gene editing technique. But instead, the patent judge granted sorta-victories to each of the rival parties—a team from UC Berkeley and another with members from both MIT and Harvard University’s Broad Institute. That’s great for those groups (and their spin-off, for-profit gene editing companies with exclusive licenses). But it leaves things a bit murkier for anyone else who wants to turn a buck with gene editing.

The Crispr discoverers now have some authority over who gets to use Crispr, and for what. And while exclusive licenses aren’t rare in biotech, the scope of these do stand out: They cover all the 20,000-plus genes in the human genome. So this week, legal experts are sending a formal request to the Department of Health and Human Services. They want the federal government to step in and bring Crispr back to the people.

Crispr is new, but patent laws governing genetic engineering date back decades. In 1980, shortly after the Supreme Court ruled that genetically engineered microbes were patentable, Congress passed something called the Bayh-Doyle Act. The law gives permission for universities to patent—and license—anything their researchers invented with public funds, making it easier to put those inventions back in the hands of citizens.

UAE will be a major player in technology innovation of the future as they like Israel, Africa, Eastern Europe, and various parts of Asia such as the current ones of China and India as well as Australia and Vietnam will be the new emerging leaders in tech innovation. We’re entering a period of radical change and a complete overhaul of science (including medical) and technology thanks to the realities and opportunities of Quantum. The following announcement shows US UAE’s own commitment to being a leader and I promise you there is much more to come from these amazing hotspots of innovation and invention.

Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, issued directives to Mohammad Bin Rashid Space Centre, MBRSC, to lead the Mars 2117 project and prepare a 100-year plan for its implementation.

As per his directives, the centre’s plan will focus on preparing specialised national cadres and developing their capabilities in the fields of space science, research, artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced space technologies.

Continue reading “VP tasks Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre to lead Mars 2117 project” »

The Los Angeles Times covered my libertarian campaign for CA governor. I do still support a libertarian version of a basic income due to coming automation—and the fact it will swallow welfare and other government programs, essentially reducing the size of government while distributing money to all residents.

Essential Politics: Lawmaker says California needs an estate tax if the federal version is scrapped, Sanders thanks supporters in Los Angeles

This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. Here’s what we’re watching right now:

Continue reading “This California gubernatorial candidate wants state-funded ‘universal basic income’ for everyone” »

The Russian government has given S7 airlines a license for space operations. The company plans its first launch by the year’s end.

“As academics we can sign petitions, but it is not enough.”

As academics we can sign petitions, but it is not enough. Scott Aaronson wrote very eloquently about this issue after the initial ban was announced (see also Terry Tao). My department has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of applicants in general and not just from Iran. We were just informed that we can no longer make Teaching Assistant offers for students who are unlikely to get a visa to come here.

The Department of Homeland Security has demonstrated its blatant disregard for moral norms. Why should we trust its scientific norms? What confidence do we have that funding will not be used in some coercive way? What does it say to our students when we ask them to work for DHS? Yes, the government is big, but at some point the argument that it’s mostly the guy at the top who is bad but the rest of the agency is still committed to good science becomes just too hard to swallow. I decided that I can’t square that circle. Each one of us should think hard about whether we want to.

Continue reading “Why I Will No Longer Do Research Sponsored By The Department Of Homeland Security” »

There have been numerous dark net-related prosecutions in Europe in the past few months. The first country to wage a war against dark web criminals was Germany, where the government decided to provide more manpower to eliminate all kinds of illegal dark net activity. The Germans started focusing on the dark web shortly after the Münich shooting, which happened on July 22, 2016. Investigators discovered that the gunman acquired his weapon through a vendor on a dark net marketplace, who had been busted after the tragic incident.

By seeing the number of prosecutions, Austria is following the German example. A national news outlet, tips.at, conducted an interview with Chief Inspector Erwin Eilmannsberger, a police officer from Schärding, about the increasing dark net crime in his district.

Continue reading “Dark Net Crime In Increase: Interview With Austrian Chief Inspector” »