Lifeboat Foundation

What makes a better Internet possible? At Orchid Labs, our goal is to ensure that every person on Earth can have access to an open, decentralized, and uncensored Internet. We believe a better Internet is one that isn’t controlled by the few, but open to all.

Currently, Internet access for the majority of the people on Earth is censored and monitored. Because of this, many Internet users are blocked from freely communicating, collaborating, and accessing information. The current centralized system, which limits our ability to communicate and learn — while also harvesting and selling our personal data — is far from the full potential of what the internet could be and strays from the original intention of its creators.

That’s why we’ve launched the Orchid Protocol, an open-source overlay network that uses excess bandwidth on top of the existing Internet to ensure that people — no matter where they live on our planet — can have unrestricted access to information and collaboration. Orchid’s protocol combines surplus bandwidth, state-of-the-art encryption, and a decentralized infrastructure enabling any Internet user to participate and exchange bandwidth for payment in peer-to-peer transactions using Orchid tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

Atherosclerosis is the number one killer in the world, and science is working on solutions to combat this age-related disease. A new mouse study has shown that the drug trodusquemine can melt away the accumulated arterial plaques that lead to heart attacks and strokes.

What is Atherosclerosis?

Atherosclerosis is an age-related disease in which toxic, oxidized cholesterol deposits in the bloodstream produce inflammation in arterial walls. This causes macrophages to swarm to these fatty deposits to clear up this toxic waste.

Ozone is a colorless combination of three oxygen atoms. High in the atmosphere, about 7 to 25 miles above the Earth, ozone shields Earth from ultraviolet rays that cause skin cancer, crop damage and other problems.

Scientists at the United Nation a few years ago determined that without the 1987 treaty there would have been an extra 2 million skin cancer cases by 2030. They said overall the ozone layer is beginning to recover because of the phase-out of chemicals used in refrigerants and aerosol cans.

Continue reading “Ozone hole over Antarctica shrinks to smallest peak since 1988” »

Editor’s Note: The Falling Walls Conference is an annual, global gathering of forward thinking individuals from 80 countries organized by the Falling Walls Foundation. Each year, on November 9—the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—20 of the world’s leading scientists are invited to Berlin to present their current breakthrough research. The aim of the conference is to address two questions: Which will be the next walls to fall? And how will that change our lives? The author of the following essay is speaking at this year’s Falling Walls gathering.

This is more than just another industrial revolution—it is something that transcends humankind and even biology.

• By Jurgen Schmidhuber on November 2, 2017

Particles known as “bottom mesons” are not decaying in the way the Standard Model of particle physics says they should, and it’s causing some excitement.

We wouldn’t blame you for thinking that Julius Horsthuis spent weeks designing and animating his sci-fi short, Fraktaal, using 3D software. But as the artist reveals, “It so happens that I’m a lazy animator.” So he instead relied on complex mathematical fractal patterns to automatically generate the alien worlds and cities visited in his film.

What if we could stop aging forever?

Thanks so much for help with the video to Lifespan.io. Check them out and learn how you can get active here:

Continue reading “How to Cure Aging – During Your Lifetime?” »

The folks at Kurzgesagt have created another great video about aging and thanks to them for giving us the opportunity to work with them in creating this video. If you would like to support our work check out (https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/join-us-become-a-lifespan-hero/).

The video today discusses the near future technologies that are changing how we treat aging and could potentially bring it under medical control soon. It is important to discuss this topic now and its great to see popular channels like Kurzgesagt are keen to get involved in that dialogue.

The CRISPR-Cas9 system has revolutionised gene-editing, but cutting DNA isn’t all it can do. From turning gene expression on and off to fluorescently tagging particular sequences, this animation explores some of the exciting possibilities of CRISPR.

Download a poster on ‘The expanding CRISPR toolbox’ here: https://www.nature.com/posters/crisprtoolbox

Continue reading “Gene editing and beyond” »