Lifeboat Foundation

The possibilities were almost limitless, so why does everything line up?

A potential new biomarker of aging has been discovered by researchers. This substance, found in urine, indicates oxidative damage that could be used to determine how much someone has aged biologically.

Why do we need biomarkers of ageing?

It is important for us to develop accurate and reliable biomarkers of aging, as these can show us how much we have aged biologically rather than chronologically. If we know how we are aging on a biological level, it can help to inform our healthcare strategy.

Neural networks are powerful things, but they need a lot of juice. Engineers at MIT have now developed a new chip that cuts neural nets’ power consumption by up to 95 percent, potentially allowing them to run on battery-powered mobile devices.

Smartphones these days are getting truly smart, with ever more AI-powered services like digital assistants and real-time translation. But typically the neural nets crunching the data for these services are in the cloud, with data from smartphones ferried back and forth.

That’s not ideal, as it requires a lot of communication bandwidth and means potentially sensitive data is being transmitted and stored on servers outside the user’s control. But the huge amounts of energy needed to power the GPUs neural networks run on make it impractical to implement them in devices that run on limited battery power.

Continue reading “Putting AI in Your Pocket: MIT Chip Cuts Neural Network Power Consumption” »

We’re working to make AI accessible by providing lessons, tutorials and hands-on exercises for people at all experience levels. Filter the resources below to start learning, building and problem-solving.

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk took to Twitter this week to decry the slow and costly pace of U.S. infrastructure projects, and thus a challenge — or boast — was born: The Boring Co. could build a tunnel across the San Francisco Bay far cheaper and far faster than current available estimates.

Musk was pointing to a San Francisco Chronicle editorial favoring a new Transbay Tube for public transportation over another cross-bay bridge to alleviate chronic traffic woes and public-transportation overcrowding in the Bay Area. The editorial cited a starting price of $12 billion for the new tunnel.

Probably about a tenth of the cost and a fifth of the time— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2018

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s latest Boring Co. boast: A San Francisco Bay tunnel at 1/10th the cost” »

Biohacking future of avoiding doctors?

This man claims experimental gene therapy cured his lactose intolerance.

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Temperature changes large and small are happening around us all the time, and scientists have come up with a machine that can convert those fluctuations into electricity, potentially powering sensors and communication devices almost out of thin air.

The energy harvesting is done through what’s called a thermal resonator: a device that captures heat on one side and radiates it over to the other. As both sides try and reach equilibrium, the energy can be caught using the process of thermoelectrics.

According to the team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the new thermal resonator could keep remote sensors or any off-grid devices powered up for years, just by using temperature swings – like the natural ones between night and day, for instance.

Continue reading “MIT Engineers Have Built a Device That Pulls Electricity Out of Thin Air” »

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador (AP) — It’s the biggest shark — and the biggest fish — in the sea, often found roaming in warm waters around the globe with its huge mouth agape in search of dinner.

Yet despite its hulking appearance, the whale shark has only tiny, almost useless teeth and is sometimes so docile that entire boatloads of people can swim alongside the enigmatic, spotted beast. It’s also one of the least understood animals in the oceans.