Lifeboat Foundation

Inside Ikea’s big bet on smart home tech via The Verge.

Off the coast of Curaçao, at a depth of 60 feet, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau is looking to create the world’s largest underwater research habitat.

Glycerol, used in the past as antifreeze for cars, is produced by a range of organisms from yeasts to vertebrates, some of which use it as an osmoprotectant—a molecule that prevents dangerous water loss in salty environments—while others use it as an antifreeze. Here, scientists from the University of Nevada and Miami University in Ohio show that two species of the single-celled green algae Chlamydomonas from Antarctica, called UWO241 and ICE-MDV, produce high levels of glycerol to protect them from osmotic water loss, and possibly also from freezing injury. Presently, only one other organism, an Arctic fish, is known to use glycerol for both purposes. Both species synthesize glycerol with enzymes encoded by multiple copies of a recently discovered ancient gene family. These results, published today in the open-access journal Frontiers in Plant Science, illustrate the importance of adaptations that allow life to not only survive but to thrive in extreme habitats.

The researchers collected both Chlamydomonas species from depths of 13 to 17 m, a region with a steep salinity gradient, in Lake Bonney, a permanently ice-covered lake in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Victoria Land, Antarctica. Previously, they showed that both species are remarkably adapted to their extreme habitat, with a photosynthetic apparatus adapted to cold, saline, and light-poor conditions, novel proteins, more fluid cell membranes that function at low temperatures, and ice-binding proteins that protect against freeze-thaw injury.

“Our overall goal is to understand how microorganisms survive in extreme environments. The Chlamydomonas species of Lake Bonney are well-suited for such studies because they are exposed to many extremes, including low light, low temperature, oxidative stress, and high salinity. The present results are the first to show that glycerol production by microorganisms, which is well-known in warm, salty environments, is also important in polar regions,” says corresponding author Dr. James Raymond, Adjunct Research Professor at the School of Life Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA.

As a child, you develop a sense of what “fairness” means. It’s a concept that you learn early on as you come to terms with the world around you. Something either feels fair or it doesn’t.

But increasingly, algorithms have begun to arbitrate fairness for us. They decide who sees housing ads, who gets hired or fired, and even who gets sent to jail. Consequently, the people who create them—software engineers—are being asked to articulate what it means to be fair in their code. This is why regulators around the world are now grappling with a question: How can you mathematically quantify fairness?

This story attempts to offer an answer. And to do so, we need your help. We’re going to walk through a real algorithm, one used to decide who gets sent to jail, and ask you to tweak its various parameters to make its outcomes more fair. (Don’t worry—this won’t involve looking at code!)

Artificial intelligence applications are popping up everywhere these days, from our Internet browsing to smart homes and self-driving cars. Now a group of researchers is launching a new AI-led study that will collect data from recently released prisoners. The ultimate goal of the project is to identify – and, ostensibly, one day eliminate – the psychological and physiological triggers that cause recidivism among parolees.

According to project-leads Marcus Rogers and Umit Karabiyik, the resulting data will assist them in conducting a forensic psychological analysis. While the monitoring will be gauged in intervals – not real-time – they believe it will help build a profile of the risky behaviors and stressful triggers that recent parolees face when returning to the outside world.

Corrinne Graham (Economic financial analyst, Space Renaissance USA) interviewed Gregg Maryniak, about his history, motivation and aims to inspire young generations to find their way to the outer space. Gregg is the co-founder, together with Peter Diamandis, of the X-Prize Foundation. The X-Prize is recognized, by the space community, as the initiative that triggered the New Space revolution, by demonstrating that the low cost access to space was feasible and mature. He was the Executive Director of the Space Studies Institute, founded by Gerard O’Neill in Chicago, US. He’s on the Board of Directors of the Singularity University and keeps on restlessly working to inspire and motivate youngs, students and public opinion at large, explaining why human expansion into space is needed and very urgent, in order not to miss our “launch window”. During the conversation, we acknowledged that we agree on many points, all of them primary relevant to the survival and continued progress of civilization. Namely the common appreciation for the O’Neill’s model, that gives priority and preference to artificial rotating structures – the “space colonies” – since they assure 1G artificial gravity. Also, we are 100% in tune about the extreme urgency of kicking-off civilian expansion into outer space, and the subsequent need to make people to understand it. The big risk – said Gregg — is to miss our launch window, the period in which social and economic conditions are favorable to begin really moving into space. When I asked him whether he thinks that humanity is doing everything that is to be done, and if we are in time, on our evolutionary road to space, his answer was a clear “NO”. So we understood that we also agree on the most urgent technology advances to be raised as priority: the enabling technologies, necessary to bring untrained civilians to travel, live and work in space. Namely low acceleration vehicles, protection against cosmic radiations, artificial gravity, green environments and artificial ecosystems in space habitats. Gregg is a great achievement indeed, in our SR Academy Mentorship Programme. After this first meeting, we’ll try to hold other ones, properly announced on social networks, with the target to bring the above discussion to large public opinion. Stay in tune! https://spacerenaissance.space/gregg-maryniak-interviewed-by…programme/

CHECK THE SPACE RENAISSANCE ACADEMY MENTORSHIP PROGRAM! https://spacerenaissance.space/the-space-renaissance-academy…programme/ Students: choose some theme(s) for your graduation theses or Ph.D https://spacerenaissance.space/themes-for-graduate-works/ Mentors: choose your favorite disciplines on which you can provide mentorship https://spacerenaissance.space/mentorship-disciplines/

What would it take to build this state-of-the-art space habitat?

In the first billion years, there was no oxygen on Earth. Life developed in an anoxic environment. Early bacteria probably obtained their energy by breaking down various substances by means of fermentation. However, there also seems to have been a kind of “oxygen-free respiration.” This was suggested by studies on primordial microbes that are still found in anoxic habitats today.

“We already saw ten years ago that there are genes in these microbes that perhaps encode for a primordial respiration enzyme. Since then, we—as well as other groups worldwide—have attempted to prove the existence of this respiratory enzyme and to isolate it. For a long time unsuccessfully because the complex was too fragile and fell apart at each attempt to isolate it from the membrane. We found the fragments, but were unable to piece them together again,” explains Professor Volker Müller from the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Bioenergetics at Goethe University.

Through hard work and perseverance, his doctoral researchers Martin Kuhns and Dragan Trifunovic then achieved a breakthrough in two successive doctoral theses. “In our desperation, we at some point took a heat-loving bacterium, Thermotoga maritima, which grows at temperatures between 60 and 90°C,” explains Trifunovic, who will shortly complete his doctorate. “Thermotoga also contains Rnf genes, and we hoped that the Rnf enzyme in this bacterium would be a bit more stable. Over the years, we then managed to develop a method for isolating the entire Rnf enzyme from the membrane of these bacteria.”

“We need to go to space to help us here on Earth. Satellites have played an enormous role in improving the state of the world, and will do even more”.

I’m often asked: ‘Why are you building satellites for space when there are so many problems to fix here on Earth?’ It’s a perfectly rational question. The short answer is that we need to go to space to help us here on Earth. Satellites have played an enormous role in improving the state of the world, and will do even more as an explosion of technology innovation enables large new fleets of small satellites to be deployed with radical new capabilities.

Continue reading “Space technology is improving our lives and making the world a better place. Here’s how” »