Lifeboat Foundation

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) will set up seven new Research Units and one new Clinical Research Unit. This was decided by the Senate of the DFG in its summer session during the DFG Annual Meeting in Mainz. In addition to the already established Units, another Research Unit is now in a position to start work. This Unit is funded jointly by the DFG and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The DFG Senate had already supported this Unit in March 2016 and approval has now been obtained from the Austrian partner organisation.

The research collaborations will offer researchers the possibility of pursuing current and pressing issues in their research areas and establishing innovative work directions. Clinical Research Units are also characterised by the close connection between research and clinical work. The maximum funding duration of Research Units and Clinical Research Units is two periods of three years. In the initial funding period, the nine new groups will receive approximately €23 million in total. As a result, the DFG will be funding a total of 190 Research Units and 19 Clinical Research Units.

The new Research Units.

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Image source: Google.

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Google’s parent, Alphabet, Inc., held its annual shareholder meeting earlier this month. The gem of the event for investors was when Executive ChairmanEric Schmidtdiscussed the “most interesting” tech innovations that hebelieves are going to take off over the next five to ten years.

Continue reading “Google Billionaire: 7 Game-Changing Tech Innovations to Take Off in 5 to 10 Years” »

One of the latest innovations in the 3D printing world comes from a preteen who created a 3D printer using a 3D –rinting pen and a Lego Mindstorms EV3.

I find this article extremely laughable. Of course, humans do not know everything around science why we do research, incubate, and evolve future technologies as well as continue to do innovation and discovery.

What We Cannot Know. By Marcus du Sautoy. 4th Estate; 440 pages; £20. To be published in America by Viking Penguin in April 2017.

“EVERYONE by nature desires to know,” wrote Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. But are there limits to what human beings can know? This is the question that Marcus du Sautoy, the British mathematician who succeeeded Richard Dawkins as the Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford University, explores in “What We Cannot Know”, his fascinating book on the limits of scientific knowledge.

Seokheun “Sean” Choi, assistant professor of computer and electrical engineering at Binghamton University, along with two of his students, developed the device, a microbial fuel cell that runs on the bacteria available in a few drops of dirty water. They report on their invention in a new paper published online in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics (“A disposable power source in resource-limited environments: A paper-based biobattery generating electricity from wastewater”).

A new disposable battery that folds like an origami ninja star could power biosensors and other small devices for use in challenging field conditions.

A new wave of Chinese outbound investment has arrived in Israel, led by a younger generation of Chinese investors and entrepreneurs. This generation is more technology savvy than its predecessors, more focused on innovation, and will have a deep and lasting impact on Israel’s startup ecosystem.

Earlier waves of Chinese international investment were focused on manufacturing, natural resources and infrastructure. They were dominated by state-backed enterprises targeting large-scale projects and companies, often in Africa and frontier economies. Now, with outbound investment led by entrepreneurial investors who are digital natives, the emphasis is changing, and that is where Israel stands to benefit.

This generation is characterized by technology pioneers such as Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei, Kuang-Chi and Xiaomi, among the world’s most successful tech companies, on par with Western counterparts such as Amazon, Cisco and Samsung. What they see in Israel is an unmatched opportunity to learn and benefit from the unique Israeli technology ecosystem that is fast, dynamic, and lean.

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So, all of this nextgen technology is wonderful; I truly see the vision and how to make it happen over time. However, what about the native people of the countries where this innovation and advancement is occurring? Are they getting the opportunity to be a part of the innovation story? Or, are they being left behind?

At Microsoft, we established many programs and outreach programs to engage many of the Native Americans across the US; I would like to encourage others to think about how can more be done to include the indigenous people of your countries to be part of the innovation/ evolution story. It truly is rewarding to so many.

The first Native Youth My Brother’s Keeper Hackathon saw students produce several games, apps.

Continue reading “New Mexico hackathon provides template for Native STEM engagement” »

Researchers from the University of Bristol have used acoustics to make gauntlets that are able to levitate particles.

It seems that Earth is closer to Timelord technology than ever—particularly after a team of researchers from the University of Bristol in England unveiled their latest invention: the GauntLev.

The GauntLev functions similar to Doctor Who’s infamous sonic screwdriver. Well, almost. Timelord sonic screwdrivers can pick locks and disarm weapons, scan matter, and do a bunch of other cool stuff. Earthling sonic screwdrivers can levitate objects using sound waves.

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“So there came a time in which the ideas, although accumulated very slowly, were all accumulations not only of practical and useful things, but great accumulations of all types of prejudices, and strange and odd beliefs.
Then a way of avoiding the disease was discovered. This is to doubt that what is being passed from the past is in fact true, and to try to find out ab initio again from experience what the situation is, rather than trusting the experience of the past in the form in which it is passed down. And that is what science is: the result of the discovery that it is worthwhile rechecking by new direct experience, and not necessarily trusting the [human] race[’s] experience from the past. I see it that way. That is my best definition…Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.“
–Richard P Feynman, What is Science? (1968)[1]

TruthSift.com is a platform designed to support and guide individuals or crowds to rationality, and make them smarter collectively than any unaided individual or group. (Free) Members use TruthSift to establish what can be established, refute what can’t be, and to transparently publish the demonstrations. Anyone can browse the demonstrations and learn what is actually known and how it was established. If they have a rational objection, they can post it and have it answered.

Whether in scientific fields such as climate change or medical practice, or within the corporate world or political or government debate, or on day to day factual questions, humanity hasn’t had a good method for establishing rational truth. You can see this from consequences we often fail to perceive:
Peer reviewed surveys agree: A landslide majority of medical practice is *not* supported by science [2,3,4]. Scientists are often confused about the established facts in their own field [5]. Within fields like climate science and vaccines, that badly desire consensus, no true consensus can be reached because skeptics raise issues that the majority brush aside without an established answer (exactly what Le Bon warned of more than 100 years ago[6]). Widely consulted sources like Wikipedia are reported to be largely paid propaganda on many important subjects [7], or the most popular answer rather than an established one [8]. Quora shows you the most popular individual answer, generated with little or no collaboration, and often there is little documentation of why you should believe it. Existing systems for crowd sourced wisdom largely compound group think, rather than addressing it. Existing websites for fact checking give you someone’s point of view.

Corporate or government planning is no better. Within large organizations, where there is inevitably systemic motivation to not pass bad news up, leadership needs active measures to avoid becoming clueless as to the real problems [9]. Corporate or government plans are subject to group think, or takeover by employee or other interests competing with the mission. Individuals who perceive mistakes have no recourse capable of rationally pursuading the majority, and may anyway be discouraged from speaking up by various consequences[6].

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