Lifeboat Foundation

Chipmaker Nvidia has shown off a clone of our entire planet that could help meteorologists simulate and visualize global weather patterns at an “unprecedented scale,” according to a press release.

The “Earth climate digital twin,” dubbed Earth-2, was designed to help recoup some of the economic losses caused by climate change-driven extreme weather.

Customers can access the digital twin through an API, allowing “virtually any user to create AI-powered emulations to speed delivery of interactive, high-resolution simulations ranging from the global atmosphere and local cloud cover to typhoons and turbulence.”

Lonely young adults are more prone to being disengaged from education or employment and perceive themselves as less employable, according to the study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine recently. As a consequence, such individuals tend to get positioned lower on the economic ladder compared to their less lonely counterparts.

Findings revealed that young adults who grappled with loneliness earlier in life encountered challenges in their young adulthood, irrespective of their current loneliness status. This underscores the long-term economic implications of loneliness and the potential economic benefits of addressing loneliness during early adolescence.

“There is still significant interest and potential in industrial uses of hemp,” said Dr. Jeffrey Steiner.

How can hemp production help boost local Native American economies? This is what a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture hopes to achieve as they recently awarded this grant to the Global Hemp Innovation Center at Oregon State University (OSU) to foster collaboration with 13 Native American Tribes across the western United States, including California, Montana, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon with the goal of creating economic stimuli for those communities while improving hemp production.

The grant comes with four primary objectives in achieving collaboration with the 13 Tribal nations, including educational opportunities, technology development, building trade networks, and ensuring product quality. This grant comes as the 2018 Farm Bill helped legalize hemp, leading to hemp production reaching $824 million across the United States in 2021.

Continue reading “Harnessing Hemp: Empowering Native American Economies” »

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Avian influenza is killing tens of thousands of seals and sea lions in different corners of the world, disrupting ecosystems and flummoxing scientists who don’t see a clear way to slow the devastating virus.

The worldwide bird flu outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths of millions of domesticated birds and spread to wildlife all over the globe. This virus isn’t thought to be a major threat to humans, but its spread in farming operations and wild ecosystems has caused widespread economic turmoil and environmental disruptions.

Seals and sea lions, in places as far apart as Maine and Chile, appear to be especially vulnerable to the disease, scientists said. The virus has been detected in seals on the east and west coasts of the U.S., leading to deaths of more than 300 seals in New England and a handful more in Puget Sound in Washington. The situation is even more dire in South America, where more than 20,000 sea lions have died in Chile and Peru and thousands of elephant seals have died in Argentina.

This apparent paradox has a simple yet surprising explanation, according to Meredith Whitney: Employers are finally exacting revenge on remote workers who’ve secretly had a second job.

The veteran researcher, who became known as the “Oracle of Wall Street” for her early warnings about banks before the financial crisis, is no stranger to thinking outside the box about everything from the housing market to the economy, and this theory is no exception.

But there’s evidence to support Whitney’s thesis that many of the job cuts made have been to remote positions that were filled by people working at multiple companies under the radar.

Explores how jobs and skills will evolve over the next five years. This fourth edition of the series continues the analysis of employer expectations to provide new insights on how socio-economic and technology trends will shape the workplace of the future.

A universal basic income pilot program that would sprinkle $100 million across the state in the form of no less than $500 monthly cash payments to certain low-income Minnesotans — including illegal immigrants — advanced in a state House committee on Tuesday.

Rep. Athena Hollins, DFL-St. Paul, introduced HF2666 last year. The bill didn’t receive a hearing amidst a historic legislative session where Democrats spent down a $17.5 billion surplus and increased the state budget by more than 38 percent. But with news earlier this month that the state has a projected $3.7 billion surplus, Hollins’ bill received a hearing in the House Children and Families Committee.

Continue reading “$100M universal basic income bill advances in state House committee” »

Investors know that most startups fail, but something that may be less understood is how few mobile apps actually make money. According to a new analysis of the subscription app economy from mobile subscription toolkit provider RevenueCat, the top 5% of apps generate 200 times the revenue of the bottom quartile after their first year, while the median monthly revenue an app generates after 12 months is less than $50 USD.

The “State of Subscription Apps” report offers a bird’s-eye view into the subscription app universe, as RevenueCat has nearly 30,000 apps using its platform’s tools to manage their monetization. Outside of Apple and Google, that makes RevenueCat the largest collection of subscription app developers on one platform.

This report specifically looks at data from over 29,000 apps and over 18,000 developers who collectively generate over $6.7 billion in tracked revenue and have over 290 million subscribers.

At the brink of a new phase of the industrial revolution, the Navigating the Industrial Metaverse: A Blueprint for Future Innovations report draws on insights from over 150 experts, advocating for a responsible approach to metaverse innovation that balances economic growth with sustainability and human-centric values.