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Category: education – Page 184

Our friends at the Methuselah Foundation are working on macular degeneration.

Typically, a fellowship and participation in a research study to cure a major disease would occur years after completing undergrad, possibly even after earning a PhD. But Jennifer DeRosa is not a typical student.

As early as high school, DeRosa was already in the lab, conducting research in plant biotechnology at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) before graduating valedictorian from Skaneateles High School. As a freshman student at Onondaga Community College, she continued to develop skills in molecular biology, analytical chemistry, and cell biology. She logged over 1,600 hours in academic and industry laboratories while maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA, completing her associate’s degree in Math and Science in only one year.

Although she had planned to continue to a bachelor’s program, DeRosa elected to defer enrollment after being offered a Methuselah Foundation research fellowship. “The fellowship provides distinguished students a year-long stipend to work in any laboratory of their choosing that conducts work on age-associated diseases,” said Methuselah Foundation CEO David Gobel. “We are very pleased that she chose to complete her fellowship at Ichor Therapeutics, where she has been working as a paid intern. Methuselah Foundation has a high degree of confidence in the quality and scope of work being conducted there.”

Continue reading “Methuselah Foundation Fellowship Award Winner Tackles Research in Macular Degeneration” | >

I can honestly say that many of us working with QC hasn’t warned folks for a while on the hacking risks around QC going against even today’s most sophisticated encryption models & methods; and to be developing a strategy in how to best handle this risk. With last weeks launch by China has shown the world that we are definitely not a decade away from this risk.

Education and planning are key, cyber-security expert Tyler Cohen Wood says.

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As the global headcount nears 8 billion, our thirst for kilowatts is growing by the minute. How will we keep the lights on without overheating the planet in fossil fuel exhaust? Alternative energy is the obvious choice, but scaling up is hard. It would take an area the size of Nevada covered in solar panels to get enough energy to power the planet, says Justin Lewis-Weber, “and to me, that’s just not feasible.” This past March, Lewis-Weber, a then-high school senior in California, came up with a radical plan: self-replicating solar panels—on the moon.

Here’s the gist: When solar panels are orbiting Earth, they enjoy 24 hours of unfiltered sunshine every day, upping their productivity. Once out there, they could convert that solar radiation into electricity (just as existing solar panels do) and then into microwave beams (using the same principle as your kitchen appliance). Those microwaves then get beamed back to Earth, where receivers convert them back into electricity to power the grid. Simple! Except that Lewis-Weber estimates that building and launching thousands of pounds of solar panels and other equipment into space will be outrageously expensive, in the range of hundreds of trillions of dollars.

Instead, he suggested, why not make them on the moon? Land a single robot on the lunar surface, and then program it to mine raw materials, construct solar panels, and (here’s the fun part) make a copy of itself. The process would repeat until an army of self-replicating lunar robot slaves has churned out thousands of solar panels for its power- hungry masters.

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Hmmmm.

Technocrat scientists believe they can ‘code’ any kind of future they want, but what about what everyone else wants? These are the overlords of Technocracy who believe that we should just ‘trust them’ to build Utopia. ⁃ TN Editor.

Imagine a future where there is no need to cut down a tree and reshape that raw material into a chair or table. Instead, we could grow our furniture by custom-engineering moss or mushrooms. Perhaps glowing bacteria will light our cities, and we’ll be able to bring back extinct species, or wipe out Lyme disease — or maybe even terraform Mars. Synthetic biology could help us accomplish all that.

Continue reading “Be the first to comment on “Synthetic Biology: We Will Grow Entire Cities Out Of Living Organisms”” | >

Innovation is all the buzz in Asia. Australia, China, Korea, Vietnam, and now lets look at India.

Personally, I believe there is great potential in India for some amazing innovations. Just look at their own historical sites and artifacts, art, etc.; no one can claim creativity, imagination, etc. does not exist. And, not to mention the engineering feats that have been proven by India many times.

India has moved 16 rungs up the global ranking for innovation in 2016, as compared to 2015, but still remains a lowly 66th, well below Malaysia and Vietnam, leave alone China in the middle-income category and far below countries like South Korea and Japan, and other high-income innovation hubs like Switzerland, the US, the UK and Singapore. What can be done to make India a hub of innovation? Improve the quality of education across all levels. A technology policy that incentivises genuine R&D is required. Ease of entry and exit of firms, competition, a vibrant financial sector that allocates capital to new profit potential, a culture of entrepreneurship and an end to failure-shaming would help. The least obvious requirement is political empowerment of the common man.

Close on the heels of the release of the ranking comes the news that India has got one more unicorn, a startup with a valuation in excess of $1billion, with fresh investment in Hike, a messenger app from the Bharti stable, valuing the company at $1.4 billion. This is a welcome development, and testimony to innovation at work in India. However, compared to what WeChat, a Chinese app that brings many functionalities together including payments and messages that expire, Indian innovation looks limited. Huge research and development expenditure by global majors in their units in India has helped raise the country’s ranking in the global index. But this only means Indian brawn working to bring foreigners’ innovation to fruition, for the most part.

Continue reading “How to make India an innovation hub” | >

If you’re interested in one day creating your own eco-house using open source tech, this kit is great place to start:

Picture this: you own a small piece of land. Nothing fancy — just a small plot. A group of people shows up, sets up a workshop in your shed, and within five days, using materials available at your local hardware store or made from the raw resources of your land, builds you a small starter house kitted out with state-of-the-art eco features for less than $25,000.

Sound crazy? Well, open source advocate and maker Catarina Mota and inventor Marcin Jakubowski (see their TED Talks, “Play with smart materials” and “Open-sourced blueprints for civilization,” respectively), are making the dream of accessible, affordable eco-housing come true with their Open Building Institute Eco-Building Toolkit. They’ve already built several prototypes and tested the concept through a series of educational builds.

As they close out a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to take the idea to the next stage of development, Marcin and Catarina give the lowdown on barn-raising, open source style. Here’s how it works:

Continue reading “How to Build Your Own Starter House in Just 5 Steps — for ‚000” | >

Next to the medical field, as we follow the significant impacts 3D printing is making on the world, that of aerospace is right at the top of the list. While some are still confused about the actual importance of 3D printing as it hasn’t really affected them personally yet, it’s important to think on a much bigger scale. And there’s not much of a bigger scale than space.

For those who are cynical about the technology, pointing back to the continual supply of keychains and figurines (we all have to start somewhere, thank you!) being pumped out in plastic at the desktop, when you take a look at how long NASA has been involved with additive manufacturing—and how many parts they are using now—well, that’s impressive. Not only that, because of numerous 3D printed parts, larger components are being made that would not have been possible previously, and certainly not with such a level of customization, speed, and affordability.

download (15)We learn more about NASA and their plans continually, allowing for an education not only in the importance of 3D printed parts today, but also quite simply in how space travel is considered and what the future holds. It’s pretty darned exciting, as you are probably aware. And technology such as 3D printing has been playing a well-publicized part in everything from space suits for travel to Mars to 3D printed rocket engines. And when you couple the space technology excitement from NASA with the latest from Aerojet Rocketdyne, the details start to get intense.

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Interesting read; like the plug by Rajeev Alur about how the insights from the ExCAPE project has helped advance making QC programmable. Like Alur, I too see many synergies across multiple areas of science & tech. For example, the work on singularity is being advance by the work performed around anti-aging, cancer research, etc. and vice versa. Truly one of my biggest enjoyments of research and innovation is taking a accept or vision, and guessing where else can the concept be leveraged or even advancing other industries.

NSF’s mission is to advance the progress of science, a mission accomplished by funding proposals for research and education made by scientists, engineers, and educators from across the country.

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