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Super-Men and Wonder-Women: the Relationship Between the Acceptance of Self-enhancement, Personality, and Values

Since the beginning of human storytelling, enhancing oneself to a “better version” was of vital interest to humans. A twenty-first century-philosophical movement called transhumanism dedicated itself to the topic of enhancement. It unites discussions from several disciplines, e.g. philosophy, social science, and neuroscience, and aims to form human beings in desirable ways with the help of science and technology (Bostrom, 2005; Loh, 2018; More, 2013). Enhancement is the employment of methods to enhance human cognition in healthy individuals (Colzato et al., 2021), thereby extending individual performance above already existing abilities. It should thus be distinguished from therapy, which is the application of methods to help individuals with illnesses or dysfunctions in restoring their abilities (Viertbauer & Kögerler, 2019). Although enhancement methods bear psychological implications, there is hardly any psychological research on them. However, as the use of enhancement methods has increased (Leon et al., 2019; McCabe et al., 2014), and with it the demand for official guidelines (Jwa, 2019), it is necessary to examine who would use these methods in the first place, especially because these technologies can easily be misused. Investigating personality traits and values of individuals who want to enhance themselves could not only support suppliers and manufacturers of enhancement technologies in creating guidelines for using enhancement, but also raise more general awareness on which individuals might be in favour of enhancement.

In previous studies investigating the intersection between enhancement and personality traits or values, vignettes were used to describe enhancement methods and to measure their acceptance among participants (e.g. Laakasuo et al., 2018, 2021). Thus, subjects were asked to read scenarios involving the use of a certain enhancement method and then—as a measure of acceptance—judge aspects (e.g. the morality) of the action undertaken in the corresponding scenario (e.g. Laakasuo et al., 2018, 2021). In the present study, we followed a similar vignette-based approach with a variety of different enhancement methods to investigate the link between the acceptance of enhancement (i.e., the willingness to use enhancement methods, hereinafter termed AoE), personality traits, and values. More specifically, we examined the acceptance of the most discussed cognitive enhancement methods: pharmacological enhancement, brain stimulation with transcranial electrical stimulation and deep brain stimulation, genetic enhancement, and mind upload (Bostrom, 2003; Dijkstra & Schuijff, 2016; Dresler et al., 2019; Gaspar et al., 2019; Loh, 2018).

Pharmacological enhancement has received much attention in the media and literature (Daubner et al., 2021; Schelle et al., 2014) and is defined as the application of prescription substances that are intended to ameliorate specific cognitive functions beyond medical indications (Schermer et al., 2009). The best-known drugs for cognitive enhancement are methylphenidate (Ritalin®), dextroamphetamine (Adderall®), and modafinil (Provigil®), which are usually prescribed for the treatment of clinical conditions (de Jongh et al., 2008; Mohamed, 2014; Schermer et al., 2009).

Atom Limbs Newsroom: The latest news & announcements

March 10, 2022 Benzinga — This Startup Is Creating The World’s First Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm — Last Call To Invest

March 10, 2022 Yahoo — This Startup Is Creating The World’s First Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm — Last Call To Invest

March 2, 2022 Interesting Engineering — A new artificial human arm is moving prosthetics one step closer to true bionics.

Immune System for Your Mind Against Disinformation with Lee McIntyre

Booting biology systems readouts.
Bio-monitors on.
Choice.
Graph five… engage.
Change brain wave parameters.
Brain wave pattern altered.
Prepare brain stem injection.
Initiate brain stem.
Insertion complete.
Synaptic reaction positive.
Change brain wave parameters.
Initiate second level.
Insertion complete.
Initiate brain stem.
Brain wave pattern altered.
Warning.
Shut down theta stimulation.
Warning.
Endocrine, adrenal, increasing to fatal levels.
System shutdown.

Researchers Have Found A Way To Regrow Teeth

O.o! Circa 2021


False teeth could one day be a thing of the past, thanks to the discovery of an antibody that sparks the regeneration of lost teeth. By inhibiting the action of a gene called USAG-1, the antibody increases the availability of certain growth factors, and could eventually be used to help people grow a new set of pearly whites.

Publishing their work in the journal Science Advances, a team of researchers describes how they genetically modified mice to suffer from tooth agenesis, where some teeth fail to develop. Injecting pregnant mice from this line with the USAG-1 antibody, however, resulted in normal tooth development among their offspring. Moreover, a single administration of the antibody caused the growth of a whole new tooth in regular mice.

The researchers decided to target the USAG-1 gene because it is known to inhibit two signaling molecules known as BMP and Wnt, both of which are involved in tooth development. However, because these compounds also control the growth of a wide range of other organs, interfering with them can produce an array of serious side-effects.

New genetically engineered herpes virus kills cancer cells

A genetically modified version of the herpes virus has shown great potential in treating advanced cancers, according to a report by the Institute of Cancer Research in London published on Thursday.

A promising therapy

Although the treatment is still in early trials, researchers have found that RP2, a modified version of the herpes simplex virus, managed to kill cancer cells in a quarter of patients. The patients had cancers so advanced and complicated that they had run out of treatments to try.

Salk scientists modify CRISPR to epigenetically treat diabetes, kidney disease, muscular dystrophy

Circa 2017 face_with_colon_three


LA JOLLA—Salk scientists have created a new version of the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology that allows them to activate genes without creating breaks in the DNA, potentially circumventing a major hurdle to using gene editing technologies to treat human diseases.

Most CRISPR/Cas9 systems work by creating “double-strand breaks” (DSBs) in regions of the genome targeted for editing or for deletion, but many researchers are opposed to creating such breaks in the DNA of living humans. As a proof of concept, the Salk group used their new approach to treat several diseases, including diabetes, acute kidney disease, and muscular dystrophy, in mouse models.

“Although many studies have demonstrated that CRISPR/Cas9 can be applied as a powerful tool for gene therapy, there are growing concerns regarding unwanted mutations generated by the double-strand breaks through this technology,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and senior author of the new paper, published in Cell on December 7, 2017. “We were able to get around that concern.”

The Battery Wars Are Heating Up in a Good Way

The competition for lithium-ion batteries is heating up in a good way.


And then there are lithium-metal solid-state batteries which promise to be safer, faster charging and last longer than existing lithium-ion technology.

The State of Aluminium-Sulphur Batteries

This type of battery has been around for a while but the main shortcoming of the technology has been durability. The batteries using ambient temperature ionic liquid electrolytes form dendrites over time that interfere with the flow of electrons between the anodes. The results are short circuits. The cure appears to be raising the operating temperature of the battery and switching out the electrolyte. At 110 Celsius (230 Fahrenheit) degrees this new version of the aluminum-sulphur battery doesn’t form dendrites.

Affecting Up to 216,000 Studies — Popular Genetic Method Found To Be Deeply Flawed

According to recent research from Sweden’s Lund University, the most commonly used analytical method in population genetics is deeply flawed. This could have caused incorrect results and misconceptions regarding ethnicity and genetic relationships. The method has been used in hundreds of thousands of studies, influencing findings in medical genetics and even commercial ancestry tests. The findings were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The pace at which scientific data can be gathered is increasing rapidly, resulting in huge and very complex databases, which has been nicknamed the “Big Data revolution.” Researchers employ statistical techniques to condense and simplify the data while maintaining the majority of the important information in order to make the data more manageable. PCA (principal component analysis) is perhaps the most widely used approach. Imagine PCA as an oven with flour, sugar, and eggs serving as the input data. The oven may always perform the same thing, but the ultimate result, a cake, is highly dependent on the ratios of the ingredients and how they are mixed.

“It is expected that this method will give correct results because it is so frequently used. But it is neither a guarantee of reliability nor produces statistically robust conclusions,” says Dr. Eran Elhaik, Associate Professor in molecular cell biology at Lund University.