Lifeboat Foundation

“The current benchtop cell sorters are too expensive, too un-safe, and too high-maintenance. More importantly, they have very low biocompatibility. The cell-sorting process can reduce cell viability and functions by 30–99 percent for many fragile or sensitive cells such as neurons, stem cells, liver cells and sperm cells. We are developing an acoustic cell sorter that has the potential to address all these problems.”

Researchers describe an acoustic cell sorter capable of the kind of high sorting throughput necessary to compete with commercial fluorescence activated cell sorters.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/your-body-is-young…think.html

Edit: some have commented asking about neurons. Please see the article linked above and the following articles for more information. We probably should have tried to clarify the unknowns more in the image itself. Apologies.

Jolene

Continue reading “Your Body is Younger Than You Think” »

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed a model that applies ideas from the theory of complex networks, such as the brain or the Internet, to the fundamental quantum geometry of space-time.

The research is published in Scientific Reports with the title “Complex Quantum Network Manifolds in Dimension d > 2 are Scale-Free.” The research paper is freely available online.

“We hope that by applying our understanding of complex networks to one of the fundamental questions in physics we might be able to help explain how discrete quantum spaces emerge,” said author Ginestra Bianconi.

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Progress always seems to ride a slippery slope. Innovations generally bring a plethora of potential benefits and just as many dangers, the obvious and the hidden. Technologies that tamper with our biological constructs is well underway in the neuro- and biotech industries. Historically, innovations in medicine have usually been beneficial on the aggregate.

But these new breakthroughs go beyond preventing and healing pre-existing causes. Transhuman technologies hold the promise of enhancing who we are as individuals and potentially as an entire species, and the decisions surrounding these technologies are far from simple. Dr. Nayef Al-Rodhan, a philosopher, neuroscientist, and director of the Geneva Center for Security Policy, believes we should be acting now to prepare for the inevitable and the unpredictable ramifications.

Framing Human Motivation

Considering our mixed track record as a species in rolling out groundbreaking innovations, discussing and finding potential solutions to many of the hidden dangers, and obvious ones, seems more than reasonable. One of the more puzzling questions is, where do we begin to have a pragmatic conversation on the ethics of these technologies?

There are plenty of theories about what drive human decisions, not least because human morality is infinitely complex and our minds crave frames through which to make sense of chaos. Dr. Al-Rodhan has his own conception of what drives human motivations. He makes meaning using the lens of “5 P’s” – Power, Pride, Profit, Pleasure, and Permanence – which he posits drive human motivations. “This is my view, the foundation of my outlook…this perceived emotion of self interest drives our moral compass.”

Continue reading “The Imminence of Transhuman Technologies” »

Dr Michael Fossel is a PhD and MD heading up telomerase research and therapy and has kindly written a blog article for Bioviva detailing the work both they and his company Telocyte are doing to fight back against Alzheimer’s.

How Alzheimer’s Can Be Prevented and Cured…

Michael Fossel, MD, PhD

As I said in my medical textbook on aging, “If age is a thief, then the greatest treasure we lose is ourselves.” We fear Alzheimer’s not simply because it takes away our health, but because it steals our souls.

Continue reading “Curing Alzheimer's” »

A report from DARPA’s Wait, What? conference.

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The next time someone accuses you of making an irrational decision, just explain that you’re obeying the laws of quantum physics.

A new trend taking shape in psychological science not only uses quantum physics to explain humans’ (sometimes) paradoxical thinking, but may also help researchers resolve certain contradictions among the results of previous psychological studies.

According to Zheng Joyce Wang and others who try to model our decision-making processes mathematically, the equations and axioms that most closely match human behavior may be ones that are rooted in quantum physics.

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Kim Suozzi died at age 23 from glioblastoma — a deadly brain tumour.

When she died in 2013, she made sure her fight for survival, albeit an unusual one, would not be forgotten.

She wanted to live forever through a computer and chose to have her brain frozen in the hopes that it may one day be resurrected and transformed into digital code.

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A 28 year old man who has been paralysed has been given a new sense of touch following a new breakthrough that saw electrodes places directly into the man’s brain.

The research and clinical trial has been carried out by DARPA, the US Military’s research agency. Essentially, the man (who has not been named) is now able to control his new hand and feel people touching it because of two sets of electrodes: one array on the motor cortex, the part of the brain which directs body movement, and one on the sensory cortex, which is the part of the brain which feels touch.

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