Lifeboat Foundation

I believe that homelessness is often seen in America or other parts of the world as bad but with Finland they have found a housing first approach which has stopped nearly all homelessness there. I believe also regenerative medicine and lots of transhumanistic approaches to medicine would help end their aging and even repair their body if needed. Also if we research the brain we can finally discover and repair genes throughout the body essentially bringing them back near perfect and beyond. Along with ethical approaches towards a more cultural relativistic approach to all humans could show everyone how to coexist. It is still a problem of aging though which is still curable and in extreme cases will be eventually solved in the future. I think with a more comprehensive understanding of all transhumansistic medicine it would be possible to save all lives so no one is left behind.

OK, so the Finns are more generous and just shell out a lot more to help the homeless, right? Actually not. The Finns are simply smarter.

Instead of abandoning the homeless, they housed them. And that led to an insight: people tend to function better when they’re not living on the street or under a bridge. Who would have guessed?

Continue reading “How Finland managed to virtually end homelessness” »

The 25-year bet between neuroscientist Chris Koch and philosopher David Chalmers is settled. Consciousness, on the other hand, is not.

Is the Executive Director of the Innovative Genomics Institute (https://innovativegenomics.org/people/brad-ringeisen/), an organization founded by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Jennifer Doudna, on the University of California, Berkeley campus, whose mission is to bridge revolutionary gene editing tool development to affordable and accessible solutions in human health and climate.

Dr. Ringeisen is a physical chemist with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Wake Forest University, a pioneer in the field of live cell printing, and an experienced administrator of scientific research and product development.

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If Neuralink’s monkey can play Pong with its mind, imagine what humans could do with the same technology in just a few years.

A new Jell-O-like material could replace metals as electrical interfaces for pacemakers, cochlear implants, and other electronic implants.

Do an image search for “electronic implants,” and you’ll draw up a wide assortment of devices, from traditional pacemakers and cochlear implants to more futuristic brain and retinal microchips aimed at augmenting vision, treating depression, and restoring mobility.

Some implants are hard and bulky, while others are flexible and thin. But no matter their form and function, nearly all implants incorporate electrodes — small conductive elements that attach directly to target tissues to electrically stimulate muscles and nerves.

A new type of macrophage recently identified in atherosclerotic lesions could provide a missing link in understanding the inflammatory origins of the common yet fatal condition.

Atherosclerosis is a common condition in which an accumulation of fat, named plaque, builds up on the innermost walls of arteries, causing them to become narrow and restrict the blood flow to vital organs such as the heart and the brain. It can be life-threatening if untreated—narrow arteries increase the risk of a blockage and lead to a heart attack or stroke.

Macrophages are immune cells that play essential roles in organ homeostasis as well as infection and injury. Key to their success is the ability to alter their transcriptional patterns of gene expression to perform highly-specialized roles in specific organs and tissues. However, their prominent role means that when things go wrong, macrophages can be impactful drivers of disease.

Engineers from Rice University and the University of Maryland have created full-motion video technology that could potentially be used to make cameras that peer through fog, smoke, driving rain, murky water, skin, bone and other media that reflect scattered light and obscure objects from view.

“Imaging through scattering media is the ‘holy grail problem’ in optical imaging at this point,” said Rice’s Ashok Veeraraghavan, co-corresponding author of an open-access study published today in Science Advances. “Scattering is what makes light—which has lower wavelength, and therefore gives much better spatial resolution—unusable in many, many scenarios. If you can undo the effects of scattering, then imaging just goes so much further.”

Continue reading “Neural wavefront shaping camera overcomes light scattering problem in optical imaging” »

Two rival theories about the basis of perception went head-to-head in neuroscience experiments, but advocates of “losing” idea aren’t conceding yet.

While mitochondria play a crucial role in producing the energy our cells need to carry out their various functions, when damaged, they can have profound effects on cellular function and contribute to the development of various diseases.

Broken-down mitochondria are usually removed and recycled through a garbage disposal process known as “mitophagy.”

PINK1 and Parkin are two proteins vital to this process, responsible for “tagging” malfunctioning mitochondria for destruction. In Parkinson’s disease, mutations in these proteins can result in the accumulation of damaged mitochondria in the brain, which can lead to motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness and difficulty with movement.