Lifeboat Foundation

Here’s my latest Opinion piece just out for Newsweek…focusing on cyborg rights.

Over the past half-century, the microprocessor’s capacity has doubled approximately every 18–24 months, and some experts predict that by 2030, machine intelligence could surpass human capabilities. The question then arises: When machines reach human-level intelligence, should they be granted protection and rights? Will they desire and perhaps even demand such rights?

Beyond advancements in microprocessors, we’re witnessing breakthroughs in genetic editing, stem cells, and 3D bioprinting, all which also hold the potential to help create cyborg entities displaying consciousness and intelligence. Notably, Yale University’s experiments stimulating dead pig brains have ignited debates in the animal rights realm, raising questions about the ethical implications of reviving consciousness.

Continue reading “Creating Sapient Technology and Cyborg Rights Should Happen Soon” »

Recent studies have found that Gires-Tournois (GT) biosensors, a type of nanophotonic resonator, can detect minuscule virus particles and produce colorful micrographs (images taken through a microscope) of viral loads. But they suffer from visual artifacts and non-reproducibility, limiting their utilization.

In a recent breakthrough, an international team of researchers, led by Professor Young Min Song from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, has leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) to overcome this problem. Their work was published in Nano Today.

Rapid and on-site diagnostic technologies for identifying and quantifying viruses are essential for planning treatment strategies for infected patients and preventing further spread of the infection. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for accurate yet decentralized diagnostic tests that do not involve complex and time-consuming processes needed for conventional laboratory-based tests.

The Collective Intelligence of Cells During Morphogenesis: What Bioelectricity Outside the Brain Means for Understanding our Multiscale Nature with Michael Levin — Incredible Minds.

Recorded: April 29, 2023.

Continue reading “Incredible Minds: The Collective Intelligence of Cells During Morphogenesis with Dr. Michael Levin” »

Researchers at Columbia University have developed a probiotic-guided chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T platform that uses engineered bacteria to infiltrate and produce synthetic antigen targets, enabling CAR-T cells to find, identify, and destroy tumor cells in situ. The results of in vivo preclinical tests suggest that the combined ProCAR cell therapy platform could expand the scope of CAR-T cell therapy to include difficult-to-target solid tumors.

Tal Danino, PhD, and Rosa L. Vincent, PhD, at Columbia University’s department of biomedical engineering, and colleagues, reported on their developments in Science, in a paper titled “Probiotic-guided CAR-T cells for solid tumor targeting,” in which they concluded, “These findings highlight the potential of the ProCAR platform to address the roadblock of identifying suitable CAR targets by providing an antigen that is orthogonal to both healthy tissue and tumor genetics … Overall, combining the advantages of tumor-homing bacteria and CAR-T cells provides a new strategy for tumor recognition and, in turn, builds the foundation for engineered communities of living therapies.”

Immunotherapies using CAR-T cells have proven successful in treating some types of blood cancers, but their efficacy against solid tumors remains elusive. A key challenge facing tumor-antigen targeting immunotherapies like CAR-T is the identification of suitable targets that are specifically and uniformly expressed on solid tumors, the authors noted. “A key challenge of antigen-targeted cell therapies relates to the expression patterns of the antigen itself, which makes the identification of optimal targets for solid tumor cell therapies an obstacle for the development of new CARs.” Solid tumors express heterogeneous and nonspecific antigens and are poorly infiltrated by T cells. As a result, the approach carries a high risk of fatal on-target, off-tumor toxicity, wherein CAR-T cells attack the targeted antigen on healthy vital tissues with potentially fatal effects.

In this October 13 Learning Lab, Hilary Sherman, a Senior Scientist in the Corning Life Sciences Applications Lab, and Robert Padilla, a Field Application Scientist at Corning, dive into the topic of 3D culture techniques and why these technologies should be a part of any researcher’s repertoire.

Three-dimensional (3D) cultures such as spheroids and organoids are an important part of the research model market, helping to close the gap between cell cultures and animal models. Both organoids and spheroids have been used to create in vivo-like tissue models of cancer subtypes to study novel therapies and to make models for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine studies. But there are some key differences, with important implications for various applications. The right tool for a project is not always obvious. For spheroids and organoids, knowing where the cultures are similar and where they differ will help scientists select the best resource for their projects the first time around.

Mobility impairments such as those caused by cerebral palsy make it hard for people to perform even simple tasks like drinking a sip of water.

Gary Lynn, a Houstonian living with the condition, turned to Rice University’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) for help making the idea of an assistive-drinking device a reality. Rice undergraduate engineering students Thomas Kutcher and Rafe Neathery rose to the challenge, and the result is RoboCup ⎯ a robotic device that enables people with limited mobility to stay hydrated without help.

“We wanted to make it possible for people with cerebral palsy or similar mobility challenges to drink water autonomously rather than needing to rely on caregiver assistance,” said Kutcher, who is a bioengineering major. “The device is designed for wheelchair users who might have trouble holding a cup, and our hope is that it will grant users greater freedom.”

👉For business inquiries: [email protected].
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In the quest to overcome the limitations of the human body and mind, scientists worldwide are diligently working on various technologies. The question arises: What will human beings become after undergoing numerous enhancements? Will we retain our identity while embracing the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence? What extraordinary capabilities will biotechnology bestow upon us? And how will our emotions and desires evolve as our bodies undergo transformation?

Continue reading “Humanity in 2050” »

All medical breakthroughs have to start somewhere, and Intellia Therapeutics is ready to show the world the first-in-human gene editing data that could be the start of a | Interim results are in for Intellia and partner Regeneron’s in vivo CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing candidate, NTLA-2001, in patients with transthyretin (ATTR) amyloidosis: and the numbers look good. This is the first time gene editing has been proven to work in humans, which “opens up a whole new area of therapies for patients that wasn’t there.”

UMass Amherst researchers have pushed forward the boundaries of biomedical engineering one hundredfold with a new method for DNA detection with unprecedented sensitivity.

“DNA detection is in the center of bioengineering,” says Jinglei Ping, lead author of the paper that appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ping is an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, an adjunct assistant professor in biomedical engineering and affiliated with the Center for Personalized Health Monitoring of the Institute for Applied Life Sciences. “Everyone wants to detect the DNA at a low concentration with a high sensitivity. And we just developed this method to improve the sensitivity by about 100 times with no cost.”