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Category: bioengineering – Page 78

High-Risk, High-Payoff Bio-Research For National Security Challenges — Dr. David A. Markowitz, Ph.D., IARPA

Dr. David A. Markowitz, Ph.D. (https://www.markowitz.bio/) is a Program Manager at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA — https://www.iarpa.gov/) which is an organization that invests in high-risk, high-payoff research programs to tackle some of the most difficult challenges of the agencies and disciplines in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).

IARPA’s mission is to push the boundaries of science to develop solutions that empower the U.S. IC to do its work better and more efficiently for national security. IARPA does not have an operational mission and does not deploy technologies directly to the field, but instead, they facilitate the transition of research results to IC customers for operational application.

Currently, Dr. Markowitz leads three research programs at the intersection between biology, engineering, and computing. These programs are: FELIX, which is revolutionizing the field of bio-surveillance with new experimental and computational tools for detecting genetic engineering in complex biological samples; MIST, which is developing compact and inexpensive DNA data storage devices to address rapidly growing enterprise storage needs; and MICrONS, which is guiding the development of next-generation machine learning algorithms by reverse-engineering the computations performed by mammalian neocortex.

Previously, as a researcher in neuroscience, Dr. Markowitz published first-author papers on neural computation, the neural circuit basis of cognition in primates, and neural decoding strategies for brain-machine interfaces.

Continue reading “Dr. David Markowitz, PhD — IARPA — High-Risk, High-Payoff Research For National Security Challenges” | >

b Department of Polymer Science and Engineering and Key Laboratory of High Performance Polymer Materials and Technology of MOE, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210,023, China.

c Institute of Chemical and Bioengineering, ETH Zurich, Vladimir Prelog Weg 1, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.

Received 21st February 2019, Accepted 17th April 2019.

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The fourth discussion of the NEW NOW program, “Transhumanism: Beyond the Human Frontier?”, took place on December 16.

Together with our guest experts, we tried to identify the latest technology that has either already become a reality or is currently in development, focusing on the ethical aspects of the consequences that ensue. We reflected on the question of whether the realization of transhumanist ideas is likely to entail a radical change in the ways people relate to one another. How far are we prepared to go in changing our bodies in order to attain these enhanced capacities? We will attempt to identify the “human frontier”, beyond which the era of posthumanism awaits.

Speakers:

James “J.” Hughes Ph.D. is a bioethicist and sociologist who serves as the Associate Provost for the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), and as Senior Research Fellow at UMB’s Center for Applied Ethics. He holds a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Chicago where he taught bioethics at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Since then Dr. Hughes has taught health policy, bioethics, medical sociology and research methods at Northwestern University, the University of Connecticut, and Trinity College.

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Björk, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Olafur Eliasson, Pharrell Williams and Justin Guariglia. Morton co-wrote and appears in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges. They are the author of the libretto for the opera Time Time Time by Jennifer Walshe.

Eric Schwitzgebel. Most of Professor Eric Schwitzgebel research explores connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind, especially the nature of belief, the inaccuracy of our judgments about our stream of conscious experience, and the tenuous relationship between philosophical ethics and actual moral behavior.

Continue reading “NEW NOW. Transhumanism: beyond the human frontier?” | >

A team of researchers from Purdue University claim to have discovered the “chemistry behind the origin of life” on Earth in simple droplets of water, and they’re using strikingly strong language to celebrate the findings.

Graham Cooks, chemistry professor at Purdue and lead author of a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, called it a “dramatic discovery” and the “secret ingredient for building life” in a statement.

“This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life,” he added. “This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water.”

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Bringing together concepts from electrical engineering and bioengineering tools, Technion and MIT scientists collaborated to produce cells engineered to compute sophisticated functions— biocomputers of sorts.

Graduate students and researchers from Technion—Israel Institute of Technology Professor Ramez Daniel’s Laboratory for Synthetic Biology & Bioelectronics worked together with Professor Ron Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create genetic “devices” designed to perform computations like artificial neural circuits. Their results were recently published in Nature Communications.

The was inserted into the bacterial cell in the form of a plasmid: a relatively short DNA molecule that remains separate from the bacteria’s “natural” genome. Plasmids also exist in nature, and serve various functions. The research group designed the plasmid’s genetic sequence to function as a simple computer, or more specifically, a simple artificial neural network. This was done by means of several genes on the plasmid regulating each other’s activation and deactivation according to outside stimuli.

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Synthetic biology offers a way to engineer cells to perform novel functions, such as glowing with fluorescent light when they detect a certain chemical. Usually, this is done by altering cells so they express genes that can be triggered by a certain input.

However, there is often a long lag time between an event such as detecting a molecule and the resulting output, because of the time required for to transcribe and translate the necessary genes. MIT synthetic biologists have now developed an alternative approach to designing such , which relies exclusively on fast, reversible protein-protein interactions. This means that there’s no waiting for genes to be transcribed or translated into proteins, so circuits can be turned on much faster—within seconds.

“We now have a methodology for designing protein interactions that occur at a very fast timescale, which no one has been able to develop systematically. We’re getting to the point of being able to engineer any function at timescales of a few seconds or less,” says Deepak Mishra, a research associate in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the lead author of the new study.

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Synopsis: In this talk we articulate a positive vision of the future that is both viable given what we know, and also utterly radical in its implications. We introduce two key insights that, when taken together, synergize in powerful ways. Namely, (a) the long-tails of pleasure and pain, and (b) the correlation between wellbeing, productivity, and intelligence. This informs us how to distribute resources if we want to maximize wellbeing. Given the weight of the extremes, it is important to take them into account. But because of the causal significance of more typical hedonic ranges, engineering our baseline is a key consideration. This makes it natural to break down the task of paradise engineering into three components:

Avoid negative extremes.
increase hedonic baseline, and.
achieve new heights of experience.

With regards to : the future of consciousness is anodyne. It lacks extreme suffering in any of its guises. We will see how, if we aim right, a significant proportion of extreme suffering can be prevented with pragmatic technologies already available. Even just applying what we know today would be as significant for the reduction of suffering as the advent of anesthesia was in the context of surgery.

On : the future of consciousness is engaging. From novelty generation to Buddhist annealing, baseline-enhancing interventions will change the way we think of life. It is not only about making everyday fun, but also the economics of it.

And : the future of consciousness is ecstatic. A science of ecstasy will allow us to safely and reliably sample from a wide range of time-tested ultra-blissful peak experiences. A common cause with other sentient beings, and indeed with the interests of consciousness at large, can be forged in the knowledge of such deep experiences.

They give you a genuine, non-sentimental, reason to live. Together, action on these three levels can significantly advance the cause of eliminating suffering and engineering paradise. And our assessment is: there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in this space. Let’s pick it up!

Continue reading “The Future of Consciousness — Andrés Gómez Emilsson” | >

With mathematical modeling, a research team has now succeeded in better understanding how the optimal working state of the human brain, called criticality, is achieved. Their results mean an important step toward biologically-inspired information processing and new, highly efficient computer technologies and have been published in Scientific Reports.

“In particular tasks, supercomputers are better than humans, for example in the field of artificial intelligence. But they can’t manage the variety of tasks in —driving a car first, then making music and telling a story at a get-together in the evening,” explains Hermann Kohlstedt, professor of nanoelectronics. Moreover, today’s computers and smartphones still consume an enormous amount of energy.

“These are no sustainable technologies—while our brain consumes just 25 watts in everyday life,” Kohlstedt continues. The aim of their interdisciplinary research network, “Neurotronics: Bio-inspired Information Pathways,” is therefore to develop new electronic components for more energy-efficient computer architectures. For this purpose, the alliance of engineering, life and investigates how the is working and how that has developed.

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Turns out, altering bacteria from within could be the solution to antibiotic resistance.

In an ironic twist, researchers used viruses engineered with the CRISPR-Cas system to alter bacterial defense mechanisms and edit their genomes selectively in complex environments. Significantly, the novel approach may help address the pressing issue of antibiotic resistance.

Meletios Verras/iStock.

The CRISPR Conundrum

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