Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1146

Artificial Intelligence is touching almost every aspect of our lives. It’s reasonable to expect AI influence will only increase in the future. One of many fields heavily influenced by AI is the military. Particularly in the development of Supersoldiers. The notion of super-soldiers enhanced with biotechnology and cybernetics was once only possible in the realm of science fiction. But it may not be too long before these concepts become a reality.

A new worldwide arms race is pitting countries against each other to be the first to successfully create real genetically modified super soldiers by using tools such as CRISPR. Understandably many of these human enhancement technologies raise health and safety questions and it is more likely these enhancements will first gain traction in countries that do not place as much weight on ethical concerns.

According to US Intelligence, China has conducted “human testing” on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with “biologically enhanced capabilities.

This has made the U.S. military’s top intelligence agencies increasingly worried but the Pentagon has significantly invested in its own research in AI and in the extension of the human senses beyond their current physical limitations, to provide soldiers with superhuman abilities.

Continue reading “The Rise of Supersoldiers — How AI Changes Everything” | >

AZoRobotics speaks with Dr. Erik Enegberg from Florida Atlantic University about his research into a wearable soft robotic armband. This could be a life-changing device for prosthetic hands users who have long-desired advances in dexterity.

Typing on a keyboard, pressing buttons on a remote control, or braiding a child’s hair has remained elusive for prosthetic hand users. How does the loss of tactile sensations impact limb-absent people’s lives?

Losing the sensation of touch has a profound impact on people’s lives. Some of the things that may seem simple and a part of everyday life, such as stroking the fur of a pet or the skin of a loved one, are a meaningful and fundamental way to connect with those around us for others. For example, a patient with a bilateral amputation has previously expressed concerns that he might hurt his granddaughter by accidentally squeezing her hand too tightly as he has lost tactile sensation.

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It’s extremely important to check yourself for ticks this summer.

Up to 14.5% of the global population may have already had Lyme disease, according to a new meta-analysis published in BMJ Global Health. The researchers behind the report analyzed 89 previously published studies to calculate the figure, which sheds a harrowing light on the worldwide toll of the tick-borne illness.

From 1991 to 2018, the incidence of Lyme disease in the United States nearly doubled, according to data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 1991, there were nearly four reported cases per 100,000 people; that number jumped to about seven cases per 100,000 people by 2018. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about 470,000 Americans are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year.

The bacterium that most commonly causes Lyme, Borrelia burgdorferi, is transmitted to humans via the bite of an infected black-legged tick, also known as a deer tick. These especially tiny ticks are often found in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast of the United States, per the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). Once a person has been infected, they may develop short-term, flu-like symptoms including fever, headache, and fatigue, as well as a signature bull’s-eye-shaped rash that appears in up to 80% of Lyme disease cases, according to the CDC. In rare instances, when Lyme is left untreated, a person may experience long-term, potentially life-threatening complications, including joint pain, severe headaches and neck stiffness, heart issues, and inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, among others.

Continue reading “Lyme Disease Is Even More Common Than Experts Realized, New Research Finds” | >

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and the most common cause of dementia, affecting more than 5.8 million individuals in the U.S. Scientists have discovered some genetic variants that increase the risk for developing Alzheimer’s; the most well-known of these for people over the age of 65 is the APOE ε4 allele. Although the association between APOE4 and increased AD risk is well-established, the mechanisms responsible for the underlying risk in human brain cell types has been unclear until now.

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have discovered two important novel aspects of the gene: 1) human genetic background inherited with APOE4 is unique to APOE4 patients and 2) the mechanistic defects due to APOE4 are unique to human cells.

Our study demonstrated what the APOE4 gene does and which brain cells get affected the most in humans by comparing human and mouse models. These are important findings as we can find therapeutics if we understand how and where this risk gene is destroying our brain.

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At 79, he’s already outlived the CDC’s official life expectancy by two years and he has no intention of dying — or even slowing down — anytime soon. An active man, Scott jets between his homes in upstate New York and Florida, flies to exotic locations such as Panama City for business and still finds time for the odd cruise. His secret? A DIY regime of self-experimentation and untested therapies he believes will keep him going well past the next century.

Self-experimenters litter the history of medical science. Dentist Horace Wells dosed himself with nitrous oxide in 1,844 to see if it could kill pain, Nicholas Senn inflated his innards with hydrogen a few decades later to work out if it could diagnose a ruptured bowel, and more recently, Barry Marshall drank a solution containing H. pylori in 1985 to prove the bacterium caused ulcers.

These scientists risked their own health to make a medical breakthrough or prove a theory, but Scott is not a scientist. He’s an amateur enthusiast, also known as a biohacker. Biohackers engage in DIY biology, experimenting on themselves to enhance their brain and body. And many of them — like Scott — see longevity as the ultimate prize.

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Researchers at the University of Houston are reporting a first-of-its-kind technology that not only repairs heart muscle cells in mice but also regenerates them following a heart attack, or myocardial infarction as its medically known.

Published in The Journal of Cardiovascular Aging 0, the groundbreaking finding has the potential to become a powerful clinical strategy for treating heart disease in humans, according to Robert Schwartz, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of biology and biochemistry at the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

The new technology developed by the team of researchers uses synthetic messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to deliver mutated transcription factors — proteins that control the conversion of DNA into RNA — to mouse hearts.

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The talk is provided on a Free/Donation basis. If you would like to support my work then you can paypal me at this link:
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Or to support me longer term Patreon me at: https://www.patreon.com/waihtsang.

Unfortunately my internet link went down in the second Q&A session at the end and the recording cut off. Shame, loads of great information came out about FPGA/ASIC implementations, AI for the VR/AR, C/C++ and a whole load of other riveting and most interesting techie stuff. But thankfully the main part of the talk was recorded.

TALK OVERVIEW
This talk is about the realization of the ideas behind the Fractal Brain theory and the unifying theory of life and intelligence discussed in the last Zoom talk, in the form of useful technology. The Startup at the End of Time will be the vehicle for the development and commercialization of a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms.

We will show in detail how the theoretical fractal brain/genome ideas lead to a whole new way of doing AI and ML that overcomes most of the central limitations of and problems associated with existing approaches. A compelling feature of this approach is that it is based on how neurons and brains actually work, unlike existing artificial neural networks, which though making sensational headlines are impeded by severe limitations and which are based on an out of date understanding of neurons form about 70 years ago. We hope to convince you that this new approach, really is the path to true AI.

Continue reading “The Startup at the End of the Age : Creating True AI and instigating the Technological Singularity” | >