SELF-RENEWAL Fluorescent markers reveal which genes are turned on as hydras’ stem cells develop into specific cell types. For instance, nerve cells light up magenta in one hydra (second from left). Another (second from right) shows gene activity behind two of the stages of development (early, green; late, red) of the animal’s stinging cells.
In the deep of the ocean, where the sun’s rays struggle to penetrate, organisms lurk that could solve the biggest medical crisis facing humanity.
Far below the surface bacteria are engaged in warfare with each other — and to do so they make an antibiotic so strong it can destroy the toughest superbugs in our hospitals.
“But there’s a problem,” Rebecca Goss, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of St Andrews, said. “It disintegrates in sunlight.”
On the heels of my latest New York Times OpEd, which is in print today on page 4 of the NYT Sunday Review, I’m excited to share my brand new book: The Futuresist Cure: Notes From the Front Lines of #Transhumanism. It’s a collection of my best essays on the future, many re-adapted, and many which have helped shape our movement. It’s #FREE today on Amazon in #Kindle. Or get the paperback version. There’s a foreword by the late Jacque Fresco. Download the book for FREE today!
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On Wednesday, we wrote about a database of mutations that could give people superhuman characteristics or medical benefits.
The database, which reads like a real-life skill tree from a video game, is housed on the website of famed Harvard geneticist George Church. Now Church has opened up, telling Futurism why he assembled the list and how he hopes others will use it as gene-hacking technology develops.
Quality sleep is foundational to good health — and a key strategy for anti-aging. In this video, best-selling wellness author Dave Asprey explains how you can hack your sleep and, in doing so, stave off diabetes, cancer, and even Alzheimer’s.
It’s not everyday that you see some of the worlds leading cancer scientists attending a scientific forum put on by a hospital from Mexico. But CHIPSA hospital isn’t your average hospital and the scientists showed presenting their research, much of which they are working on with CHIPSA.
Take for instance Dr. Franco Marincola. The fa med former chief of immunogenetics for the NIH, editor of 9 peer reviewed publications and co-author of the textbook mosts oncologists use for immunotherapy reference. Dr. Marincola joined the CHIPSA Scientific advisory board in June and speaks highly of their work and passion for translational science.
Or Dr. Vijay Mahant, who did his post doctorate at MD Anderson in 1985 and invented the prostate cancer test that is widely used today. He also co-founded auto-genomics a leading liquid biopsy company that is studying diagnosing cancer through the blood.
I’m excited to share my new Op-Ed for The New York Times on the pro-life versus pro-choice debate of the artificial womb. Could this change the abortion divide forever? Conservatives may need to step up and embrace ectogenesis. Liberals should let them. The transhumanism tech will be here in a few years.
The technology would allow fetuses to develop outside the female womb so women would no longer have be pregnant.
Get your Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind references ready, because scientists have just figured out a way to erase bad memories using—you guessed it—electroshock therapy. Get ready for on-demand forgetting. It’s a real thing now.
A team of Dutch neuroscientists recently devised an electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to “target and disrupt patients’ memory of a disturbing episode.” Nature explains how patients were showed two traumatic narratives in a slideshow and then subjected to the new technique:
The team later prompted patients to recall only one of the stories by replaying part of that slide show. Immediately afterwards, when the reactivated memory is thought to be vulnerable, the patients received electroconvulsive therapy.
Continue reading “Finally, a Real-Life Memory-Erasing Technique for Humans” »
Researchers from North Carolina State University and Elon University have developed a technique that allows them to remotely control the movement of soft robots, lock them into position for as long as needed and later reconfigure the robots into new shapes. The technique relies on light and magnetic fields.
“We’re particularly excited about the reconfigurability,” says Joe Tracy, a professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper on the work. “By engineering the properties of the material, we can control the soft robot’s movement remotely; we can get it to hold a given shape; we can then return the robot to its original shape or further modify its movement; and we can do this repeatedly. All of those things are valuable, in terms of this technology’s utility in biomedical or aerospace applications.”
For this work, the researchers used soft robots made of a polymer embedded with magnetic iron microparticles. Under normal conditions, the material is relatively stiff and holds its shape. However, researchers can heat up the material using light from a light-emitting diode (LED), which makes the polymer pliable. Once pliable, researchers demonstrated that they could control the shape of the robot remotely by applying a magnetic field. After forming the desired shape, researchers could remove the LED light, allowing the robot to resume its original stiffness—effectively locking the shape in place.
