New transhumanism and biohacking story out by one of Asia’s most influential newspapers: South China Morning Post:
From brain supplements to chip implants to nootropics, humans are using technology, medicine and extreme diets to improve their brainpower, health and longevity.
People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are often confused about which foods may ease symptoms and which ones may make them worse. Based on medical research, there’s no single plan that definitively offers relief. But a recent study on a new diet called the IBD-AID diet has shown that it may help.
The diet focuses on correcting gut bacteria balance with probiotic and prebiotic foods.
Early morning exposure to blue wavelength light can help heal the brain following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), new research suggests.
Results of a small, randomized controlled trial showed blue-light therapy improved brain structure and function, cognition, and sleep in this patient population.
“We found that blue-light therapy improved patients’ daytime sleepiness,” study investigator William D. ‘Scott’ Killgore, PhD, told Medscape Medical News. “So those who got the blue light were less sleepy 6 weeks later than they had been at baseline.”
Sometimes, being human involves tragedy: unexpected accidents can alter a person’s future, permanently changing how they need to approach their daily lives. Those with traumatic brain injuries suffer long-term mental and physical challenges, such as trouble with their working memory span, which can play a significant role in their education and longevity. However, if used properly, transhuman aids such as prosthetic limbs can provide solutions to human challenges.
Transhumanism, in a nutshell, is the idea that people can use technology to overcome biological limitations. Just as how we use rational means to improve our life experiences and the world around us, we can use such means to improve ourselves as organisms. It is simply a concept, not a tangible characterization of some futuristic cyborg.
There is reasonable fear that using such technologies would be tampering with nature. This is true. However, whether something is good or bad cannot be decided simply by asking whether or not it is natural. Plenty of natural things are horrible, such as diseases and parasites, where our moral interest is to intervene and improve these conditions. The question to ask is not whether the technology is natural, but rather, what are the various possible consequences that would arise from it, both desirable and undesirable, and the likelihood of each. People who are concerned that our species will stray too far away from what it means to be a ‘natural human’ forget how far we have already evolved as a species.
Posted in biotech/medical, robotics/AI
Artificial-intelligence startup Pearl Inc. is using machine learning to analyze dental imagery, helping insurers pinpoint whether the same X-ray was used for more than one patient and whether a procedure was necessary.
The West Hollywood, Calif., company said its system has found thousands of cases in which dentists have used the same X-rays or other images to bill insurers for multiple patients.
New immunology research has discovered the cure to cancer was possibly within us all along.
Researchers at the Montpellier Cancer Research Institute (IRCM) have discovered a new component in blood that has never been detected there before. Mitochondria are normally found inside cells, but the team has now discovered them floating around on their own in the bloodstream.
Often referred to as the power houses of cells, mitochondria are organelles that play a key role in metabolizing energy and cell signaling. Occasionally they are found outside of cells, but usually only as fragments within platelets.
But after a seven-year study, an IRCM team has now found complete and fully-functioning mitochondria in blood plasma, contained inside highly-stable structures. Using electron microscopy, the researchers analyzed plasma samples from about 100 people, and found up to 3.7 million of these mitochondria-containing structures per milliliter of plasma.
CHICAGO/LONDON (Reuters) — When a newly organized vaccine research group at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) met for the first time this week, its members had expected to be able to ease into their work. But their mandate is to conduct human trials for emerging health threats — and their first assignment came at shocking speed.
Corpses of coronavirus victims are being left unattended in a corridor of a hospital flooded with patients in Wuhan as the Chinese city is ravaged by the deadly infection, it has been revealed.
The chilling scene, captured by a woman who claims to be a nurse, was posted on the country’s social media network today but quickly censored.
Dozens of videos posted online appear show people lying in the street after collapsing where they stood as they walked through the streets of Wuhan.
Closed-door reviews of risks and benefits of studies should be made public, some scientists say.
