Just need to prevent brain hacking.
Eric Leuthardt believes that in the near future we will allow doctors to insert electrodes into our brains so we can communicate directly with computers and each other.
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,612
Scientists have expanded the building blocks of DNA to create a stable semi-synthetic organism that can produce biological compounds entirely new to nature.
The DNA that makes up essentially all living things on Earth consists of arrangements of four basic nucleotides, but the new life-form developed by researchers in the US makes use of six – and that’s where things get interesting.
The semi-synthetic organism (SSO) engineered by a team at the Scripps Research Institute in California is made from the same four regular nucleobases as you and I – adenine (A), cytosine ©, guanine (G), and thymine (T) – but it’s also got two unnatural nucleotides to call upon.
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“If something goes wrong, I can just chop off that part of the skin.” Josiah Zayner took a swig from his beer and squinted into the spotlight. He was already kind of drunk. He also hadn’t bothered to write a speech. Tattooed and heavily pierced with a shock of blue-gray hair, he shuffled around uneasily on stage. But 150-odd people had flown in from around the country to hear him speak—the mad pirate-king of biotech. “It all is coming from my heart,” he said, choking up a little. “Everything you’re going to hear today is me to the core.” Advertisement Zayner’s audiencesat in the fashionably…
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Cancer can often evade the immune system by sending signals that fool it into thinking that the cancer cells are normal, healthy cells and that it should ignore them. Earlier this year, we reported on an approach to treating cancer in which the immune system can be taught to detect cancer by seeing past the cancer cell’s attempts to hide.
One of these attempts involves a signaling pathway that sends a “don’t Eat Me” signal to the immune system. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a second biological pathway that signals the immune system not to engulf and consume cancer cells.
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By Michael Kanis, National Sales Engineering Manager, Proven Process Medical Devices, and Jodi Hutchins, RAC, CQA
All Those in Favor of Using Real World Evidence, Say Aye!
Medical Devices are used in the real world every day, so shouldn’t they be tested in the real world? You would think so. But the FDA hasn’t necessarily been of that mindset — until now.
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It’s that time of the year again … the Science news writers and editors are homing in on the “Breakthrough of the Year,” their choice of the most significant scientific discovery, development, or trend in 2017. That selection, along with nine runners-up, will be announced when the last issue of the year goes online on 21 December.
Now, you can get in on the action! Pick your favorite breakthrough from the list of candidates below by 3 December. Then check back the next day, when we will start a second round of voting with your four top picks. We will announce your winner—the People’s Choice—along with Science’s choice on 21 December.
From cancer advances to the cosmos, what’s your top choice?
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In this new Business Insider article, my ideas on peak labor and Universal Basic Income are pitted against MIT scientist Andrew McAfee. I’m excited to see my government shrinking Federal Land Dividend proposal getting out there. Story by journalist Dylan Love: http://www.businessinsider.com/will-universal-basic-income-s…?r=UK&IR=T #transhumanism #libertarian
Does free money change nothing or everything?
Universal basic income (UBI) is the hottest idea in social security since Franklin Roosevelt signed the New Deal in 1935, and it is fairly understood as free money given to citizens by their government. Though the idea traces its roots back to the 16th century as a “cure for theft,” UBI has gained new consideration and momentum these days, as high-profile techno-doomsayers like SpaceX founder Elon Musk point to it as an economic solution for big problems predicted to arrive soon.
The future is coming, Musk and his ilk warn, and it’s bringing increased automation and intelligent technologies with it that will eventually overtake the human capacity for work. All-capable robots will cause widespread human unemployment, goes the thinking, plaguing our income and livelihood for generations.
If the “robots are stealing jobs” on the level that the party line portends, then UBI presents itself as a compelling solution to this unusual, hypothetical problem. There’s already some real-world precedent for it: a UBI pilot program in Finland sees the government send a small amount of money to 2,000 unemployed Finns each month, and the initial results are quite positive.
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Innovation Group looked at three fundamental pillars of humanity and how they will evolve over the coming 10–15 years: our bodies, our thought, and our behavior. After identifying the driving forces that will transform these fundamental pillars, we extracted key themes emerging from their convergence. Ultimately our goal was to determine the ways in which the changing nature of humanity and transhumanism would affect individuals, society, businesses, and government.
A few of the trends that emerged from this study include the following seven trends. We hope they will spark discussion and innovation at your organizations.
Companies today are strategizing about future investments and technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, or growth around new business models. While many of these trends will make for solid investments for the next 5–10 years, fewer companies are considering the revolutionary convergence of disparate trends pulled from technology, behavioral and societal changes, and medical advances to understand how they will converge to transform society. This transformation will be messy, complex, and sometimes scary, but signals already point to a future of humanity that will blur our identities into “transhumanism.”
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