Lifeboat Foundation

What has been shaping the human mind throughout the history of mankind? What is the difference between mind and consciousness? What links quantum physics to consciousness? What gives rise to our subjective experience? What drives our accelerating evolution?

If you’re eager to familiarize with probably the most advanced ontological framework to date or if you’re already familiar with the Syntellect Hypothesis which, with this series, is now presented to you as the full-fledged Cybernetic Theory of Mind, you should get this book two of the series which corresponds to Part II of The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution. This volume two contains some newly-introduced and updated material if compared with the originally published version and can be read as a stand-alone book. At the same time, it is highly recommended to obtain The Syntellect Hypothesis as the original coherent version of the same theoretical framework instead of waiting for all five books to come out and if you don’t need extra detailing.

Continue reading “TECHNOCULTURE: The Rise of Man | The Cybernetic Theory of Mind” »

This autumn Kotaro Ando, a forty year-old farmer from Tara Town, Saga City (Japan) became the first customer to lease an asparagus picking robot from local agricultural high-tech startup Inaho Co. Ltd. Founded in 2017 and located in the coastal town of Kamakura, Inaho develops robots for agricultural and non-agricultural use. In January 2019, the company opened an office in Kashima (about 110 km from Tokyo) to market their autonomous robot to asparagus and cucumber farmers in Saga City and its surrounding areas. Kotaro Ando was one of these lucky asparagus farmers.

The blob is neither animal, plant, nor fungus. The remarkable species can find and digest food, form together with others, and pass on knowledge.

Cutting calories significantly may not be an easy task for most, but it’s tied to a host of health benefits ranging from longer lifespan to a much lower chance of developing cancer, heart disease, diabetes and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

A new study from teams led by Scripps Research Professors Bruno Conti, Ph.D., and Gary Siuzdak, Ph.D., illuminates the critical role that body temperature plays in realizing these diet-induced health benefits. Through their findings, the scientists pave the way toward creating a medicinal compound that imitates the valuable effects of reduced body temperature.

Continue reading “Linking calorie restriction, body temperature and healthspan” »

The cruise line was already eschewing cruise staples like buffets, setting Virgin Voyages ahead of the pack.

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Cooking foods at temperatures higher than boiling produces advanced glycation end (AGE) products, which induce insulin resistance and inflammation, and shorten lifespan in mice. Similar data exists in humans for the effect of AGE products on insulin resistance and inflammation, and a higher dietary AGE product intake is associated with cancer in both men and women. Accordingly, reducing dietary AGE product intake may be an important strategy for improving health and increasing lifespan in people.

Since antiquity, cultures on nearly every continent have discovered that certain plant leaves, when chewed or brewed or rubbed on the body, could relieve diverse ailments, inspire hallucinations or, in higher dosages, even cause death. Today, pharmaceutical companies import these once-rare plants from specialized farms and extract their active chemical compounds to make drugs like scopolamine for relieving motion sickness and postoperative nausea, and atropine, to curb the drooling associated with Parkinson’s disease or help maintain cardiac function when intubating COVID-19 patients and placing them on ventilators.

Now, Stanford engineers are recreating these ancient remedies in a thoroughly modern way by genetically reprogramming the cellular machinery of a special strain of yeast, effectively transforming them into microscopic factories that convert sugars and amino acids into these folkloric drugs, in much the same way that brewers’ yeast can naturally convert sugars into alcohol.

Low-temperature plasmas offer promise for applications in medicine, water purification, agriculture, pollutant removal, nanomaterial synthesis and more. Yet making these plasmas by conventional methods takes several thousand volts of electricity, says David Go, an aerospace and mechanical engineer at the University of Notre Dame. That limits their use outside high-voltage power settings.

In work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Go and a team of researchers conducted research that explores making plasma devices that can be operated without electrical power—they need only human or mechanical energy.

Their paper in Applied Physics Letters introduces a strategy the scientists call “energy-conversion plasma” as an alternative to producing “transient spark” discharges without the need for a very high-voltage power supply.

But the question a lot of us in Australia might have is, when there are plenty of other protein options, why should we bother eating insects?

Insects are delicious and nutritious and can be grown in shipping containers in the middle of cities and towns. Is it time Australians joined the 2 billion people around the world who eat insects daily?