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Futurist event Moogfest’s line-up in these stories, including a cover pic of the transhumanist Immortality Bus on Cool Hunting:

http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/moogfest-2017 &

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/michael-stipe-premiering-first-…-moogfest/ & https://thump.vice.com/en_ca/article/moogfest-keynote-speakers-announcement #futurist

Physicist Dr Kate Shaw, MIT Media Lab’s Joe Davis and an art installation from Michael Stipe take the stage at this year’s boundary-pushing celebration of technology by Karen Day.

Continue reading “Moogfest 2017’s Futurist Line-Up” | >

Inside a Boston lab just a few miles away from MIT, a team of PhDs is building tools for a future where factories are powered by biology, not traditional manufacturing. The startup, Ginkgo Bioworks, currently helps clients design flavors and fragrances by modifying the DNA of microbes like yeast. Once the yeast have been tweaked to produce a particular scent as a byproduct, they can be brewed like beer and the smell can be extracted and bottled — which reduces the client’s need to depend on natural resources for ingredients. (video by: Alan Jeffries, Victoria Blackburne-Daniell, Drew Beebe) (Source: Bloomberg)

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Part man, part machine: Researchers at the University of Oxford are making The Terminator a reality.

Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy and Andrew Carr, of the Oxford Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit, test medical technology by dressing robots in human flesh.

The cyborgs “wear” tissue grafts to help develop artificial muscles and tendons before transplantation.

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Coffee turns up some interesting properties and it isnt the caffeine in that is the star of the show.

Could coffee be a geroprotector?

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Many people like to start the day with a hot cup of coffee to help get their motor running, but there could be more to this popular beverage than meets the eye. Nothing quite like the taste of hot fresh coffee and it is no surprise it has been the drink of choice in many cultures for centuries. Coffee has also long been associated with having geroprotective properties, meaning it is a substance that protects against the aging process.

A number of epidemiologic studies suggest that drinking coffee can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Based on the cardiovascular risk factors, aging and dementia studies, the consumption of 3–5 cups of coffee a day is associated with a reduced risk for Alzheimer’s in later life. Some studies have suggested the reason coffee is beneficial is due to caffeine and its antioxidant properties, however a study in 2015 found there was no significant difference between caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee so something else other than caffeine must be responsible for its protective properties.

Continue reading “A major neuroprotective component in coffee” | >

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and La Jolla-based startup Nanovision Biosciences Inc. have developed the nanotechnology and wireless electronics for a new type of retinal prosthesis that brings research a step closer to restoring the ability of neurons in the retina to respond to light. The researchers demonstrated this response to light in a rat retina interfacing with a prototype of the device in vitro.

They detail their work in a recent issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering. The technology could help tens of millions of people worldwide suffering from neurodegenerative diseases that affect eyesight, including macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and loss of vision due to diabetes.

Despite tremendous advances in the development of over the past two decades, the performance of devices currently on the market to help the blind regain functional vision is still severely limited—well under the acuity threshold of 20/200 that defines legal blindness.

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A Universal Basic Income (UBI) will not fix everything— it’s not supposed to —it’s a start for some people and a boon for everyone. But don’t let the prospect of a little free money stop us from pursuing more progressive regulations and reforms.

UBI is meant to provide a floor —a standard—which no one can fall beneath. But giving people unconditional free money shouldn’t be the end of the conversation, says Ben Spies-Butcher, a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Masters of Policy and Applied Social Research in the Sociology Department at Macquarie University.

In his essay “Not Just a Basic Income” for the Green Institute, Spies-Butcher writes:

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