The Cosmologist and Physicist, Stephen Hawking said he will leave the Earth to travel to space onboard Richard Branson’s spaceship, The Independent reported.
Professor Hawking told Good Morning Britain that he’d never dreamed he’d be able to head into space. But “Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately”, he said.
Richard Branson’s spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, hopes soon to carry people into space on commercial missions.
Here’s a new 40-minute podcast interview I did with site Lions of Liberty. Lots of transhumanism in it.
In today’s episode of Lions of Liberty, Marc welcomes in the founder of the Transhumanist Party and 2018 Libertarian candidate for the California Governorship, Zoltan Istvan!
In the show, you’ll hear:
Toronto-based eSight Corp. has launched a pair of electronic glasses that allow the legally blind to see. The eSight3 glasses use high-tech image processing to give those who are legally blind the chance to experience what it is like to have 20/20 vision.
Users can control a variety of functions that are important for vision, including magnification, contrast, brightness and focus. Videos projected onto two OLED screens in front of the eyes allow the user to see the different functions in action.
ESight glasses are ideal for a number of conditions, including for people who have optic nerve hypoplasia, ocular albanism, forms of glaucoma and more, according to the company.
A popular science article discussing the imminent arrival of senescent cell removing therapies.
Imagine a world where you could take just a single pill for the treatment or prevention of several age-related diseases. Although still in the realms of science fiction, accumulating scientific data now suggests that despite their biological differences a variety of these diseases share a common cause: senescent cells. This has led scientists to find drugs that can destroy these cells.
When cells become damaged, they either self-destruct (apoptosis) or they lose their ability to grow and remain stuck within the body. These are the non-growing senescent cells that no longer carry out their tasks properly. They spew out chemicals that cause damage to cells nearby, sometimes turning them into “zombies” – hence why they are sometimes referred to as “zombie cells”. Eventually, the damage builds up so much that the function of bodily organs and tissues, such as skin and muscle, becomes impaired. At this point, we identify the changes as disease.
Depending on where these senescent cells gather within the body will determine which disease will develop. Senescent cells have now been shown to be linked to several diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis and cancer.
“SpaceX has applied to the FCC to launch 11,943 satellites into low-Earth orbit, providing “ubiquitous high-bandwidth (up to 1Gbps per user, once fully deployed) broadband services for consumers and businesses in the U.S. and globally,” according to FCC applications.”
TechCrunch: “You’ll soon be coming home and a robot will greet you at the door.”
VentureBeat: “Read to kids, host video chats, take pictures, recognize faces and objects, connect to smart home devices, and secure the home by roaming around and video taping everything.”
H+ Magazine: “What sets Autonomous’s efforts apart is the sophistication of the software which incoporates deep learning neural networks and what they call — talents.”
Imagine a world where parents can give birth to superbabies with bones so strong they’re impervious to a surgical drill and a heart less prone to failure. A world where a child has DNA from three parents, not two. A world where it’s possible for a woman to have her favorite movie star’s child simply by collecting a few of his skin cells. Genetic technology is making it all a reality, horrifying some and heartening others.
Reproductive advances are arriving so rapidly, we’ve already entered the realm of science-fiction and are on the verge of making truly astounding leaps.
For more, look to the new book “The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids — and the Kids We Have” by Bonnie Rochman.
Posted in neuroscience
JUDY WOODRUFF: For decades, researchers have worked to create a better and more direct connection between a human brain and a computer to improve the lives of people who are paralyzed or have severe limb weakness from diseases like ALS.
Those advances have been notable, but now the work is yielding groundbreaking results.
Special correspondent Cat Wise has the story.
