Lifeboat Foundation

New spin on all things that are Singular. Hmmm — so if Singularity becomes a religion; is Ray Kurzweil its God?

A colleague forwarded John Horgan’s recent Scientific American article, “The Singularity and the Neural Code.” Horgan argues that the intelligence augmentation and mind uploading that would lead to a technological singularity depend upon cracking the neural code. The problem is that we don’t understand our neural code, the software or algorithms that transform neurophysiology into the stuff of minds like perceptions, memories, and meanings. In other words, we know very little about how brains make minds.

Another exampme of how precision works.

While pregnant with her first child, Rhea Birusingh started experiencing blurry vision that her OB-GYN dismissed as an expected pregnancy-related change, but three months later, she went to her ophthalmologist, who discovered an inoperable 2-centimeter benign brain tumor behind her right eye. Now, nearly four months later, Birusingh’s son is healthy and her vision is normal, thanks to a powerful, precise radiation treatment.

“When you’re a pathologist and your eyes are a money maker, you start to get a little bit worried,” Birusingh, 37, of Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida, told FoxNews.com.

Continue reading “Precision radiation helps ward off first-time mom’s brain tumor” »

Researchers have created a beautiful visualization the electrical activity in the human brain with the Unity3D game development engine. It’s gorgeous eye candy but it’s also amazing when you find out what it is you’re looking at.

Very promising. Wonder how effective it is with Prescription Med. Addictions.

A type of brain cell known as microglia plays a key role in reducing the effects of cocaine in the brain, according to a major study by a team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal.

The discovery, published in the journal Neuron, establishes for the first time that microglia can diminish the adverse changes to neural circuitry brought on by the chronic use of cocaine and has significant implications for developing an effective treatment for addiction.

Continue reading “Mechanism that reduces effect of cocaine on brain discovered” »

A specific type of immune cell, called microglia (green) can help contain amyloid plaques (magenta), the key hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, thus limiting their damage to surrounding brain cells.

But, Dr Jaime Grutzendler, associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Yale, said that is no longer thought to be the case, and should signal a new.

He said: ‘It suggests we should be enhancing the function of these immune cells, not trying to suppress it.’

Continue reading “Immune cells thought to trigger dementia actually PROTECT against it” »

Harvard you’re wrong. Why? Harvard needs to explain to all the families with genetic mutations tied to various types of cancer, cancer survivors who carry a genetic mutation, or the workers who were exposed at work to radiation or carcinogens how their smoking caused their cancer when they never smoked in their entire life. However, how do you explain that to the countless million patients, survivors, and loved ones who lost someone to cancer that never smoked or were exposed to smoking.

As many as 40 percent of cancer cases, and half of cancer deaths, come down to things people could easily change, researchers said Thursday.

While Americans often worry about whether chemicals, pollution or other factors out of their control cause cancer, the new analysis shows otherwise: People are firmly in charge of much of their own risk of cancer.

Continue reading “Here’s How to Prevent Half of Cancer Deaths” »

As it restarts its mission to discover weird and exotic things about our universe, the Large Hadron Collider is about to become a firehose of quantum data.

Q-Dots ORNL style.

VIDEO: A method to produce significant amounts of semiconducting nanoparticles for light-emitting displays, sensors, solar panels and biomedical applications has gained momentum with a demonstration by researchers at Oak Ridge National… view more

Continue reading “ORNL demonstrates large-scale technique to produce quantum dots” »

Finally, some well deserved recogonition to Argonne Natl. Labs in their efforts on QC with the Univ. Of Chicago.

If biochemists had access to a quantum computer, they could perfectly simulate the properties of new molecules to develop novel drugs in ways that would take the fastest existing computers decades.

Electrons represent an ideal quantum bit, with a “spin” that when pointing up can represent a 0 and down can represent a 1. Such bits are small—even smaller than an atom—and because they do not interact strongly, they can remain quantum for long periods. However, exploiting electrons as qubits also poses a challenge because they must be trapped and manipulated. Which is exactly what David Schuster, assistant professor of physics, and his collaborators at UChicago, Argonne National Laboratory and Yale University have done.

Continue reading “New device steps toward isolating single electrons for quantum computing” »