Lifeboat Foundation

Would you have your brain preserved? Do you believe your brain is the essence of you?

To noted American PhD Neuroscientist and Futurist, Ken Hayworth, the answer is an emphatic, “Yes.” He is currently developing machines and techniques to map brain tissue at the nanometer scale — the key to encoding our individual identities.

A self-described transhumanist and President of the Brain Preservation Foundation, Hayworth’s goal is to perfect existing preservation techniques, like cryonics, as well as explore and push evolving opportunities to effect a change on the status quo. Currently there is no brain preservation option that offers systematic, scientific evidence as to how much human brain tissue is actually preserved when undergoing today’s experimental preservation methods. Such methods include vitrification, the procedure used in cryonics to try and prevent human organs from freezing and being destroyed when tissue is cooled for cryopreservation.

Hayworth believes we can achieve his vision of preserving an entire human brain at an accepted and proven standard within the next decade. If Hayworth is right, is there a countdown to immortality?

Continue reading “What if your memories could live past your mortal shelf life?” »

By Margaret Rhodes — Wired

“I honestly think in five years people are going to go, ‘Oh God, remember when we used to wash our hair with shampoo?’” says Michael Gordon. That’s a striking statement, given Gordon’s own history: He created the famed haircare company Bumble and Bumble in 1977, the spin off product line in 1992, and then in 2006 sold his stake to Estée Lauder. But he isn’t advocating for unwashed hair. He’s explaining Purely Perfect, his new product line that defies just about every expectation most consumers have when it comes to personal hygiene.

The marquee product is a hair cleanser that has no detergents and doesn’t create a foam. Specifically, it’s free of sodium laureth sulfate, a chemical ingredient used in virtually all shampoos because it kills oils and leaves users with a squeaky-clean scalp. Problem is, that also dries out skin and hair follicles—a problem that most people treat by buying, without batting an eye, additional products like conditioners and hair masks. Instead, the Purely Perfect cleansing creme has aloe vera, rose flower oil, evening primrose oil, and peppermint oil. Using it feels nothing like shampoo: Massage the balm into your scalp, through your strands, and rinse it out. That’s it. No lathering, no rinsing, no repeating. And no Bumble and Bumble.

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FUTURISM UPDATE (October 03, 2014)

BBC: Toyota’s plans for a fuel cell future http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29459999

POPULAR SCIENCE: CHEOS– China’s New Eye In Space http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/eastern-arsenal/cheos-chi…e-in-space

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 03, 2014)” »

By Nick Lavars — GizMag

A team of international researchers has developed a molecule capable of triggering cancer cell death by carrying chloride into cancer cell membranes. The molecule flushes the cells with salt and causes them to self-destruct, potentially paving the way for new types of anti-cancer drugs.

The international effort involves researchers from the UK, Texas and South Korea who have collaborated to develop a synthetic ion transporter with a chloride payload. Once it reaches the cancer cells, the chloride interacts with the sodium in the cell membranes and leads to its demise.

Continue reading “Synthetic molecule uses salt to trigger self-destruction of cancer cells” »

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 02, 2014)

CIO: Microsoft Wants You to Help Predict the Future, and Bet on it http://www.cio.com/article/2689412/innovation/microsoft-want…on-it.html

FINANCIAL TIMES: Robots are our saviours, not the enemy. The alternative is a world in which wages fall and prices rise, writes Peter Thiel http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db02d75c-4400-11e4-baa7-00144feabdc0.html

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 02, 2014)” »

What follows is my position piece for London’s FutureFest 2013, the website for which no longer exists.

Medicine is a very ancient practice. In fact, it is so ancient that it may have become obsolete. Medicine aims to restore the mind and body to their natural state relative to an individual’s stage in the life cycle. The idea has been to live as well as possible but also die well when the time came. The sense of what is ‘natural’ was tied to statistically normal ways of living in particular cultures. Past conceptions of health dictated future medical practice. In this respect, medical practitioners may have been wise but they certainly were not progressive.

However, this began to change in the mid-19th century when the great medical experimenter, Claude Bernard, began to champion the idea that medicine should be about the indefinite delaying, if not outright overcoming, of death. Bernard saw organisms as perpetual motion machines in an endless struggle to bring order to an environment that always threatens to consume them. That ‘order’ consists in sustaining the conditions needed to maintain an organism’s indefinite existence. Toward this end, Bernard enthusiastically used animals as living laboratories for testing his various hypotheses.

Historians identify Bernard’s sensibility with the advent of ‘modern medicine’, an increasingly high-tech and aspirational enterprise, dedicated to extending the full panoply of human capacities indefinitely. On this view, scientific training trumps practitioner experience, radically invasive and reconstructive procedures become the norm, and death on a physician’s watch is taken to be the ultimate failure. Humanity 2.0 takes this way of thinking to the next level, which involves the abolition of medicine itself. But what exactly would that mean – and what would replace it?

Continue reading “The Abolition of Medicine as a Goal for Humanity 2.0” »

Andres Agostini and His 1,025 Easy Success Secrets!

1. Picture mentally, radiantly.

2. Draw outside the canvas.

Continue reading “Andres Agostini and His 1,025 Easy Success Secrets!” »

By Brendan I. Koerner - Wired

Because it’s so late on a Monday afternoon, there is a listless vibe inside the University of Washington lecture hall where Jim Olson is about to speak. The audience consists of a few dozen grad students struggling with end-of-day fatigue. They scarf down free chocolate-chunk cookies as they prepare to take notes, but sugar can sharpen mental alertness only so much. The talk they’ve come to hear, part of a biweekly series on current topics in neuroscience, doesn’t exactly seem like edge-of-your-seat material.

Olson’s first slide wakes them up. It is a pixelated photograph of an adorable 6-year-old boy named Hayden Strum, who sports a white Quiksilver T-shirt and a pirate-style eye patch. Hayden, who suffered from a pernicious brain tumor, came to Olson in 1995, back when Olson was just starting his career as a pediatric oncologist and cancer researcher. For four years, the doctor treated Hayden with successive rounds of chemotherapy and major surgeries, but nothing could save the boy’s life. Olson tells the audience that while sitting in the back row at Hayden’s memorial service, listening to the speakers express their pain, he had an epiphany about his scientific priorities.

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FUTURISM UPDATE (October 01, 2014)

WFS: Signs of “Connected Consciousness” Detected on Global Scale http://www.wfs.org/blogs/richard-samson/signs-connected-cons…obal-scale

New York State Takes Activist Role in Implementing Solar Energy Projects http://www.21stcentech.com/york-state-takes-activist-role-im…-projects/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 01, 2014)” »