Lifeboat Foundation

EXCLUSIVE: Clones are the next step in extending human life, scientist believes The technique has proved successful in animals but not yet worked in people Dr Alex Zhavoronkov believes it will offer ‘spare’ organs for people as they age Regardless of the huge strides scientists have made towards reaching the elusive goal, immortality remains a pipedream.

Dr. Kristie Miller, co-director of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, explained that the block universe theory says that our universe could be seen as a big four-dimensional block of spacetime that holds everything that ever happens.

In the world of blocks, there is no “now” or “now.” Within the three directions of space and the one direction of time, all moments only exist in relation to each other. Your experience of the present is just a reflection of where you are in the block world at the time. The “past” is just a piece of the world at a different time. The “future,” on the other hand, is at a different time.

So, is time just a trick your mind plays on you? And, more importantly, is it possible to go back in time?

Meta’s using a “flattening” tactic amid mass tech layoffs, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. See more details about how roles will change, here.

Here’s my new article for Newsweek. Give it a read with an open mind! The day of superintelligence is coming, and we can attempt to make sure humans survive by being respectful to AI. This article explores some of my work at Oxford.

The discussion about giving rights to artificial intelligences and robots has evolved around whether they deserve or are entitled to them. Juxtapositions of this with women’s suffrage and racial injustices are often brought up in philosophy departments like the University of Oxford, where I’m a graduate student.

A survey concluded 90 percent of AI experts believe the singularity—a moment when AI becomes so smart, our biological brains can no longer understand it—will happen in this century. A trajectory of AI intelligence growth taken over 25 years and extended at the same rate 50 years forward would pinpoint AI becoming exponentially smarter than humans.

Continue reading “Why Giving Rights to Robots Might One Day Save Humans” »

Scientists have found a clever way to generate hydrogen straight from salty seawater. This could be another step towards a clean energy future, if renewables power the process.

The new device makes a few chemical modifications to existing technologies, making it possible to extract hydrogen from untreated, unpurified seawater – which could alleviate concerns about using precious water supplies.

“We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen… to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyzer,” explains chemical engineer Shizhang Qiao of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

At Davos, a Duke University futurist spoke in glowing terms about the promise of ‘brain transparency’ – and downplayed the obvious dystopian risks.

New geological dating system could show when glaciers retreated.

For all of the unparalleled, parallel-processing, still-indistinguishable-from-magic wizardry packed into the three pounds of an adult human brain, it obeys the same rule as the other living tissue it controls: Oxygen is a must.

So it was with a touch of irony that Evgeny Tsymbal offered his explanation for a technological wonder—movable, data-covered walls mere atoms wide—that may eventually help computers behave more like a brain.

“There was unambiguous evidence that oxygen vacancies are responsible for this,” said Tsymbal, George Holmes University Professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Triple-negative breast cancer accounts for approximately 15% of all breast cancer cases. Patients with this subtype typically have poorer outcomes compared to other breast cancers, suggesting the need for improved treatments. One new therapy being investigated at Moffitt Cancer Center involves oncolytic viruses, which infect and kill the cancer cells. In a new article published in Nature Medicine, the researchers, led by Hatem Soliman, M.D., share results from a phase 2 clinical trial of the oncolytic virus talimogene laherparepvec (TVEC) combined with standard chemotherapy in patients with early stage triple-negative breast cancer.

Patients with triple-negative breast cancer lack expression of the estrogen and progesterone receptors and have little to no expression of the protein HER2. As a result, hormone therapy and medicines that target HER2 protein receptors are not effective against this type of cancer. Standard therapy for early stage triple-negative breast cancer has been cytotoxic chemotherapy with the recent addition of pembrolizumab. However, this approach is associated with significant side effects. Many studies have shown that patients who have higher levels of immune cells within their tumors tend to have better responses to therapy. These observations suggest that agents that stimulate the immune system may be beneficial in triple-negative breast cancer.

TVEC is a modified herpes simplex 1 virus that includes coding sequences for the protein GM-CSF, which can stimulate the immune system. It is injected directly into the tumor and undergoes replication within the tumor cells, resulting in the breakdown of the tumor cell and production of tumor derived antigens. Immune cells can recognize the antigens, infiltrate the tumor and target the cancer cells for destruction. In addition, GM-CSF made by the virus acts as a beacon to help recruit immune cells to the tumor.