Lifeboat Foundation

To date, paralysis resulting from spinal cord damage has been irreparable. With a new therapeutic approach, scientists from the Department for Cell Physiology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) headed by Professor Dietmar Fischer have succeeded for the first time in getting paralyzed mice to walk again. The keys to this are the protein hyper-interleukin-6, which stimulates nerve cells to regenerate, and the way how it is supplied to the animals. The researchers published their report in the journal Nature Communications from 15 January 2021.

Spinal cord injuries caused by sports or traffic accidents often result in permanent disabilities such as paraplegia. This is caused by damage to nerve fibers, so-called axons, which carry information from the brain to the muscles and back from the skin and muscles. If these fibers are damaged due to injury or illness, this communication is interrupted. Since severed axons in the spinal cord can’t grow back, the patients suffer from paralysis and numbness for life. To date, there are still no treatment options that could restore the lost functions in affected patients.

Scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind human stem cell that seems to be capable of repairing and healing damage anywhere in the body.

These so-called “smart” stem cells start off as human fat cells. But after being reprogrammed with cancer drugs that stripped the cells of their identity, they turned back into multipotent stem cells that were able to adapt to their surroundings in a mouse model, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.”

While these findings are very exciting, I will keep a lid on my excitement until we get this through to patients, Chandrakanthan said in the press release.

Among popular public thinkers advocating for the simulation hypothesis is Elon Musk who stated: if you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality “before concluding ” that its most likely we’re in a simulation.

Elon Musk is known in the philosophical community to make “outrageous” claims, whether its about the advent of digital superintelligence, or in this case, according to some skeptics of the simulation hypothesis, Elon Musk exaggerates the probability that we might be living in a simulation.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: Are We Living in a Simulation?” »

“By contemplating the full spectrum of scenarios of the coming technological singularities, many can place their bets in favor of the Cybernetic Singularity which is the surest path to cybernetic immortality and engineered godhood as opposed to the AI Singularity when Homo sapiens is hastily retired as a senescent parent. This meta-system transition from the networked Global Brain to the Gaian Mind is all about evolution of our own individual minds; it’s all about our own Self-Transcendence.”-Alex M. Vikoulov, The Cybernetic Singularity: The Syntellect Emergence #CyberneticSingularity #SyntellectEmergence #CyberneticTheoryofMind #AlexMVikoulov ​#consciousness #phenomenology #evolution #cybernetics #SyntellectHypothesis #PhilosophyofMind #QuantumTheory #PhysicsofTime #PressRelease #NewBookRelease #AmazonKindle #AlexVikoulov #EcstadelicMediaGroup

Ecstadelic Media Group releases a new non-fiction book The Cybernetic Singularity: The Syntellect Emergence, The Cybernetic Theory of Mind series by Alex M. Vikoulov as a Kindle eBook (Press Release, San Francisco, CA, USA, January 102021 08.00 PM PST)

Circa 2019 😃

The La Moto Volante from French company Lazareth demonstrated its first stable hover. NASA’s helicopter that will fly on Mars has passed its flight tests. And Boston Dynamics’ upgraded Handle robot is a champ at warehouse Tetris.

Continue reading “Lazareth’s transforming flying motorcycle can hover | What the Future” »

The consumer electronics show was virtual this year, and the WIRED Gear crew watched all the Zooms to bring you this list of nearly 80 products, trends, musings, and photos.

Engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory are prototyping a previously theoretical rocket design that could someday take spacecraft to interstellar space. Their plan? Use heat from the sun, rather than combustion, to power a rocket engine.

🌌 You love badass space stuff. So do we. Let’s explore the universe together.

Summary: Close adherence to the MIND and Mediterranean diets delayed the onset of Parkinson’s disease by up to 17.4 years in women, and 8.4 years in men.

Source: University of British Columbia.

A new study from UBC researchers suggests a strong correlation between following the MIND and Mediterranean diets and later onset of Parkinson’s disease (PD). While researchers have long known of neuroprotective effects of the MIND diet for diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, this study is the first to suggest a link between this diet and brain health for Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Experts are investigating the spread and behavior of coronavirus variants, including whether vaccines work on them. Here’s what we know so far.