Lifeboat Foundation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The two astronauts who will test drive SpaceX’s brand new rocketship are classmates and friends, veteran spacefliers married to veteran spacefliers, and fathers of young sons.

Together, they will end a nine-year drought for NASA when they blast into orbit next week from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

Retired Marine Col. Doug Hurley will be in charge of launch and landing, a fitting assignment for the pilot of NASA’s last space shuttle flight.

Researchers trained an A.I. on over 31,000 selfies to help it learn how to judge our personalities based on facial features alone.

Education Saturday with Space Time.

This episode of space time is brought to you by the information flowing through an impossibly complex network of quantum entanglement, that just happens to mutually agree that you and I exist inside it. Oh, and Schrodinger’s cat is in here too.

Continue reading “How Do Quantum States Manifest In The Classical World?” »

If you’re interested in superlongevity and superintelligence, then I have a book to recommend., by Sonia Contera, is a book about the intersection of biotech and nanotech. Interesting and well written for the layman, the book covers some of the latest developments in nanotechnology as it applies to biological matters. Although there are many topics, I was primarily interested in the DNA nanobots, DNA origami, and the protein nanotechnology sections. My interest is piqued in these arenas due to my expectation that DNA nanobots and protein nanobots, as well as complex self-assembled custom nanostructures, are going to be key to some of the longevity technologies and some of the possible substrates for mind uploading that are key to superlongevity and superintelligence. There are also sections in the book on 3D bioprinted organs — progress and possibilities, as well as difficulties.

There is even a section that clearly was written specifically to address a discussion that has engaged my friends, Dinorah Delfin and Dan Faggella. The title is:

FUTURE DEVICES: QUANTUM PHYSICS MEETS BIOLOGY MEETS NANOTECHNOLOGY

Now, some might be tempted to consider that particular combination to be “woo woo”, however, please keep in mind the author’s credentials. Sonia Contera is a professor of biological physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford.

Continue reading “Nano Comes to Life: How Nanotechnology Is Transforming Medicine and the Future of Biology” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEdVe0IlHyc

I recently interviewed post-humanist Dr Francesca Ferrando on the relationship between the global transhumanist and post-humanist movements – might be of interest!

Blown away by the support since I launched my YouTube channel focused on futurist/transhumanist topics a couple of months back & have decided to invest in better equipment to boost the quality. In the meantime very grateful for any subscribers 😊.

Continue reading “‘I consider myself a post-humanist’ — Francesca Ferrando interview” »

A United Arab Emirates research institute has developed a coronavirus treatment using stem cells “which could be a game-changer in the global fight” against the outbreak, a government official announced on Friday.

Read the latest coronavirus updates in our dedicated section.

The Abu Dhabi Stem Cell Center has developed a treatment method that regenerates lung cells and prevents the immune system from overreacting, Hend Al Otaiba, Director of Strategic Communications with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a Twitter thread.

The director of our institute, Sir Paul Nurse, borrowed another wartime analogy when he imagined academic labs as a flotilla of ‘little ships’, as at Dunkirk, that could be set up quickly to help rescue a rather desperate situation. The protocols we’ve developed have been downloaded more than 5,000 times, and we’ve helped other testing laboratories (including the big ones that are now coming online) with re-agents and scientific advice. We’ve been able to get recovering doctors and nurses back to work quicker, and crucially we’ve been able to identify healthcare workers who may have been spreading the virus unwittingly to the most vulnerable.

The team at the Crick is extremely multi-national. Wartime analogies are not helpful when they promote national exceptionalism, still less when they imply an individual battle between patient and virus. They are helpful when it comes to getting people to think clearly and act swiftly. The frustration when we’ve run up against what might be politely described as ‘NHS bureaucracy’ has been intense. When we’ve dealt with local NHS partners who are determined and dynamic, we’ve been able to save lives. In this sense there really is a war on, and for once I’m happy to see politicians treat it in this way.

We will win this war through immunity. Understanding immunity to respiratory viruses is really difficult — more like decoding Enigma than developing radar. We will need new technology as well as optimising existing tests. So far, the best tests can give a reasonable estimate of whether someone has been exposed to the virus. They cannot yet tell you if you are immune to it. The trouble with coronaviruses is that they have evolved to evade immunity. They possess all sorts of unknown weaponry that dampens down our immune responses.

General anesthesia (GA) can produce analgesia (loss of pain) independent of inducing loss of consciousness, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We hypothesized that GA suppresses pain in part by activating supraspinal analgesic circuits. We discovered a distinct population of GABAergic neurons activated by GA in the mouse central amygdala (CeA_GA neurons). In vivo calcium imaging revealed that different GA drugs activate a shared ensemble of CeA_GA neurons also possess basal activity that mostly reflects animals’ internal state rather than external stimuli. Optogenetic activation of CeA_GA potently suppressed both pain-elicited reflexive and self-recuperating behaviors across sensory modalities and abolished neuropathic pain-induced mechanical (hyper-)sensitivity. Conversely, inhibition of CeA_GA activity exacerbated pain, produced strong aversion and canceled the analgesic effect of low-dose ketamine. CeA_GA neurons have widespread inhibitory projections to many affective pain-processing centers. Our study points to CeA_GA as a potential powerful therapeutic target for alleviating chronic pain.

A novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first identified in December 2019 as the cause of a respiratory illness designated coronavirus disease 2019, or Covid-19.¹ Several therapeutic agents have been evaluated for the treatment of Covid-19, but none have yet been shown to be efficacious.^2,3 Remdesivir (GS-5734), an inhibitor of the viral RNA-dependent, RNA polymerase with inhibitory activity against SARS-CoV and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV),^4–7 was identified early as a promising therapeutic candidate for Covid-19 because of its ability to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.⁸ In addition, in nonhuman primate studies, remdesivir initiated 12 hours after inoculation with MERS-CoV^9,10 reduced lung virus levels and lung damage.

To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of putative investigational therapeutic agents among hospitalized adults with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19, we designed an adaptive platform to rapidly conduct a series of phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials. Here, we describe the preliminary results of the first stage of the Adaptive Covid-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT-1), in which we evaluated treatment with remdesivir as compared with placebo.