Lifeboat Foundation

We often hear this word used in Transhumanist (H+) discussions, but what is meant by it? After all, if H+ is about using scitech to enhance Human capabilities via internal modifications what does it mean to go beyond these? In the following I intend to delineate possible stages of enhancement from what exists today to what could exist as an endpoint of this process in centuries to come.

Although I have tried to put it in what I believe to be a plausible chronological order a great deal depends on major unknowns, most especially the rapidity with which Artificial Intelligence (AI) develops over the next few decades. Although AI and biotech are at present evolving separately and in parallel I would expect at some point fairly soon for there to be a massive crossover. Exactly how or when that might happen is again a moot question. There is also a somewhat artificial distinction between machines and biology, which exists because our current machines are so primitive. Once we have a fully functioning nanotechnology, just like Nature’s existing nanotech (life), that distinction will disappear completely.

The display is part of a growing trend to find alternatives to fireworks, which create noise and smoke pollution and can be a fire hazard.

The children at BiZoHa, an orphanage and school in southwest Uganda, wake up at 7 a.m. Within an hour they’re ready and dressed in their school uniforms, blue shirts with bright yellow collars and either charcoal grey pants or dresses. There are classes after that and, at 10:30, a pause for porridge, bread, and fried bananas. The day continues from there — classes, meals, play, and sleep — perfectly routine and peaceable. But in the Kasese District, a multi-ethnic region on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, this schedule, with all its reassuring regularity, is radical. There are no prayer breaks. There are no church services. BiZoHa, described by its backers as “the world’s first atheist orphanage,” is a humanist raft adrift a choppy sea of faith.

Whether or not BiZoHa really is the first atheist orphanage or not — any facility in North Korea could stake a claim — doesn’t much matter. To debate that point is to lose the specific context. Thanks to a missionary history and the influence of American conservative activists, Uganda is an enthusiastically, zealously religious country. It is not constitutionally Christian, but it basically functions that way, which makes the Reddit-funded orphanage something akin to a humanist fortress. And there is a distinct militarism to some of the language embraced by its teachers. Number six on the list of the school’s ten values is “NO SUPERSTITION.” Students who see those words know that they are a reminder to “Rely on Reason, Logic, and Science to understand the universe and to solve life’s problems.”

It’s a hallowed lesson to BiZoHa’s founding director, Bwambale Robert Musubaho. A Ugandan orphaned at five, Musubaho was raised by his grandmother and eventually graduated from college with a diploma in Biological Sciences. Frustrated by what he saw as hypocrisy among believers, Musubaho stepped back from religion in the late 1980s. But he still took inspiration from the religious people he saw around him, specifically the missionaries. He became an atheist, a homegrown Richard Dawkins preaching good works and good, solid reasoning. After many years, he found the word for what he was on the internet and declared himself a humanist.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with over 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said Sunday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions.

The announcement by Hassan Rouhani comes as Iran faces crushing American sanctions after the U.S. pulled out of its nuclear deal with world powers last year.

Rouhani made the announcement in a speech in the desert city of Yazd. He said the field was located in Iran’s southern Khuzestan province, home to its crucial oil industry.

Previous versions of a vaccine that Mayo Clinic was working on were a lot more invasive than their current one. This shot is administered easily and requires no special bells and whistles.

“It’s supposed to be just off the shelf, kind of similar to when you get the flu shot or pneumonia shot,” Chumsri said.

The team is working on vaccines for every stage of breast cancer. They’ve already started using this vaccine on two new patients, and they are looking for additional trial subjects. If you’re interested in being a part of the next trial at the Mayo Clinic, you can search through your options here.

2019 is quite a milestone for LEAF; this will be our fourth year of bringing you the latest industry news, organizing online events, hosting our annual conference in New York, and crowdsourcing important research projects over at Lifespan.io. We have been incredibly busy and, as has been customary in previous years, we will be taking a look back at the year.

January

Continue reading “Looking Back at 2019 – and Forward to 2020” »

For your 2020 New Year’s resolutions, think about keeping the microbes that live inside your gut healthy. Look after them and they’ll look after you.

Utilizing a recently developed brain imaging technique new research suggests that measuring accumulated levels of a protein called tau may predict future neurodegeneration associated with Alzihemer’s disease. The discovery promises to accelerate clinical trial research offering a novel way to predict the progression of the disease before major symptoms appear.

Exactly what occurs in the human brain during the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease remains quite a mystery for dementia researchers. While studies have homed in on several pathological signs signaling moderate to severe cases of Alzheimer’s, it’s still unclear what the initial triggers for the disease are, and without this vital information scientists are struggling to generate effective drugs and treatments to slow or prevent the disease.

The two big pathological signs of Alzheimer’s most researchers agree on are accumulations of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain. Abnormal aggregations of amyloid proteins, into what are referred to as plaques, are generally considered to be the primary causative mechanism behind Alzheimer’s. Masses of misfolding tau proteins, forming what are known as neurofibrillary tangles, are also seen in the disease.

Physicists Neil Turok and Sabine Hossenfelder are among those who worry that physics is in a funk, in part because of the love of “beautiful” mathematics.