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Oct 24, 2019

Fossil Trove Offers Clues to How Life Found a Way After Asteroid That Wiped Out Dinosaurs

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, evolution, existential risks

On the outskirts of Colorado Springs, researchers have uncovered thousands of fossils showing how life on Earth revived in the aftermath of an asteroid impact 66 million years or so ago that killed most dinosaurs and other life on land and sea.

Taken together, the fossil trove documents an era when evolution, in essence, hit the reset button. While countless species vanished forever, some plants and animals rebounded relatively quickly in the first million years after the devastation, including the mammals ancestral to humankind, the scientists said in research published Thursday in Science.

Oct 24, 2019

CRISPR Just Created a Hornless Bull, and It’s a Step Forward for Gene-Edited Food

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, genetics

Gene-Edited Bulls

Although GMO wheat, corn, and other crops are frequently used in the US, scientists and farmers have begun shifting their focus to a far more accurate, cheaper, and potentially acceptable way of tinkering with the genome: genetic editing.

We’ve spilled plenty of ink on the merits of CRISPR and older-generation genetic editors such as TALEN. Rather than blindly sticking additional genes into a genome, these are guided approaches that surgically snip out or insert additional genetic material, and as such, are far more precise and predictable. Rather than inserting alien genes into our foods, scientists can now cut out genes detrimental to crop growth, or mimic mutations that provide advantages—a sort of “gene therapy” for food, but for enhancement rather than treatment.

Oct 24, 2019

Can This Newfound Dark, Massive Galaxy Be Astronomy’s ‘Missing Link’ In The Universe?

Posted by in category: space

If this newfound galaxy is just the tip of the iceberg, the entire Universe may fall into place.

Oct 24, 2019

The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes, Scientists Say

Posted by in category: space

‘Spacetime foam’ might just be the wildest thing in the known universe, and we’re just starting to understand it.

Oct 24, 2019

How Fast Is The Universe Expanding? Incompatible Answers Point To New Physics

Posted by in categories: physics, space

As more data comes in, the puzzle gets deeper and deeper.

Oct 24, 2019

Scientists are trying to build a conscious machine — here’s why it will never work

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, robotics/AI, supercomputing

Many advanced artificial intelligence projects say they are working toward building a conscious machine, based on the idea that brain functions merely encode and process multisensory information. The assumption goes, then, that once brain functions are properly understood, it should be possible to program them into a computer. Microsoft recently announced that it would spend US$1 billion on a project to do just that.

So far, though, attempts to build supercomputer brains have not even come close. A multi-billion-dollar European project that began in 2013 is now largely understood to have failed. That effort has shifted to look more like a similar but less ambitious project in the U.S., developing new software tools for researchers to study brain data, rather than simulating a brain.

Some researchers continue to insist that simulating neuroscience with computers is the way to go. Others, like me, view these efforts as doomed to failure because we do not believe consciousness is computable. Our basic argument is that brains integrate and compress multiple components of an experience, including sight and smell – which simply can’t be handled in the way today’s computers sense, process and store data.

Oct 24, 2019

This ‘two-faced’ membrane can create electricity—from nothing but salty water

Posted by in category: particle physics

New membrane acts as one-way path for charged particles.

Oct 24, 2019

Blob-like brains created in lab could have ‘thoughts’ and are ‘suffering’, scientists warn

Posted by in category: neuroscience

MINIATURE brains which have been grown in the lab could have some form of consciousness and could be suffering as a result, scientists have worryingly claimed.

Oct 24, 2019

Liz Parrish conference at RAADfest 2019 (05-Oct-2019)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Hayley Harrison sent me this video taken-filmed by Andrés Grases and posted it to Youtube… I know for a certainty that Gene therapy will not increase Life span into 125 or beyond years due to the Animal Eukartyotic cell of the earth having a plague that infects all cells into mutation and early cell death.


This year I had the privilege to record in full Liz Parrish talk delivered at RAADfest 2019 (Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival 2019), which took place in Las Vegas, NV from 3 to 6 of October.

Continue reading “Liz Parrish conference at RAADfest 2019 (05-Oct-2019)” »

Oct 24, 2019

Surprising study shows reduced neuronal activity extends life

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension, neuroscience

Say this about the kinds of molecular mayhem that we know underlie aging: Mechanisms like whether the ends of chromosomes fray (bad) and whether genes’ on-off status breaks down (really bad) at least sound like plausible ways to impair vital organs, from skin to brains and hearts, and produce the whole sorry mess known as aging.

On Wednesday, scientists reported a driver of aging that, in contrast, even the lead researcher diplomatically calls “counterintuitive”: neuronal activity. Aging, of course, affects the brain. But the brain seems to affect aging, too, they found: In creatures from worms to mice to people, high levels of neuronal firing spell a shorter life span. Lower levels — naturally, or due to drugs that dampen neurons’ activity — increase longevity.

The discovery4 was so surprising that it’s taken two years to be published (in Nature) because of how much additional data the outside scientists reviewing the study requested. Geneticist Bruce Yankner of Harvard Medical School, who led the research, understood their skepticism. “If you say you have a cat in your backyard, people believe you,” he said. “If you say you have a zebra, they want more evidence.”