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Jan 5, 2020

Thanks Boomer? Bitcoin-Friendly Generations to Inherit $70 Trillion

Posted by in category: bitcoin

Data from Coinshares underscores the wealth from days gone by which will ultimately fall into the hands of those who are sympathetic to Bitcoin as sound money.

Those who consider Bitcoin sound money will benefit from Baby Boomers to the tune of three times of U.S. GDP.

Jan 4, 2020

A Surprising New Source of Attention in the Brain Raises New Questions

Posted by in category: neuroscience

As you read this line, you’re bringing each word into clear view for a brief moment while blurring out the rest, perhaps even ignoring the roar of a leaf blower outside. It may seem like a trivial skill, but it’s actually fundamental to almost everything we do. If the brain weren’t able to pick and choose what portion of the incoming flood of sensory information should get premium processing, the world would look like utter chaos—an incomprehensible soup of attention-hijacking sounds and sights.

Meticulous research over decades has found that the control of this vital ability, called selective attention, belongs to a handful of areas in the brain’s parietal and frontal lobes. Now a new study suggests that another area in an unlikely location—the temporal lobe—also steers the spotlight of attention.

The unexpected addition raises new questions in what has long been considered a settled scientific field. “The last time an attention controlling area was discovered was 30 years ago,” says Winrich Freiwald, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Neural Systems, who published the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on November 4, 2019, “This is a fundamental discovery that might require a rethinking of old concepts about attentional control.”

Jan 4, 2020

Steven Kwast | The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force

Posted by in categories: education, engineering, ethics, government, law, policy, sex, space

Starfleet Begins


Steven L. Kwast is a retired Air Force general and former commander of the Air Education and Training Command at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering, he holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a past president of the Air Force’s Air University in Montgomery, Alabama, and a former fighter pilot with extensive combat and command experience. He is the author of the study, “Fast Space: Leveraging Ultra Low-Cost Space Access for 21st Century Challenges.”

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Jan 4, 2020

What CRISPR-baby prison sentences mean for research

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, law enforcement

Chinese court sends strong signal by punishing He Jiankui and two colleagues.

Jan 4, 2020

Guarding Against Directed-Energy Weapons

Posted by in category: energy

BAE Systems is working on a form of atmospheric shield to protect against directed energy weapons.

Jack Browne

Jan 4, 2020

Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience

Posted by in categories: biological, food, neuroscience, robotics/AI

If you’re interested in mind uploading, I have a book that I highly recommend. Rethinking Consciousness is a book by Michael S. A. Graziano, who is a Princeton University professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Early in his book Graziano writes a short summary:

“This book, however, is written entirely for the general reader. In it, I attempt to spell out, as simply and clearly as possible, a promising scientific theory of consciousness — one that can apply equally to biological brains and artificial machines.”

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Jan 4, 2020

Keep exercising: New study finds it’s good for your brain’s gray matter

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

Cardiorespiratory exercise—walking briskly, running, biking and just about any other exercise that gets your heart pumping—is good for your body, but can it also slow cognitive changes in your brain?

A study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases provides new evidence of an association between and brain health, particularly in and total brain volume—regions of the brain involved with cognitive decline and aging.

Brain tissue is made up of gray matter and filaments called white matter that extend from the gray matter cells. The volume of gray matter appears to correlate with various skills and cognitive abilities. The researchers found that increases in peak oxygen uptake are strongly associated with increased gray matter volume.

Jan 4, 2020

42% of New Cancer Patients Lose Their Life Savings

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, finance

A single PET scan is over 3k.


A new study delivers the dark financial reality of cancer.

Jan 4, 2020

Hearing through lip-reading

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, robotics/AI

“Brain activity synchronizes with sound waves, even without audible sound, through lip-reading, according to new research published in JNeurosci.”

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_re…/2020–01/sfn-htl010220.php

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Jan 4, 2020

Scientists Find Evidence a Strange Group of Quantum Particles Are Basically Immortal

Posted by in categories: life extension, particle physics, quantum physics

Nothing lasts forever. Humans, planets, stars, galaxies, maybe even the Universe itself, everything has an expiration date. But things in the quantum realm don’t always follow the rules. Scientists have found that quasiparticles in quantum systems could be effectively immortal.

That doesn’t mean they don’t decay, which is reassuring. But once these quasiparticles have decayed, they are able to reorganise themselves back into existence, possibly ad infinitum.

This seemingly flies right in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, which asserts that entropy in an isolated system can only move in an increasing direction: things can only break down, not build back up again.