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Jun 10, 2019

Chronic inflammation removes motivation

Posted by in category: futurism

Why do we feel listless when we are recovering from an illness? The answer is, apparently, that low-grade chronic inflammation interferes with the dopaminergic signaling system in the brain that motivates us to do things.

This was reported in a new paper published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

The research carried out at Emory University explains the links between the reduced release of dopamine in the brain, the motivation to do things, and the presence of an inflammatory reaction in the body. It also presents the possibility that this is part of the body’s effort to optimize its energy expenditure during such inflammatory episodes, citing evidence gathered during their study.

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Jun 10, 2019

Google To Spend Billions Developing Gene Therapy For Heart Disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Alphabet, Inc., the parent company of Google, plans to develop a life-long gene therapy for heart disease, the leading cause of death for men and women in the U.S.

Attaining this lofty goal will be the job of Alphabet’s gene-editing start-up, Verve Therapeutics, and Google’s life science start-up, Verily.

This month, Google’s venture fund, GV, partnered with three other funds to launch Verve Therapeutics with $58.5 million in Series A funding. The company’s scientific founders include Dr. Sekar Kathiresan (CEO), Dr. Kiran Musunuru (chief scientific adviser) and Dr. J. Keith Joung (strategic adviser).

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Jun 10, 2019

The Ego Death of Bran Stark (Why He’s Weird)

Posted by in category: entertainment

Bran Stark, or the Three-Eyed Raven, is near omniscient but doesn’t intervene in Game of Thrones Season 8. This is because he experienced ego death.

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Jun 10, 2019

One Mystical Psychedelic Trip Can Trigger Lifelong Benefits

Posted by in categories: genetics, habitats

The subconscious is still uncharted territory the ecology of the human mind is just as vast as the real world maybe more so because it houses the genetics of thousands of generations of beings.


New research corroborates how taking psilocybin once forever changed my outlook.

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Jun 10, 2019

Epigenetic ‘Memories’ That Could Pass On A Father’s Life Experiences Seen In Worm Sperm

Posted by in categories: food, genetics, health

We may like to think that what we do in our daily lives only affects ourselves and perhaps a few people around us, but the increasingly active field of scientific inquiry called epigenetics suggests that life experiences like what we eat and the environments we expose ourselves to can influence the health and development of our kids and the generations beyond them.

Studies of both humans and animals have suggested that a father’s experiences can be transmitted across generations, but the mechanism for this epigentic inheritance hasn’t quite been clear.

New research published Wednesday in Nature Communications details how Susan Strome’s lab at UC Santa Cruz observed the transmission of epigenetic markers in the sperm of the small roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans.

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Jun 10, 2019

You Don’t Need That Bulky CRT Oscilloscope Anymore

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

While it might be nice to use a $4,000 oscilloscope in a lab at a university or well-funded corporate environment, a good portion of us won’t have access to that kind of equipment in our own home shops. There are a few ways of getting a working oscilloscope without breaking the bank, though. One option is to find old CRT-based unit for maybe $50 on craigslist which might still have 60% of its original 1970s-era equipment still operational. A more reliable, and similarly-priced, way of getting an oscilloscope is to just convert a device you already have.

The EspoTek Labrador is an open-source way of converting a Raspberry Pi, Android device, or even a regular run-of-the-mill computer into a working oscilloscope. It’s a small USB device with about a two square inch PCB footprint that includes some other features as well like a signal generator and logic analyzer. It’s based on an ATxmega which is your standard Arduino-style AVR microcontroller but geared for low power usage. It looks as though it is pretty simple to use as well, and the only requirements are that you can install the software needed for the device on whatever computing platform you decide to use.

While the Labrador is available for sale at their website, it is definitely a bonus when companies offer products like this but also release the hardware and software as open source. That’s certainly a good way to get our attention, at least. You can build your own if you’d like, but if you’d rather save the time you have pre-built options. And it doesn’t hurt that most of the reviews of this product seem to be very favorable (although we haven’t tried one out ourselves). If you’d prefer an option without a company backing it, though, we have you covered there too.

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Jun 10, 2019

Wired / Harley Davidson

Posted by in category: futurism

The inside line to the future.

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Jun 10, 2019

2019 Toyota Prius Prime Features

Posted by in category: futurism

Explore the many features that the Toyota Prius Prime has to offer. Let’s go places.

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Jun 10, 2019

Volkswagen obliterates Nürburgring electric record

Posted by in category: transportation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9iZY5IMn0wg

Volkswagen built its ID.R with the intention of showing what the heads in its electric drive division are capable of, and it only took a few months after its unveiling for the zero-emission race car to claim a record at the iconic Pikes Peak. The twin-motor electric racer has now built on this with yet another momentous showing, this time at Nürburgring-Nordschleife, where it has broken the lap record for electric vehicles by a whopping 40.564 seconds.

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Jun 10, 2019

A Thousand Times Better Instrument Will Investigate Emdrive and Mach Propulsion

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, quantum physics

Martin Tajmar has a SpaceDrive project and plans to create an instrument so sensitive and immune to interference that it would put an end to the debate once and for all. Tajmar believes that studying the EmDrive and similar propellantless propulsion systems will requir nano-newton instrument resolution.

He is making a new to torsion balance. It is a pendulum-type balance that measures the amount of torque applied to the axis of the pendulum. Tajmar’s team used a laser interferometer to measure the physical displacement of the balance scales. The new torsion scale has a nano-newton resolution and supports thrusters weighing several pounds, making it the most sensitive thrust balance in existence.

The SpaceDrive Project-Thrust Balance Development and New Measurements of the Mach-Effect and EMDrive Thrusters.

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