Lifeboat Foundation

Cryonicists are banking on the idea that future technology will allow preserved bodies to be brought back to life.

While this general estimate that the global population should peak at under 11 billion is better news than some earlier higher estimates that it would reach as high as 15 billion by the end of the century, the researchers behind the study suggest the vast majority of population growth coming over the course of this century will occur in the world’s poorest countries.

In a groundbreaking treatment, cancer patients’ immune systems are being genetically reprogrammed to fight their terminal cancer for them, with promising results.

In the UK, a number of National Health Service (NHS) patients with lymphoma at King’s College Hospital have been given CAR-T, a “living drug” that is unique to each patient as it contains some of their own cells.

Mass surveillance, drone swarms, cyborg soldiers, telekinesis, synthetic organisms, and laser beams will determine future conflict by 2030.

On a sofa in the corner of the room, a cat is purring. It seems obvious that the cat is an example of life, whereas the sofa itself is not. But should we trust our intuition? Consider this: Isaac Newton assumed a universal time flowing without external influence, and relative time measured by clocks – just as our perception tells us. Two centuries later, Albert Einstein dropped the concept of universal time, and instead introduced a concept of time measured only locally by clocks. Who before Einstein would have thought that time on the Sun, the Moon, and even on each of our watches runs at slightly different rates – that time is not a universal absolute? And yet today our cellphones must take this into account for a GPS to function.

Life ≠ alive.

A cat is alive, a sofa is not: that much we know. But a sofa is also part of life. Information theory tells us why.

Continue reading “What can Schrödinger’s cat say about 3D printers on Mars? Essays” »

Denver police made zero psychedelic mushroom arrests in the first month of the decriminalization initiative being on the books.

New experiments look to the interplay between neutrons and magnetic fields to observe our universal reflection.

Just like the gut, the skin and the mouth, the eye also has a collection of microbes that keep it healthy. Understanding the eye microbiome may lead to new probiotic therapies.

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a way to delay aging in mice with a protein that is abundant in the blood of young mice but declines with age.

eNAMPT and the NAD salvage pathway

That protein is extracellular nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (eNAMPT), and it plays a key role in the process that cells use to create nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), a crucial component that they need for energy production. NAD is a coenzyme found in all living cells. It is a dinucleotide, which means that it consists of two nucleotides joined through their phosphate groups. One nucleotide contains an adenine base, and the other contains nicotinamide.