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Feb 11, 2018

Gene therapy researchers find viral barcode to cross the blood-brain barrier

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

This image shows AAV therapy affecting pyramidal neurons in the hippocampus. Credit: Blake Albright, Asokan Lab Gene therapies promise to revolutionize the treatment of many diseases, including neurological diseases such as ALS. But the small viruses that deliver therapeutic genes can have adverse side effects at high doses. UNC School of Medicine researchers have now found a structure on these viruses that makes them better at crossing from the bloodstream into the brain – a key factor for administering gene therapies at lower doses for treating brain and spinal disorders. This structural…

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Feb 11, 2018

Forging a quantum leap in quantum communication

Posted by in category: quantum physics

In quantum communication, the participating parties can detect eavesdropping by resorting to the fundamental principle of quantum mechanics — a measurement affects the measured quantity. Thus, an eavesdropper can be detected by identifying traces his measurements of the communication channel leave behind. The major drawback of quantum communication is the slow speed of data transfer, limited by the speed at which the parties can perform quantum measurements. Researchers at Bar-Ilan University have devised a method that overcomes this, and enables an increase in the rate of data transfer by…

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Feb 11, 2018

‘Ultra-intense laser’ stops electrons travelling at near-light speed for first time, mimicking black holes

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

Using a laser beam one quadrillion times brighter than the Sun, physicists have stopped electrons travelling at near-light speeds for the first time. The experiment produced a quantum mechanical phenomenon that was previously only thought to occur around black holes and quasars.

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Feb 11, 2018

Space exploration should be an initiative of nations, not just some rich guy

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, policy, space travel

Maybe it’s because Robert Lepage is touring The Far Side of the Moon to the Adelaide Festival. Or that a new Star Trek is on TV. Or maybe it’s because I feel like the only person alive who really – really – liked Luc Besson’s Valerian, but space, fantasies of the final frontier, and the real voyages that human beings may yet dare to make into it are very much on my mind. This week saw a number of news items concerning our tentative outreach to the stars that, for all their frustrating revelations, might yet prick the aspiration for space missions back into the popular policy consciousness…

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Feb 11, 2018

Particle interactions on Titan support the search for new physics discoveries

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics, supercomputing

Nuclear physicists are using the nation’s most powerful supercomputer, Titan, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to study particle interactions important to energy production in the sun and stars and to propel the search for new physics discoveries.

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Feb 11, 2018

Life lessons: The tiny neuro-gadgets rebuilding our bodies

Posted by in category: futurism

Nature’s designs are helping to build amazing new devices that link to the body and each other, reveals a fascinating book called Bioinspired Devices.

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Feb 11, 2018

This self-driving battleship has joined the US Navy

Posted by in categories: military, robotics/AI

A prototype autonomous ship has officially been transferred to the U.S. Navy from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after a two-year testing and evaluation program.

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Feb 11, 2018

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Launch Was a Smashing Success—What’s Next for Space Travel?

Posted by in categories: innovation, satellites

Moreover, the launch accomplished SpaceX’s overarching goal of making access to space travel affordable, with a price tag of $90 million per launch, compared to roughly $500 million for the second most powerful rocket, the United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy. Now that the Falcon Heavy ’ s abilities have been demonstrated, it can be used to send satellites, payloads, and potentially tourists into space.

Days since the historic launch, this surreal image of a Tesla Roadster and Starman cruising away from Earth has become a symbol and foreshadowing of humanity’s exciting future as a space-faring species. After all, SpaceX’s massive transformative purpose is not simply to make space travel affordable, but rather to allows humans to become a multi-planetary species. Ultimately, Tuesday’s launch left many speechless because it brought us closer to accomplishing this aspirational goal.

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Feb 11, 2018

It’s transhuman life, but not as we know it

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, life extension, media & arts, neuroscience, transhumanism

#Transhumanism in the Sunday Times of London. 750,000 copies out today. My pres campaign in it briefly, as well as other transhumanists.


The new Netflix series Altered Carbon is set in a dystopian future where the super-rich can avail of technology that allows them to upload their consciousness to a new body every time they die, in effect giving them immortality.

It’s science fiction, of the kind previously explored in the novels of Philip K Dick and William Gibson, movies such as RoboCop and The Terminator, manga comics like Ghost in the Shell and even the Man-Machine album by German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk — but only until it comes to pass.

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Feb 11, 2018

His 2020 Campaign Message: The Robots Are Coming

Posted by in categories: business, economics, employment, robotics/AI

That candidate is Andrew Yang, a well-connected New York businessman who is mounting a longer-than-long-shot bid for the White House. Mr. Yang, a former tech executive who started the nonprofit organization Venture for America, believes that automation and advanced artificial intelligence will soon make millions of jobs obsolete — yours, mine, those of our accountants and radiologists and grocery store cashiers.

He says America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and a total societal meltdown, including handing out trillions of dollars in cash.


Andrew Yang, a former tech executive, is mounting a longer-than-long-shot bid for the White House by warning of economic calamity ahead.

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