Toggle light / dark theme

This is Part 1 of a 5-part series by USTP’s Foreign Ambassador in Nigeria, Chogwu Abdul, as he explores the thought-provoking intricacies of James Hughes’ “Problems of Transhumanism.”

Become a member of the U.S. Transhumanist Party / Transhuman Party for free, no matter where you reside: https://transhumanist-party.org/membership/


Ojochogwu Abdul

Introduction

In 2010, James Hughes, Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), having then just stepped down from the Board of Directors of the World Transhumanist Association (presently known as Humanity+), took up an interesting challenge during the Spring of that year to reflect on the current state of transhumanist thought and determine what the questions were that the transhumanist movement needed to answer in order to move forward. Introducing a series of articles with which he hoped to navigate through a number of heady ideas and issues concerning transhumanism, Hughes opens by posing: “What are the current unresolved issues in transhumanist thought? Which of these issues are peculiar to transhumanist philosophy and the transhumanist movement, and which are more actually general problems of Enlightenment thought?” Further, he queried, “Which of these are simply inevitable differences of opinion among the more or less like-minded, and which need a decisive resolution to avoid tragic errors of the past?”

In field trials, colonies fed mycelium extract from amadou and reishi fungi showed a 79-fold reduction in deformed wing virus and a 45,000-fold reduction in Lake Sinai virus compared to control colonies.

Though it’s in the early stages of development, the researchers see great potential in this research.

“Our greatest hope is that these extracts have such an impact on viruses that they may help varroa mites become an annoyance for bees, rather than causing huge devastation,” said Steve Sheppard, a WSU entomology professor and one of the paper’s authors. “We’re excited to see where this research leads us. Time is running out for bee populations and the safety and security of the world’s food supply hinges on our ability to find means to improve pollinator health.”

Read more

A new map of the night sky using the Low Frequency Array @LOFAR telescope charts hundreds of thousands of previously unknown galaxies.

The international team behind the unprecedented space survey said their discovery literally shed new light on some of the Universe’s deepest secrets, including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve.


In a new study [1], researchers have identified the reason why cells become defective when they grow too large and why protein creation fails when cells grow larger than their original healthy size, as is typically seen in aged and senescent cells.

They demonstrate that in enlarged yeast and human cells, RNA and protein biosynthesis does not scale in proportion to the additional cell size, which then leads to a dilution of the cytoplasm. This phenomenon is also present in senescent cells, which display similar traits to those of large cells.

The research team concludes that the maintenance of a cell type-specific DNA-to-cytoplasm ratio is essential for the majority of cellular functions, and when cellular growth changes this ratio, it encourages cells to become senescent.

Read more

The known Universe just got a lot bigger.


A new map of the night sky published Tuesday charts hundreds of thousands of previously unknown galaxies discovered using a telescope that can detect light sources optical instruments cannot see. Current latest trending Philippine headlines on science, technology breakthroughs, hardware devices, geeks, gaming, web/desktop applications, mobile apps, social media buzz and gadget reviews.

Read more