Navigating the seas of Titan in a boat
NASA landed a rover on Mars. So what’s the next step? Right: land a boat on Titan! Hey, come on, it’s gotta be the ultimate travel destiny: A magical moon that’s actually more like a planet. One of the most Earth-like bodies in the Solar System. Has an atmosphere (OK, mostly nitrogen — so bring [...]
Chemical brain preservation: how to live ‘forever’ — a personal view
Here’s my 45 minute talk on Chemical Brain Preservation at World Future Society 2012. Given the progress we’ve seen in the relevant science and technologies it’s a topic I’m presently very optimistic about. I had a great audience with lots of questions at the end, but in the interest of brevity I’m just uploading the [...]
Categories: Biomed/Longevity, Biotech, Cognitive Science/Neuroscience, Human Enhancement, Singularity/Futures Tags: blog
Chemical brain preservation: how to live ‘forever’ — a personal view
Here’s my 45 minute talk on Chemical Brain Preservation at World Future Society 2012. Given the progress we’ve seen in the relevant science and technologies it’s a topic I’m presently very optimistic about. I had a great audience with lots of questions at the end, but in the interest of brevity I’m just uploading the [...]
Categories: Biomed/Longevity, Biotech, Cognitive Science/Neuroscience, Human Enhancement, Singularity/Futures Tags: blog
Why the sponge’s protosynapses never evolved into the real thing
It was a mystery: sponges had evolved a protosynapse — the beginning of a nervous system — but never actually developed a real synapse. It was the evolutionary period of time when virtually the rest of the entire animal kingdom branched off from a common ancestor it shared with sponges, the oldest known animal group [...]
Categories: Biotech, Cognitive Science/Neuroscience Tags: blog
A universe of self-replicating code
What we’re missing now, on another level, is not just biology, but cosmology. People treat the digital universe as some sort of metaphor, just a cute word for all these products. The universe of Apple, the universe of Google, the universe of Facebook, that these collectively constitute the digital universe, and we can only see [...]
Categories: Biotech, Computers/Infotech/UI, Internet/Telecom, Social/Ethical/Legal Tags: blog
A super-memory smart drug?
Could this be the “Limitless” breakthrough we’ve been looking for? Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have discovered that when the activity of PKR — a molecule normally elevated during viral infections — is inhibited in the brain, mice learn and remember dramatically better. “The molecule PKR (the double-stranded RNA-activated protein kinase) was originally [...]
Categories: Biomed/Longevity, Biotech, Cognitive Science/Neuroscience, Social Networking/Web/Education Tags: blog
Changes in bioelectric signals trigger formation of new organs; regenerative medicine implications
In a major discovery, biologists at Tufts University were able to cause tissue to grow a new organ by simply altering the membrane voltage gradients of cells: they caused tadpoles to grow eyes outside of the head area. These findings break new ground in the field of biomedicine because they identify an entirely new control [...]
Categories: Biomed/Longevity, Biotech Tags: blog
random | Bots gone wild
Introducing random — a new, occasional blog category for stuff that’s way too weird for our regular weird posts. Like these wacky robot stories: Wanna take a ride on a 15-foot-long inflatable walking robot named Ant-Roach (as in anteater-cockroach)? Um, maybe not, but hey, “human safe” bots are not a bad idea, especially if you [...]
Categories: Biotech, Physics/Cosmology, random, Robotics/ AI, Social/Ethical/Legal, Survival/Defense Tags: blog
Let’s tell everyone how to make a virus that could kill millions!
Here’s an idea: why don’t we just tell everybody in the world how to make an airborne H5N1 influenza virus strain (“bird flu”) that has been genetically altered to be easily transmissible (between ferrets, which mostly closely mimic the human response to flu), and which if released, could trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with [...]
Categories: Biotech, Social/Ethical/Legal, Survival/Defense Tags: blog
How to synthesize a new kind of yeast cell — or person
Scientists, in theory, could one day create whole new lifeforms, going way beyond simple cloning, new research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine suggests. The scientists have now replaced the DNA in a yeast chromosome with computer-designed, synthetically produced DNA (structurally distinct from its original DNA), producing a healthy yeast cell. So perhaps one [...]
