Lifeboat Foundation

A nice new write-up on my governor run: https://humanityplus.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/this-transhuma…alifornia/ #transhumanism

It’s a good time to be a transhumanist politician. As faith in the political establishment declines, new technologies, from gene editing to artificial intelligence, are transforming our lives faster than ever. The transhumanist author and politician Zoltan Istvan agrees. He thinks the time is ripe for pro-science and technology governance, and for leaders who will embrace the technologies that could fundamentally transform our conceptions of what it means to be human.

Istvan is a maverick who appears to thrive in an ‘outsider’ role. He self-published a sci-fi novel, The Transhumanist Wager, in 2013, which became a surprise bestseller on Amazon. In 2016, he made an unlikely run for US president as the leader of the Transhumanist Party. Now, he’s making a bid for Governor of California in the 2018 election under a Libertarian Party ticket.

Continue reading “This Transhumanist Politician Wants to be Governor of California” »

The most important set of genetic instructions we all get comes from our DNA, passed down through generations. But the environment we live in can make genetic changes, too.

Researchers have now discovered that these kinds of environmental genetic changes can be passed down for a whopping 14 generations in an animal – the largest span ever observed in a creature, in this case being a dynasty of C. elegans nematodes (roundworms).

To study how long the environment can leave a mark on genetic expression, a team led by scientists from the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in Spain took genetically engineered nematode worms that carry a transgene for a fluorescent protein. When activated, this gene made the worms glow under ultraviolet light.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Observed Epigenetic Memories Being Passed Down for 14 Generations” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkxgRIgo2dA

Primarily talking about CRISPR.

Daisy Robinton explores bioengineering and its potential to end ageing.

Continue reading “Daisy Robinton — The Fight Against Aging” »

• An advisory council has urged the U.S. to establish a new body that creates plans for national biodefense and to set aside a $2 billion standby fund to address emerging bioterror threats.
• As gene editing technology advances, the potential for its use as a weapon increases, and preparing for such threats before they happen is of the utmost importance.

Though the technology promises seemingly innumerable ways to positively impact human life, gene editing is truly a double-edged sword, with nearly as many potentially negative consequences as benefits. Now, an advisory council to President Obama is urging the government to start creating countermeasures for the negative use of emerging biotechnologies.

This month, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) wrote a letter to President Obama recommending measures to address this potential for harm using new technologies. It advocates funding new research into antibiotic and antiviral drugs to combat resistance and having a $250 million fund for the stockpiling of vaccines.

Oscar Wilde once said that life imitates art, and science and engineering is often no exception to this. Science fiction certainly provides science types with plenty of inspiration for inventions, including holograms, teleportation, and even sonic screwdrivers.

Star Trek’s all-purpose medical device, the Tricorder, has also inspired a fair few people to recreate its near-magical ability to instantly diagnose a patient. As it happens, the non-profit X-Prize Foundation were so keen to get one invented that they started a global competition to see if any mavericks would succeed.

Continue reading “Star Trek’s Tricorder Now Officially Exists Thanks To A Global Competition” »

Gene-edited seedless tomatoes don’t need pollinating to produce fruit – which could come in useful at a time when bees are on the decline.

“These re-engineered organisms will change our lives over the coming years, leading to cheaper drugs, ‘green’ means to fuel our cars and targeted therapies for attacking ‘superbugs’ and diseases, such as cancer,” wrote Drs. Ahmad Khalil and James Collins at Boston University, who were not involved in the study.

Our brains are often compared to computers, but in truth, the billions of cells in our bodies may be a better analogy. The squishy sacks of goop may seem a far cry from rigid chips and bundled wires, but cells are experts at taking inputs, running them through a complicated series of logic gates and producing the desired programmed output.

Take beta cells in the pancreas, which manufacture and store insulin. If they detect a large spike in blood sugar, then they release insulin; else they don’t. Each cell adheres to commands like these, allowing us—the organism—to operate normally.

Continue reading “Scientists Hacked a Cell’s DNA and Made a Biocomputer Out of It” »

Technically, an animal could use RNA editing to change the nature of its proteins without completely altering the underlying DNA instructions. This makes the cephalopods’ ability to do it a very interesting phenomenon, but it’s unclear as to why the species requires this much RNA editing. Many of the edited proteins were found in the animals’ brains, which is why scientists think the editing and their brainpower could be linked.

More than any other species on earth, octopuses are particularly smart—they can solve puzzles, use tools, and communicate using color. Now scientists are saying they’re also capable of editing their RNA.

A team of scientists led by Joshua Rosenthal at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Noa Liscovitch-Braur and Eli Eisenberg at Tel Aviv University have discovered that octopuses and squid are capable of a type of genetic alteration called RNA editing. The process is rare among other species, leading scientists to believe that the cephalopods have evolved to follow a special kind of gene recoding.

Continue reading “These Species Can Recode Their Own Genetics” »

Transhumanism stuff out in these stories: http://z-news.link/the-future-of-the-earth-through-the-eyes-of-futurists-photo/ & http://yemcentral.com/2017/03/29/would-robots-make-better-po…an-humans/ & https://player.fm/series/lions-of-liberty-podcast/287-zoltan…nd-liberty

Futurism, or more precisely, futurology, is the study of possible hypotheses, probable and preferred options for the future. To understand what futurists predict in the improvement of the human condition, consider the progress happening in the field of science, medicine and computing.

Continue reading “The future of the Earth through the eyes of futurists. Photo” »