Lifeboat Foundation

People with type O-blood are considered “universal donors” because their blood doesn’t have any antigens or proteins, meaning anybody’s body will be able to accept it in an emergency.

But why are there different blood types? Researchers don’t fully know, but factors such as where someone’s ancestors are from and past infections which spurred protective mutations in the blood may have contributed to the diversity, according to Dr. Douglas Guggenheim, a hematologist with Penn Medicine. People with type O blood may get sicker with cholera, for example, while people with type A or B blood may be more likely to experience blood clotting issues. While our blood can’t keep up with the different biological or viral threats going around in real time, it may reflect what’s happened in the past.

“In short, it’s almost like the body has evolved around its environment in order to protect it as best as possible,” Guggenheim says.

In our own not-so-distant future we’ll witness the emergence of synthetic superintelligence as a new kingdom of life. Whether that will happen in 5 or 50 years doesn’t really matter, we are firmly on the path of facilitating its emergence — synthetic intelligence is an extension of us, natural intelligence, the future version of ourselves. On a long billions-of-years evolutionary journey from the first primordial prokaryote to a Solaris-like planetary mind, we’re merely years away from this cardinal metamorphosis.

#CyberneticTheoryofMind #consciousness #evolution #mind

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. ―Erwin Schrödinger.

Continue reading “A Novel Science of Consciousness: Towards the Cybernetic Theory of Mind” »

“You can do it quickly, you can do it cheaply, or you can do it right. We did it right.” These were some of the opening remarks from David Toback, leader of the Collider Detector at Fermilab, as he announced the results of a decadelong experiment to measure the mass of a particle called the W boson.

I am a high energy particle physicist, and I am part of the team of hundreds of scientists that built and ran the Collider Detector at Fermilab in Illinois – known as CDF.

After trillions of collisions and years of data collection and number crunching, the CDF team found that the W boson has slightly more mass than expected. Though the discrepancy is tiny, the results, described in a paper published in Science on April 7, 2022, have electrified the particle physics world. If the measurement is correct, it is yet another strong signal that there are missing pieces to the physics puzzle of how the universe works.

How we came to exist is best stated in the Barenaked Ladies’ lyric “It All Started with the Big Bang,” the moment that space-time began.

Inflatons, gravitons, and Dark Matter are the story that is emerging immediately following The Big Bang.

Architect Neri Oxman, creator of “material ecology,” explains how silkworms, shrimp shells and insect exoskeletons could help shape the city of the future.

Not a solution, but a positive and interesting step. 2 mins.

Researchers have rejuvenated a 53-year-old woman’s skin cells so they are the equivalent of a 23-year-old’s.

Continue reading “Science rejuvenates woman’s skin cells to 30 years younger — BBC News” »

Coming off multiple country approvals for his “patent free” Covid vaccine, Scientist, Researcher, Author, Science Explainer, Dr. Peter Hotez, MD, Ph.D. Baylor College of Medicine, drops by for an episode of Progress, Potential, And Possibilities.

Dr. Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. (https://peterhotez.org/), is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine (https://www.bcm.edu/people-search/peter-hotez-23229), where he is also Chief of the Section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine and the Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics (https://www.texaschildrens.org/find-a-doctor/peter-jay-hotez-md-phd).

Continue reading “Dr. Peter J. Hotez — Baylor College of Medicine — Scientist, Researcher, Author, Science Explainer” »

Axiom Space’s first mission plans a hefty science agenda during eight days on the International Space Station.

Houston company Axiom Space has a huge science haul planned for its debut mission, including robots and filters that could assist with future space exploration at the moon or Mars.

Some diabetes therapies work by ramping up the body’s secretion of insulin to counteract high blood sugar levels. | Preserving insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells—rather than exhausting them—might be a better strategy in the treatment of diabetes. Following that thinking, scientists at the Karolinska Institute found a cancer drug by Seagen holds promise for the metabolic disease.