Lifeboat Foundation

This paper explores Albert Camus’s notions of the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus and draws correlations with the movement for indefinite life extension and the big picture of existence.

Calorie vacuums playing in the mud, isn’t that what we are when it comes down to it? We guess our way through much of life, trying not to spend too much time thinking about how trivial it all may or may not be so as to see about keeping the levels of despair down, waiting for our turn on the chopping block… We try to make sense of this life but in the end, can never fully convince ourselves that we have because we never fully do. That challenge is a mountain whose top hasn’t been seen yet.

People are drawn to understand what the most sensible things to do with life are, or as Albert Camus writes “the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions”. It’s a ballpark question. People thirst to make sense of their being, to understand what’s going on, for meaning, to track down and engage the most profound implication. Is thirst proof that water exists, as Gaston Bachelard says? Even rocks mean profound things, and we are self-aware supercomputers in a space filled with variables and has no known walls. It is very improbable that there is not a fundamentally profound implication within such circumstances.

How might we ever make sense of our existence? Masses of people are desperate with this “hope of another life one must ‘deserve’” and often take an irrational “leap”, as Camus says, to “some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it.” Many rest on the hope that they’ll land a job they really love and can shine in someday but don’t put serious effort into figuring out what that would specifically be let alone work to make it happen.

Continue reading “Albert Camus and the Absurd — Life Extension and the Big Picture” »

A major factor holding back development of wearable biosensors for health monitoring is the lack of a lightweight, long-lasting power supply. Now scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by materials chemist Trisha L. Andrew report that they have developed a method for making a charge-storing system that is easily integrated into clothing for “embroidering a charge-storing pattern onto any garment.”

Sadness Circuit Found In Human Brain : Shots — Health News When people are feeling glum, it often means that brain areas involved in emotion and memory are communicating. Researchers now have observed the circuit in action in humans.

A small device that contains human cells in a 3D matrix represents a giant leap in the ability of scientists to test how those cells respond to stresses, drugs and genetic changes. About the size of a thumb drive, the devices are known as tissue chips or organs on chips.

A series of investigations to test tissue chips in microgravity aboard the International Space Station is planned through a collaboration between the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) in partnership with NASA. The Tissue Chips in Space initiative seeks to better understand the role of microgravity on human health and disease and to translate that understanding to improved human health on Earth.

Continue reading “Tissue Chips in Space a Big Leap for Research” »

The economic toll of this superbug crisis is huge: In the United States alone the health-care costs dealing with antimicrobial resistance could reach $65 billion by 2050, according to the OECD report. That is more than the flu, HIV and tuberculosis. If projections are correct, resistance to backup antibiotics will be 70 percent higher in 2030 compared to 2005 in OECD countries. In the same period, resistance to third-line treatments will double across EU countries.

A new report released Wednesday from the OECD estimates that antimicrobial resistant infection is on track to kill 30,000 Americans per year by 2050. The OECD is calling on the US and other rich countries to implement 5 simple reforms to save lives.

LSD changes the communication patterns between regions of the brain, a new study by researchers of the University of Zurich and Yale University shows. The study also provides insights into how mental health disorders develop and how these could be treated.

The researchers used brain imaging technology to examine the effects of LSD on the brains of healthy study participants. The data suggests that LSD triggers a reduction in the communication between the brain regions that are responsible for planning and decision making. At the same time, LSD increases the connectivity in brain networks associated with sensory functions and movement.

Your perceptions of your parents directly affects your physical health and wellness, according to new research. And regardless if they are true, you might be stuck with them for life.

“There are things that happen to us in life that can alter our perceptions of the past, but it’s not always the objective—or what actually happened—that really affects us,” says lead author William Chopik, psychology professor at Michigan State University.

“What really impacts adults is how we psychologically interpret things and create memories. In short: our memories of our childhood predicted health and depression even though they may not even be based in reality,” Chopik says.

Expert Panel Host: Dr Brian Clement
Conference Held at Adelphi University 2013.
(A podcast version of this video is available on iTunes.)

• Brian Clement — Learn how to transform your lifestyle from toxic and self-destructive to healthful and self-affirming, and experience renewed energy and vitality that will last a lifetime.

Continue reading “Quantum Human Biology” »

The data show such births in the U.S. and EU are predominantly to unmarried couples living together rather than to single mothers, the report says. The data suggest that societal and religious norms about marriage, childbearing and women in the workforce have changed, said Kelly Jones, the director for the Center on the Economics of Reproductive Health at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Births outside marriage have skyrocketed in developed nations, according to a report from the United Nations.