Lifeboat Foundation

The growth of human and computer intelligence has triggered a barrage of dire predictions about the rise of super intelligence and the singularity. But some retain their skepticism, including Dr. Michael Shermer, a science historian and founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine.

The reason so many rational people put forward hypotheses that are more hype than high tech, Shermer says, is that being smart and educated doesn’t protect anyone from believing in “weird things.” In fact, sometimes smart and educated people are better at rationalizing beliefs that they hold for not-so-rational reasons. The smarter and more educated you are, the better able you are to find evidence to support what you want to be true, suggests Shermer.

“This explains why Nobel Prize winners speak about areas they know nothing about with great confidence and are sure that they’re right. Just because they have this great confidence of being able to do that (is) a reminder that they’re more like lawyers than scientists in trying to marshal a case for their client,” Shermer said. “(Lawyers) just put together the evidence, as much as you can, in support of your client and get rid of the negative evidence. In science you’re not allowed to do that, you’re supposed to look at all the evidence, including the counter evidence to your theory.”

Continue reading “Why Pessimistic Predictions For Future of AI May be More Hype than High Tech” »

Nanomedicine has been something that many in tech expected to be a critical part of the healthcare landscape for over a decade. I am glad to see how quickly the technology is being adopted as part of bio-medical research and treatments for various diseases, etc.

NEW YORK, April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Nano-based science paving the precision medicine era.

The continued development of new treatments associated with the demographic trends and public health considerations is remarkable. Nanotechnology has been identified as one most relevant key enabling technologies of the last ten years, significantly impacting on many different biomedical developments in a broad spectrum of applications therapeutics, diagnostics, theranostics, medical imaging, regenerative medicine, life sciences research and biosciences, among many others. In fact, nanomedicine is present in all therapeutic areas, exhibiting a perceptible and extensive impact in the treatment and diagnosis of some most concerned diseases.

Continue reading “Trends in Nanomedicine — Technology Benchmarking & Innovator Analysis” »

In the pages of comic books and on the silver screen, superheroes like Wolverine and Deadpool have a “healing factor” that allows their bodies to regenerate and recover from injuries or illness at an amazing rate – but certainly nothing like that is possible in real life, right?

Amazingly, a team of scientists led by John Pimanda, a hematologist and associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, published a study in Monday’s edition of the journal PNAS reporting that they had successfully reprogrammed bone and fat cells into induced multipotent stem cells (iMS) – the first step to making such a repair system a reality.

As they explained in a statement, stem cell therapies using iMS cells could theoretically repair a fractured bone or fix injured spinal discs, using a technique similar to how salamanders are able to regenerate lost limbs. These treatments could radically alter the field of regenerative medicine, and perhaps most surprisingly, the authors believe they could be available in just a few years. The technique, which has been successfully tested in mice, “is a significant advance on many of the current unproven stem cell therapies, which have shown little or no objective evidence they contribute directly to new tissue formation,” Pimanda said.

Continue reading “‘Groundbreaking’ Stem Cell Treatment Could Regrow Limbs, Repair Bones” »

A common drug could hold the key to long life, in flies at least, according to research.

At low doses, lithium prolonged the life of fruit flies in lab experiments.

Scientists say the finding is “encouraging” and could eventually lead to new drugs to help people live longer and healthier lives.

Stem cells, human trials, regenerative medicine, yay!

Continue reading “A stem-cell repair system that can regenerate any kind of human tissue” »

Dear Friends,

This month we at the MMTP are launching our crowdfunding campaign on Lifespan.io. Our Senolytics research is very important to the field of aging and longevity research and if we successfully raise sufficient funds, we will be ready to make a significant impact on aging!

We are seeking like minded groups and organisations to show their support, by becoming our official supporters. Showing your support means your logo will be displayed on some of our official media and website, demonstrating you are standing with us to get this vital work underway.

Continue reading “We have a very real opportunity to change how we age, be part of that change!” »

Preliminary work suggests that T-cells, which normally target disease, can be genetically engineered to target senescent cells in a wide range of tissues. In future, an infusion of GM blood every few years might be able to keep you going indefinitely (assuming some major advances in treating cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease). At which point, the question might be less: “How long have I got?” and more: “How long do you fancy sticking around?”

American scientists have coined the term ‘senolytics’ to describe a new class of drugs designed to delay the ageing process by clearing out doddery cells.

Watch the video «BBC Horizon 2016 The Immortalist» uploaded by John Richards on Dailymotion.

When rock band Queen asked us “Who wants to live forever?” back in 1986, we interpreted it as standard lyrical rhetoric. But now, three decades and what feels like light years in technological, medical, and scientific advances later, the answer to that age-old question may have changed. And according to Ray Kurzweil, the famous American inventor who has been described as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” we’re nearing immortality.

As the man responsible for the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer, and much more, Kurzweil has a knack for spotting trends and anticipating the future. And if history is any indication (and his word stays true), we may be in for a long, long lifetime.

In an episode of PBS’s News Hour last week, Kurzweil noted that death, which he describes as “a great robber of meaning, of relationships, of knowledge,” will soon be conquered. Indeed, the futurist notes, our species will soon be able to defeat disease and degeneration, and live “indefinitely.”

Continue reading “Want to live forever? Ray Kurzweil thinks that may be possible very soon” »