Lifeboat Foundation

Brain speed declines for most people with age, and new data shows it may be because of increasingly busy, noisy circuits.

The human brain takes in a lot of information. Everyone has to deal with a slog of incoming data every day, and add it to an ever expanding bank of knowledge. Your brain re-organises itself pretty well, but new research suggests this clutter begins to have effects as it builds up.

A clouded brain.

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As implants and bio-hacking gain popularity, could tweaking the body’s circuits become a mainstay in future medicine?

Bioelectronics offer everything from precise diabetes treatment to appetite reduction. In a world where most of us have a phone glued to our hand at all times, combining ‘wetware’ with hardware is starting to make real sense.

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http://bloom.bg/1hgy8UY

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“That makes Veritas the first company to break the much anticipated threshold of a “$1,000 genome.” Mirza Cifric, Veritas’s CEO, confirmed that, initially at least, the new price is less than the cost of actually generating the data, when equipment and chemical supplies are included.”

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Cortical memory prosthesis uses internal brain signals (e.g., spiketrains) as inputs and outputs, bypassing damaged region (Dong Song et al.)

A brain prosthesis designed to help individuals suffering from memory loss has been developed by researchers at USC and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

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A few weeks ago, a drunk man in Japan was arrested for kicking a humanoid robot that was stationed as a greeter at a SoftBank, Corp., store, which develops the robots. According to the police report, the man said he was angry at the attitude of one of the store clerks. The “Pepper robot” now moves more slowly, and its internal computer system may have been damaged.

Under current Japanese law, the man can be charged with damage to property, but not injury, since injury is a charge reserved for humans. Dr. Yueh-Hsuan Weng, who is cofounder of the ROBOLAW.ASIA Initiative at Peking University in China, and former researcher of the Humanoid Robotics Institute at Waseda University in Japan, thinks a better charge lies somewhere in between.

Weng is advocating for special robot laws to address the unique nature of human-robot interactions. He argues that humans perceive highly intelligent, social robots like Pepper (which can read human emotions) differently than normal machines—maybe more like pets—and so the inappropriate treatment of robots by humans should be handled with this in mind.

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4 Robotic Animals You Never Knew Existed

futurism.com/roboticanimals

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BioViva USA, Inc. has become the first company to treat a person with gene therapy to reverse biological aging, using a combination of two therapies developed and applied outside the United States of America. Testing and research on these therapies is continuing in BioViva’s affiliated labs worldwide.

BioViva CEO Elizabeth Parrish announced Biobthat the subject is doing well and has resumed regular activities. Preliminary results will be evaluated at 5 and 8 months with full outcome expected at 12 months. The patient will then be monitored every year for 8 years.

Gene therapy allows doctors to treat disease at the cellular level by inserting a gene into a patient’s cells instead of using the regular modalities of oral drugs or surgery. BioViva is testing several approaches to age reversal, including using gene therapy to introduce genes into the body.

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Do any existing drugs have longevity promoting effects? Here are 3 currently under investigation.

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