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Jul 8, 2019

Who Gets to Decide What Our Space Settlements Look Like?

Posted by in categories: futurism, space

Let’s decolonize the future.

Jul 8, 2019

Futurist Explains 5 Keys to the Next Crypto Boom

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, finance

Good Article


According to futurist and author Daniel Jeffries, there are five key factors missing for crypto to fully succeed as a technology. Will Libra be the end of the traditional financial order as we know it? Does it pose an existential threat to people’s freedom?

Continue reading “Futurist Explains 5 Keys to the Next Crypto Boom” »

Jul 8, 2019

Could Lab-Grown Brains Develop Consciousness?

Posted by in category: neuroscience

There’s a very un-sexy view of consciousness: our rich, meaningful inner experience of self and other is nothing but electrical and chemical chattering inside our brains.

If you, like many scientists, subscribe to this theory, then a difficult question naturally follows: at what point does electro-chemical activity in dissected brain-like tissue become conscious? Yes, I’m talking about the classic sci-fi “brain in a vat” scenario; no, we are absolutely not there.

But this week, a Japan-led study in Stem Cell Reports is raising some serious red flags. For the first time, a team carefully characterized the electrical chattering of neurons grown from a brain organoid and found that they spontaneously formed long-distance connections that allowed them to fire in synchrony. “Fire together; wire together” is a fundamental testament of learning in neuroscience. Because neurons in lab-grown minibrains can sync up their activity, analogous to how neurons hook up in our brains, it’s possible that the brain nuggets have the capability to support higher cognitive functions when they’re more mature.

Jul 8, 2019

Surgery restores arm function in some paralysed patients: study

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, electronics

Surgeons in Australia have managed to restore arm function in paralysed patients, allowing them to feed themselves, use tools and handle electronic devices, according to the results of a groundbreaking study released Friday.

Thirteen who had suffered rendering them tetraplegic underwent several operations and intense physiotherapy in the largest ever application of a technique known as .

A team of surgeons succeeded in attaching individual nerves from above the zone of the spinal to nerves below the trauma site. The functioning nerves were then used to stimulate paralysed muscles below the injury zone.

Jul 8, 2019

‘My body will be frozen when I die so I can live again in the future’

Posted by in category: futurism

Mike Carter doesn’t care if he has a funeral when he dies. Because, for a few hundred thousand dollars, he’ll be stored at a US facility with the aim of coming back in dozens or maybe hundreds of years.

Jul 8, 2019

Sailesh Prasad

Posted by in category: futurism

Read more

Jul 8, 2019

June was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth

Posted by in category: futurism

From the worst wildfires to water shortages in cities.

Jul 8, 2019

By 2020 Bitcoin could be using as much energy as the entire world

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, energy

Overcharged.

Jul 8, 2019

Going caving before going to Mars

Posted by in category: space travel

NASA puts a test rover through its paces in earthly California. Richard A Lovett reports.

Jul 8, 2019

China’s tech sector faces ‘hangover after the party’, with trade war and economic slowdown hitting employment

Posted by in categories: economics, employment

Once a booming industry that offered dream jobs to China’s young talents, China’s tech sector is now waking up to the sobering reality. Experts say it is time to focus on profitability, rather than the wild expansion of previous years, as China’s economic growth slows and the trade war with the United States hits sentiment and investment.