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Nov 11, 2018
Potent, Cocaine-Like Motivational Drug Unveiled at Neuroscience Conference
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience
Motivation is such an intangible aspect of the human spirit that we often forget it has very real, neurochemical origins. We admire it in others and strive for it in ourselves (see: every Nike ad ever made), and now we are getting closer to potentially inducing that motivational feeling with drugs.
John Salamone, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Connecticut with a background in neural and behavioral pharmacology, has been working with the drug company Chronos Therapeutics to develop a drug that can restore motivation in people who have lost it — whether that’s due to the symptoms of depression, struggle with disease, or otherwise. He unveiled his early results on rats this week in a presentation at the Society For Neuroscience’s conference in San Diego, where he tells Inverse his board was bustling with activity:
“Basically we stood there for four hours and were busy the entire time,” says Salamone. The reception was overwhelmingly positive, he adds. “We didn’t have anyone say ‘This is crazy! This will never work!’”.
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Nov 11, 2018
Quantum ‘compass’ could allow navigation without relying on satellites
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: quantum physics, satellites
The UK’s first quantum accelerometer for navigation has been demonstrated by a team from Imperial College London and M Squared.
Most navigation today relies on a global navigation satellite system (GNSS), such as GPS, which sends and receives signals from satellites orbiting the Earth. The quantum accelerometer is a self-contained system that does not rely on any external signals.
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Nov 11, 2018
The US just elected 9 new scientists to Congress, including an ocean expert, a nurse, and a biochemist. Here’s the full list
Posted by Mary Jain in category: government
The faces of Capitol Hill are changing.
When the 116th Congress heads to Washington in January, there will be a record number of women in the ranks — at least 123, according to the news website Axios, including the first Muslim women, the first Somali-American, and the first Native American women.
There will be more scientists too.
There is evidence that star clusters start out close, as giant collisions between massive molecular clouds, but then the stellar siblings scatter throughout our galaxy. Evidence was collected using SOFIA Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy —which is The Boeing Company’s jetliner modified to carry a 106-inch diameter telescope.
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Nov 11, 2018
Living on ‘Mars 2’: The Real Tech Behind Nat Geo’s Martian Colony
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: space travel
What will the first Mars colony look like? In National Geographic’s “Mars” series, a group of pioneers build the first colony on Mars, complete with rovers, helicopters and other tech inspired by NASA, SpaceX and other “big thinkers” in the space industry. How does the fictional tech in Nat Geo’s series match up to real-world ideas for how we’ll colonize Mars? Shown here is Mars 2’s fictional idea of a Mars base.
Next: SpaceX’s Mars Base Vision
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Nov 11, 2018
Sci-Fi Writer Greg Egan and Anonymous Math Whiz Advance Permutation Problem
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: innovation, mathematics
Nov 11, 2018
After the Search: Journey to the Dark Side
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in category: biotech/medical
Just got these links: #Transhumanism is covered extensively in this hour long show from Discovery Channel that aired a few weeks ago. My 20-min interview in this program starts at 19 minutes: https://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/expedition-unknown/full-e…-dark-side & the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jiigjw8enQ8
After drinking a mysterious drug concocted by Amazonian shamans, Josh shares exclusive footage and insights into his own life-changing journey to the brink of the afterlife. Josh meets the leader of a movement attempting to beat death through technology.
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Nov 11, 2018
Albert Camus and the Absurd — Life Extension and the Big Picture
Posted by Eric Schulke in categories: existential risks, futurism, health, life extension, philosophy
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.
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