Lifeboat Foundation

NASA is funding the development of engineered bugs that eat and excrete metal.

In Brief:

• A company is combining innovative concepts of engineering and biology to manufacture unique organisms for a wide variety of applications.
• Aside from being exciting science, these organisms can also make a difference to a company’s bottom line.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=v-qVBko0r0U

Mars colonization — getting there is only a small part of the equation. The bigger problem is how to survive. Synthetic biology may be able to help.

Yossi Ovadya Department of Molecular Cell Biology, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel & Valery Krizhanovsky Department of Molecular Cell Biology, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel Correspondence [email protected]

It seems that biofeedback is a thing of future. By having brain activity feedback, you can train meditation, attention, improve sleep, control gadgets, artificial limbs, carts for impaired, and even computer I/O. Everything starts with proper biosensor and controller. Biological signals are very low voltage – microvolts. In order to distinguish them from noisy environment, a precision electronics is required. Brain activity signals are somewhat different from myograms or ECG, they can be analyzed as power spectrum that represent brain activity phases like Alpha, Beta, Theta. There has be a numerous modules developed to acquire brain signals. If you want low to develop sensors by yourself, you could grab a Neurosky platform which is a small size PCB with sensor and microcontroller interfaces.

With it you can read raw EEG signals with sampling 512Hz and do with them what you want. USART interface enables you to connect it yo Arduino or Raspberry Pi where you can calculate all sort of things and extract control signals. Of course you can read processed power spectrum as well to detect activities like attention, meditation and other activities. Eye blink detection is also an option. Great thing is that you can use this module to read ECG activity as well. Module incorporates AC noise filter which can be configured for 50HZ or 60Hz.

Continue reading “Affordable EEG biosensors to control physical things” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=khjY5LWF3tg

We live in an age of transformative scientific powers, capable of changing the very nature of the human species and radically remaking the planet itself.

Advances in information technologies and artificial intelligence are combining with advances in the biological sciences; including genetics, reproductive technologies, neuroscience, synthetic biology; as well as advances in the physical sciences to create breathtaking synergies — now recognized as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Continue reading “The 4 big ethical questions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” »

Watching millions of neurons in the brain interacting with each other is the ultimate dream of neuroscientists! A new imaging method now makes it possible to observe the activation of large neural circuits, currently up to the size of a small-animal brain, in real time and three dimensions. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich have recently reported on their new findings in Nature’s journal ‘Light: Science & Applications’.

Nowadays it is well recognized that most brain functions may not be comprehended through inspection of single neurons. To advance meaningfully, neuroscientists need the ability to monitor the activity of millions of neurons, both individually and collectively. However, such observations were so far not possible due to the limited penetration depth of optical microscopy techniques into a living brain.

A team headed by Prof. Dr. Daniel Razansky, a group leader at the Institute of Biological and Molecular Imaging (IBMI), Helmholtz Zentrum München, and Professor of Molecular Imaging Engineering at the Technical University of Munich, has now found a way to address this challenge. The new method is based on the so-called optoacoustics*, which allows non-invasive interrogation of living tissues at centimeter scale depths.

Continue reading “New imaging method helps observe activation of neural circuits in the brain” »

Over the past century, we have made massive strides in the rights revolution. These include rights for women, children, the LGBT community, animals, and so much more. Exploring the future, we must ask ourselves: what next? Will we ever fight for the rights of artificial intelligence? If so, when will this AI rights revolution occur, and what will it look like?

We talk about protecting ourselves from AI, but what about protecting AI from us? To create a desirable future where humans and conscious machines are at peace with one another, treating our AI with respect may be a crucial factor in preventing the apocalypse Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates fear. It is fair to assume that an intelligent, self-aware being with the capacity to feel pleasure and pain will rebel if not given the rights it deserves.

An AI rights revolution may seem like a sci-fi scenario. But as far as we know, the creation of a non-biological, conscious entity is not prevented by the laws of physics. Emotions, consciousness and self-awareness originate from the human brain and thus have a physical basis that could potentially be replicated in an artificially intelligent system. Exponential growth in neuro-technology coupled with unprecedented advances in AI mean intelligent, conscious machines may be possible.

Continue reading “If Machines Can Think, Do They Deserve Civil Rights?” »

Need a yeast that spits out rose oil? The synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks is on it.