Lifeboat Foundation

Here’s an exciting concept that was actually first discussed in 1959 by Richard Feynman in an article entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”.

I am most interested in this technology for mind uploading.

“Battelle’s N3 concept for a minimally invasive neural interface system, called BrainSTORMS (Brain System to Transmit Or Receive Magnetoelectric Signals), involves the development of a novel nanotransducer that could be temporarily introduced into the body via injection and then directed to a specific area of the brain to help complete a task through communication with a helmet-based transceiver.”

Continue reading “Battelle-Led Team Wins DARPA Award to Develop Injectable, Bi-Directional Brain Computer Interface” »

Whole Foods could afford to offer employees unlimited paid sick time during the Coronavirus outbreak. Instead, they have suggested that employees donate their accumulated paid time off to their coworkers.

Disaster emergency is in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the effects it is having on the city.

The City of Boulder has declared a local disaster emergency in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the effects it is having on the city.

City Manager Jane Brautigam issued a disaster emergency declaration today effective at 6 p.m. This creates a state of emergency for Boulder. The declaration provides the city manager with tools necessary to protect the public health and safety. The City Manager has authority to issue a disaster emergency declaration for a period of up to 7 days. To be effective for more than 7 days, the declaration must be confirmed and extended by the city council. Staff will ask the city council to consider doing so at the March 17, 2020 council meeting. The disaster emergency declaration provides the city manager with the authority to, among other things, order a curfew, limit large gatherings, close streets and sidewalks and order businesses to close. Violation of any emergency order would be punishable by a fine of up to $1000 and up to 90 days in jail.

March 9 (UPI) — Scientists have developed a technique for repairing damaged DNA. The breakthrough, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, could pave the way for new therapies for cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.

The accumulation of DNA damage is responsible for aging, cancer and neurological diseases like motor neuron disease, also known as ALS.

Until now, scientists have struggled to find ways to repair this kind of damage. However, researchers have discovered a new protein called TEX264 that can combine with other enzymes to find and destroy toxic proteins that bind to DNA and trigger damage.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday approved Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc’s coronavirus test, which would allow the firm to increase capacity to 1.4 million tests a week, a Trump administration official said.

“This will dramatically increase our ability to test people for the virus,” the official said. It was not immediately clear if capacity referred to test kit production or processing of tests performed on individual patients.

The move comes as the Trump administration struggles to meet demand for testing. The FDA has already approved emergency authorization for a faster coronavirus test made by Swiss diagnostics maker Roche.

Along with academic research departments around the world, private sector medical technology companies are getting in on the action, seeking ways to increase longevity and health span.

China and South Korea used smartphone apps to monitor people with the disease. But Americans have different views of privacy and data collection.

Coronavirus’s economic danger is exponentially greater than its health risks to the public. If the virus does directly affect your life, it is most likely to be through stopping you going to work, forcing your employer to make you redundant, or bankrupting your business.

The trillions of dollars wiped from financial markets this week will be just the beginning, if our governments do not step in. And if President Trump continues to stumble in his handling of the situation, it may well affect his chances of re-election. Joe Biden in particular has identified Covid-19 as a weakness for Trump, promising “steady, reassuring” leadership during America’s hour of need.

Continue reading “Coronavirus will bankrupt more people than it kills — and that’s the real global emergency” »

Prolonged expression of the CRISPR-Cas9 nuclease and gRNA from viral vectors may cause off-target mutagenesis and immunogenicity. Thus, a transient delivery system is needed for therapeutic genome editing applications. Here, we develop an extracellular nanovesicle-based ribonucleoprotein delivery system named NanoMEDIC by utilizing two distinct homing mechanisms. Chemical induced dimerization recruits Cas9 protein into extracellular nanovesicles, and then a viral RNA packaging signal and two self-cleaving riboswitches tether and release sgRNA into nanovesicles. We demonstrate efficient genome editing in various hard-to-transfect cell types, including human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, neurons, and myoblasts. NanoMEDIC also achieves over 90% exon skipping efficiencies in skeletal muscle cells derived from Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patient iPS cells. Finally, single intramuscular injection of NanoMEDIC induces permanent genomic exon skipping in a luciferase reporter mouse and in mdx mice, indicating its utility for in vivo genome editing therapy of DMD and beyond.