Lifeboat Foundation

A collaborative team of scientists and physicians from the Oxford University, Cambridge University, Imperial College London, University College London and King’s College London have made a remarkable progress towards curing patients with HIV infection.

Of 50 patients taking part in NHS funded revolutionary clinical trial, a 44-year-old British man is the first to complete the trial. He showed no sign of the virus in his blood following treatment.

HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is a retrovirus found in body fluids of infected person. These can be semen, vaginal and anal fluids, blood, and breast milk. It can be easily transmitted through unprotected sex or simply sharing infected needles. An infected mother can also transmit HIV to her child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding.

Continue reading “Scientists Make Remarkable Progress Towards Curing HIV” »

Therapist and author Esther Perel explores our ‘existential aloneness’ in this film. Much as technology continues to open new doors for connection, the rapid cultural changes of the past 100 years allow us to choose the sort of life we wish to live. We make our most important connections by choice instead of having them mandated to us by tradition. But as is the case with technology, sometimes it isn’t clear if we are primed to use these new opportunities to build more fulfilling lives or simply to frustrate ourselves, building a world where more people feel alone.

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Lifeboat Editorial

Lydia Begag is a high school junior at Advanced Math and Science Academy in Massachusetts. She got our attention when she published an editorial critical of the school’s uniform policy. With eloquence and articulation, she laid out a brilliant and persuasive argument that the policy was anything but uniform. It was ambiguous, arbitrary and discriminatory.

I’m with Her
Ideas Regarding Sex Equality
—Forget the Rest

Political and social turmoil are everywhere we turn, especially in the early months of 2017. Lunch conversations, small talk at work, and, of course, the media we consume have all become related to a singular topic: the United States government and its workings. Emotionally, I want to curl up in a ball and block out the political nonsense being spewed left and right until the day I die (pun very much intended)—but I feel intellectually obliged to confront the controversy.

Continue reading “Sex Equality: I’m With Her” »

I get beat up in The Guardian today a bit with a ham-fisted review. But make no mistake, the book Radicals by journalist and Immortality Bus rider Jamie Bartlett, which is coming out in a few days, is important and brilliant: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/16/radicals-outsi…ett-review #transhumanism

This thoughtful study of radical movements explores politics, sex and drugs.

Robert Freitas wrote the ultimate guide to alien biology, culture, and more. The renowned researchers shares the story behind ‘Xenology.’

Men and women differ in obvious and less obvious ways—for example, in the prevalence of certain diseases or reactions to drugs. How are these connected to one’s sex? Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently uncovered thousands of human genes that are expressed—copied out to make proteins—differently in the two sexes. Their findings showed that harmful mutations in these particular genes tend to accumulate in the population in relatively high frequencies, and the study explains why. The detailed map of these genes, reported in BMC Biology, provides evidence that males and females undergo a sort of separate, but interconnected evolution.

Several years ago, Prof. Shmuel Pietrokovski and Dr. Moran Gershoni of the Weizmann Institute’s Molecular Genetics Department asked why the prevalence of certain human diseases is common. Specifically, about 15% of couples trying to conceive are defined as infertile, which suggested that mutations that impair fertility are relatively widespread. This seems paradoxical: Common sense says that these mutations, which directly affect the survival of the species by reducing the number of offspring, should have been quickly weeded out by natural selection. Pietrokovski and Gershoni showed that mutations in genes specific to sperm formation persist precisely because the genes are expressed only in men. A mutation that is problematic for only half the population, no matter how detrimental, is freely passed on to the next generation by the other half.

In the present study, the researchers expanded their analyses to include genes that, though not necessary for fertility, are still expressed differently in the two sexes. To identify these genes, the scientists turned to the GTEx project—a very large study of human gene expression recorded for numerous organs and tissues in the bodies of close to 550 adult donors. That project enabled, for the first time, the comprehensive mapping of the human sex-differential genetic architecture.

Continue reading “Researchers identify 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and women” »

Who owns the work?

Man or his machine?

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Is Already a Better Artist Than You Are” »

And she has emotional needs.

Anyone who watched HBO’s Westworld and came away from it with the desire to have sex with a robot is now in luck. A brothel full of sex dolls has opened up in Barcelona, Spain.

Lumi Dolls offers four models that anyone can reserve for a set amount of time. Thanks to new technology, Lumi Dolls brags that its dolls are among the most realistic on the market — and they cost around €120 per hour, which is about $127. The brothel offers other services as well, including overnight stays and options for couples, but those price quotes require a consultation. Reservations are taken online.

Each of the models come complete with a sort of character page on the Lumi Dolls website, which houses a description of the doll’s anatomy, creative inspiration, and what to look forward to in the doll’s room.

Continue reading “Sex Robot Brothel Opens Up in Barcelona” »