Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: neuroscience

With yesterday’s terrible shooting tragedy, I’m hearing lots of calls for more gun control to reduce violence in the US. But that’s essentially impossible to accomplish. There are 300 million guns in America. Congress faces a statistical impossibility to make a real dent in gun control and possession (politicians saying otherwise are playing you for votes—the gov is not going to go house to house to collect guns). HOWEVER, better ways to combat terrorism and gun violence could be achieved through better medicine and figuring out better ways to keep wounded peope alive. We should focus our energy and science money on treating trauma victims (and also on prevention of mental disease and sociopaths). Also, drones can be designed to seek out shooters in public places in 30 seconds and stop what they’re doing (instead of letting them shoot for 10 minutes). Why don’t major public venues and events have them yet? Ask you government? Demand better responses so our society is safer. Also, entreprenuers, get out there and do something about this. Hotels would pay big money for see-through-wall technology that would alert staff that someone has 20 weapons in a room. Lots of this tech is already here. All these terrorism and gun violence issues can be best figured out by tech and science. Stop sending prayers, and instead send some engineers and technologists to solve the problems. This tragic ongoing violence will continue until tech and science solves it.

“If you make the human body virtually indestructible, being wounded loses some of its relevance.”

America is reeling in shock from multiple shooting tragedies. The national feeling is that the violence is increasing in frequency and there’s no end to the angst.

In the last few weeks, we’ve experienced tragic episodes in Dallas, Minnesota, Baton Rouge, and Orlando. Politicians have decried the events, calling on Congress to do more about gun control, police responsibility, and racism.

While I passionately support policies that would make Americans safer and diffuse racism, I don’t think people are going to change anytime soon. However, there is something that could significantly change our national security regardless of what tragedy strikes: far better trauma medicine.

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Leading women’s magazine Marie Claire has a feature story on life extension out this month (approx 1.5 million circulation):

Forget about life after death. More and more, women around the country are seeking another kind of miracle: not dying at all.

What if you could hit the pause button on aging? Live to 120 without feeling a day over 80? More radical still, what if you could cheat death? Would you do it?

“Life extensionists” would. That’s the name modern immortality seekers now go by, and devotees range from those who’d like to live healthier lives into old age to the more extreme, who ardently believe that humans can, and should, overcome death the same way we’ve overcome, say, smallpox or tooth decay.

Life expectancy for women in the United States has risen steadily from 73 in the 1960s to 81 today, with those numbers continuing to increase thanks to a combination of biology and higher standards of living (not to mention the over 1,000 geneticists and biologists working in the longevity field). But life extensionists want more. They want to be cognitively and physically healthy for decades, if not centuries.

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To reduce the damage to his brain and organs, Brooks was rushed to the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Lance Becker and his team cooled the young man’s core temperature to below 90 degrees Fahrenheit—a process called “induced hypothermia.” This is often done to cardiac arrest patients, either by injecting them with a cold saline solution or placing ice packs on them to increase their chances of complete recovery.

The dose of cold saved his life. Brooks had no brain damage, a remarkable feat that has led doctors to explore more ways to use induced hypothermia in emergency settings.

Now Dr. Sam Tisherman and his team at the University of Maryland, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, plan to put 10 patients into a more severe form of hypothermia than what Brooks got, something known as “suspended animation.” They’ll flush their bodies with a cold fluid, cooling (and therefore preserving) tissue. The experimental trial, known as emergency preservation and resuscitation for cardiac arrest from trauma ( EPR-CAT), is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, and it is the first time doctors are harnessing profound hypothermia (pushing body temperatures to as low as 50 degrees) to save lives.

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Why is it so much fun to hang out with our friends? Why are some people so sociable while others are loners or seemingly outright allergic to interactions with others?

A new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine begins to provide an answer, pinpointing places and processes in the that promote socialization by providing pleasurable sensations when it occurs. The findings point to potential ways of helping people, such as those with autism or schizophrenia, who can be painfully averse to socializing.

The study, which will be published Sept. 29 in Science, details the role of a substance called oxytocin in fostering and maintaining sociability. The senior author is Robert Malenka, MD, PhD, professor and associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral science. The lead author is former postdoctoral scholar Lin Hung, PhD.

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Scientists from several universities published a paper in Science Advances, in which they reveal their progress toward the “holy grail” of computing: a light-based microchip that truly rivals the speed and parallel processing of the human brain.

Scientists at the University of Exeter have made a landmark breakthrough in the quest for the “holy grail” of computing: human-brain-mimicking microchips able to store and process information on par with homo sapiens, according to a new Science Advances release.

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Dr. Mark Katakowski makes the case that rejuvenation of the bone marrow niche is a practical approach to life-extension today. Mark is President of the longevity company Forever Labs, and is a medical physicist with extensive experience developing stem cell therapies for neurological disease and injury.

Mark was first to demonstrate that microRNA functions as a communication molecule between brain tumor cells, a previously unknown mechanism of intercellular eukaryotic gene regulation. Based upon his use of stem cells to treat age-related disease, Mark surmises that rejuvenating the bone marrow provides significant opportunity to combat aging.

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The human brain is used as a comparison for how computer’s function. But, honestly, computers are nothing like human brains. Not yet, at least.

That could change as researchers have developed computing technology that uses light to mimic the functionality of a nerve’s synapse, opening the way for hardware that combines the speed of modern processors with the efficiency of brainpower.

Brains and computers are both systems that can model, manipulate, and store information. From there, they don’t tend to have all that much in common.

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