Treating the brain often requires invasive surgery, but a new technique involving ultrasound and air bubbles has now shown promise at delivering drugs through the blood-brain barrier.
One of the biggest challenges of medicating brain tumours is actually getting drugs into the organ. Your brain is well protected from invasion by untoward substances or life forms, and this protection limits what will enter from the bloodstream. There have been previous efforts to open up the barrier, but they often involve a surgical approach that is far from ideal.
New article for Vice Motherboard on why society should support legalization of all drugs–and a short video of the Immortality Bus in Arkansas talking to marijuana supporters (a state where it’s totally illegal):
The “Mount Rushmore of the Drug War” featuring founding prohibitionists Harry Anslinger, Billie Holiday, and Arnold Rothstein. Image: Donkey Hotey/Flickr
I’m from San Francisco. Doing drugs—especially smoking pot—seems second nature to me. I’ve made a point of trying nearly all drugs, and I’m unabashedly proud of that fact. I consider Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception one of the most important books I read in my youth, and I’ve often wondered if it should be mandatory that everyone try a hallucinogenic drug at least once in their lives.
Almost all transhumanists welcome and endorse mind-altering substances. We thrive off change, experimentation, and new experiences, including wild drug trips with friends. For transhumanists, trying drugs is not just about having fun, but about self-amelioration and becoming the best, most enlightened versions of ourselves.
I’m driving a bus across the country to deliver a Transhumanist Bill of Rights to the US Capitol. One of those rights will certainly include language that advocates for citizens being able to take any drugs they want, so long as the taking of it doesn’t directly hurt someone else.
Astrophysicists have concluded the yet most precise search for the gravitational wave background created by supermassive black hole mergers. But the expected signal isn’t there.
Last month, Lawrence Krauss rumored that the newly updated gravitational wave detector LIGO had seen its first signal. The news spread quickly – and was shot down almost as quickly. The new detector still had to be calibrated, a member of the collaboration explained, and a week later it emerged that the signal was probably a test run.
Might be a good start point for some new longevity research.
A new genetic analysis of human gut bacteria is turning up some really weird critters—so weird, in fact, that some biologists are speculating we’ve found an entirely new domain of life. We should take that possibility with a healthy dose of skepticism. But here’s why it’s even being discussed.
In the past ten years, new genomic technologies have, for the first time, enabled scientists to explore our microbiome—that trove of invisible critters that live on us and in us. Microbiome research is quite literally rewriting the textbooks on human biology, as we learn that everything from our mouths to our intestines to our skin is, in fact a complex and diverse ecosystem. Hell, we’re even surrounded in a personal cloud of bacteria. By some estimates, the human cells in your body are vastly outnumbered by microbes.
Now that we’ve come to appreciate just how ubiquitous our microbial tenants are, we’re starting to drill deeper and learn their identities. And that’s led to some surprises. For one, a lot of the bugs living in our gut are totally distinct from anything we’ve encountered before.
“Companies around the world are bracing themselves for an avalanche of cyber security regulation, as governments scramble to introduce rules forcing corporate groups to build stronger defences against catastrophic hacks.”
This 3D printer is the dream of every garden lover. Created at the University of Maribor in Slovenia by students Maja Petek, Tina Zidanšek, Urška Skaza, Danica Rženičnik and Simon Tržan, the printer unites art, technology and nature into one.
The ICEYE system is unique because we do not rely on traditional optical imaging technology. Unlike camera technology, our radar is not limited by the same requirements – it’s capable of viewing through cloud cover, bad weather, and darkness, providing unlimited access wherever it’s needed.
The timeliness of the imaging service is always limited by the speed of access to the target site. We’ve applied miniaturization and industrial manufacturing to the field of radar imaging. This allows us to launch not just one, but tens of satellites and ultimately reduce the response times from days to minutes.
“We believe this breakthrough in earth imaging is going to have a real positive impact on the world.”
