Lifeboat Foundation

Implantable device could teach about brain development and disease.

New research published in the New Journal of Physics tries to decompose the structural layers of the cortical network to different hierarchies enabling to identify the network’s nucleus, from which our consciousness could emerge.

The brain is a very complex network, with approximately 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses between the neurons. In order to cope with its enormous complexity and to understand how brain function eventually creates the conscious mind, science uses advanced mathematical tools. Ultimately, scientists want to understand how a global phenomenon such as consciousness can emerge from our neuronal network.

A team of physicists from Bar Ilan University in Israel led by Professor Shlomo Havlin and Professor Reuven Cohen used network theory in order to deal with this complexity and to determine how the structure of the human cortical network can support complex data integration and conscious activity. The gray area of the human cortex, the neuron cell bodies, were scanned with MRI imaging and used to form 1000 nodes in the cortical network. The white matter of the human cortex, the neuron bundles, were scanned with DTI imaging, forming 15,000 links or edges that connected the network’s nodes. In the end of this process, their network was an approximation of the structure of the human cortex.

Google’s artificial intelligence research lab DeepMind is exploring whether its technology could be used to identify early signs of eye diseases that ophthalmologists might not spot.

DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014, has struck an agreement with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London that gives it access to about a million anonymous retinal scans, which it will feed into its artificial intelligence software.

Continue reading “Could an algorithm help to save people’s eyesight? Google thinks so” »

These elephants have a second chance to walk again, thanks to new prosthetic legs.

For the first time ever, DNA was successfully sequenced in microgravity as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment performed by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins this weekend aboard the International Space Station. The ability to sequence the DNA of living organisms in space opens a whole new world of scientific and medical possibilities. Scientists consider it a game changer.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, contains the instructions each cell in an organism on Earth needs to live. These instructions are represented by the letters A, G, C and T, which stand for the four chemical bases of DNA, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Both the number and arrangement of these bases differ among organisms, so their order, or sequence, can be used to identify a specific organism.

The Biomolecule Sequencer investigation moved us closer to this ability to sequence DNA in space by demonstrating, for the first time, that DNA sequencing is possible in an orbiting spacecraft.

Continue reading “First DNA Sequencing in Space a Game Changer” »

As two doctors plan for the procedure, many in the scientific community are raising flags, calling it “unethical.”

It’s an add-on for CRISPR.

Researchers have created a new genome editing technique called Target-AID, which induces point mutations instead of cutting DNA

Gene editing technology has fantastic potential, but there are remaining issues and questions over safety and specificity. The major contender is currently CRISPR-Cas9, but this induces a double stranded break in DNA which is a slightly riskier approach — particularly if it cuts in other locations too that you don’t want it to. Research teams across the world are both optimising and customising the CRISPR system; creating more accurate versions or versions that regulate gene expression as opposed to editing it. One such team has now built an add-on to CRISPR, Target-AID.

Continue reading “Safer Gene Editing Without Cleaving DNA” »

Artificial intelligence is beginning to disrupt entire industries from finance to medicine. Yet the most revolutionary application has yet to arrive—and it’s an existential one.

As thinking machines become more integrated into our lives, we must expect a transformation in how we define what it means to be conscious; what it means to live and to die; and ultimately, what it means to love a non-human being.

These questions are artfully explored in the plot of the 2013 sci-fi film, Her, which tells the story of a man who falls deeply in love with an intelligent operating system. This OS, Samantha, is designed to evolve and adapt her personality to appeal to Theodore. She has a very human voice and provides constant empathetic support. As Samantha’s psychological and intellectual capacities grow, so does Theodore and Samantha’s love for each other.

Continue reading “How AI Will Redefine Love” »

Melissa Loomis, an amputee, is pushing the sensory capabilities of the most advanced neuroprosthetic in the world.