Lifeboat Foundation

In a way, the connectome is also a foundation for understanding far more complex nervous systems like our own.

“If a worm can do so much with so few neurons, and we have orders of magnitude more neurons,” Paul Sternberg, a biology professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Scientific American, “then we’re amazing.”

Continue reading “Scientists succeed in mapping every neuron in a worm, a breakthrough in neuroscience” »

Instead of trying to fix stroke-damaged nerve cells, Stanford scientists took aim at a set of first-responder immune cells that live outside the brain but rush to the site of a stroke. It worked.

Music has proven time and again to be an important component of human culture. From its ceremonial origin to modern medical usage for personal motivation, concentration, and shifting mood, music is a powerful balm for the human soul. Though traditional “music therapy” encompasses a specific set of practices, the broader use of music as a therapeutic tool can be seen nowadays as doctors are found recommending music for a wide variety of conditions.

Thomas Durcan’s lab is growing 3D mini-brains in the search for a cure for Parkinson’s disease. Over the next year he is giving all his lab’s protocols, methods and results away.

A new method enables researchers to test algorithms for spotting genes that contribute to a complex trait or condition, such as autism.

Researchers often study the genetics of complex traits using genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In these studies, scientists compare the genomes of people who have a condition with those of people without the condition, looking for genetic variants likely to contribute to the condition. These studies often require tens of thousands of people to yield statistically significant results.

GWAS have identified more than 100 genomic regions associated with schizophrenia, for example, and 12 linked to autism. Results are often difficult to interpret, however. Causal variants for a condition may be inherited with nearby sections of DNA that do not play a role.

You don’t improve the body by breaking its parts. In the case of prostate cancer this might be a fair trade-off, but unless you have a specific medical condition that is serious and life-threatening you should not be poisoning yourself with metabolism breaking chemicals. They will have negative impacts all over the body as a rule.

• Prostate cancer patients who take a hormone-suppressing drug may be at an increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s, a study has found.
• The study of more than 150,000 men found a link between the degenerative diseases and a treatment drug called androgen deprivation therapy.
• Researchers cautioned doctors to further consider the risks of ADT before giving it to their patients to treat prostate cancer.
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A study of more than 150,000 men with prostate cancer found that a certain hormone treatment is linked with increased risks of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

There’s a 20-percent higher chance of having dementia for older men who have taken the prostate cancer treatment, according to the research study from JAMA Network. That drug treatment, called androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), is used to suppress male hormones (like testosterone) that can help to spread prostate cancer in the body.

Continue reading “A drug for treating prostate cancer has been linked with increased risk of dementia, study finds” »

Researchers have recently found bacteria residing in the brain, once believed to be a completely sterile environment. The discovery raises profound questions.

Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha) root extract is very popular ancient herbal medicine. The objective of the study was to characterize and evaluate the impact of The Trivedi Effect^® — Energy of Consciousness Healing Treatment (Biofield Energy Healing) on phytoconstituents present in the ashwagandha root extract using GC-MS and NMR. Ashwagandha root extract was divided into two parts. One part was denoted as the control, while the other part was defined as The Trivedi Effect^® — Biofield Energy Treated sample, which received The Trivedi Effect^® — Energy of Consciousness Healing Treatment remotely from eighteen renowned Biofield Energy Healers. The GC-MS data indicated that the peak height and peak area of The Trivedi Effect^® treated sample were found to be altered compared with the control sample. The peak height of the phytoconstituents present in the treated ashwagandha sample was altered significantly in the range of −8.32% to 89.25% compared with the control sample. Similarly, the peak area of the treated sample was altered significantly in the range of — 4.28% to 216.30% compared with the control sample. Overall, the change in the peak area% of the treated sample was significantly altered in the range of −18.29% to 170.18% compared with the control sample. The GC-MS and NMR analysis results identified the presence of withanolides such as glyco-withanolides, alkaloids, and sugars in the root extract in both the sample. The peak area of 2,3,4,5-tetrahydropyridazine , methyl ethyl sulfoxide , 5,6-dihydro-2-methyl-4(H)pyran-3,4-dione , diethoxy-2-methyl-propane , 2,3,4,5-tetrahydroxy-tetrahydro-pyran , and 3,4-dimethyl-2(3H)-furanone were significantly increased by 170.18%, 58.21%, 7.74%, 139.50%, 23.16%, and 45.63%, respectively in the treated sample compared with the control sample. On the contrary, the peak area% of 2-hydroxy-γ-butyrolactone was decreased by — 14.96% in the treated ashwagandha compared with the control sample. From the results, it can be hypothesized that The Trivedi Effect^® — Biofield Energy Treatment might have the impact on the intrinsic physicochemical properties of the phytoconstituents present in the ashwagandha root extract and responsible for the alteration in the relative peak height/area of treated sample compared with the control sample. As a result, the concentrations of the phytoconstituents assumed to be increased in treated sample compared with the control sample. This treated ashwagandha root extract would be helpful for designing better nutraceutical/pharmaceutical formulations which might be providing a better therapeutic response against autoimmune diseases, nervous and sexual disorders, infectious diseases, antiaging, diabetes, cancer, immunological disorders, stress, arthritis, etc.

Keywords:

Biofield Energy Healing Treatment, Biofield Energy Healers, Consciousness Energy Healers, The Trivedi Effect^®, Withania somnifera, Withanolides, GC-MS, NMR.

To me cryonics just makes sense. It may not be pretty but, just like open heart surgery, it is one of those things that, without any guarantees, can possibly extend your life [very] substantially. Thus, especially given the alternative, I just can’t quite make sense of the slow rate of adoption evident not only in North America but also across the world. And so I am always happy to discover new books that lay out the scientific argument for cryonics while making it easily digestible and giving it a very personal, human perspective. Since the most recent book, I thoroughly enjoyed on this topic was Frozen to Life: A Personal Mortality Experiment I thought that D.J. MacLennan will make an excellent guest on my podcast. I was not wrong about that.

During our 1 hour conversation with D.j. MacLennan we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he decided to write Frozen to Life and who is it for; cryonics as a glass-state time travel; why he chose neuro- rather than full-body preservation; the costs and rate of adoption of cryonics; the culture, conservatism and geography of his home on the Isle of Skye; transhumanism and transcending limitations; the differences between Max More and James Hughes; his fear of death; the promise of chemical brain preservation; mindfulness and meditation; writing a transhumanist take on The Wizard of Oz and potentially on Grim’s Fairy Tales…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.