Lifeboat Foundation

US military scientists have used electrical brain stimulators to enhance mental skills of staff, in research that aims to boost the performance of air crews, drone operators and others in the armed forces’ most demanding roles.

The successful tests of the devices pave the way for servicemen and women to be wired up at critical times of duty, so that electrical pulses can be beamed into their brains to improve their effectiveness in high pressure situations.

The brain stimulation kits use five electrodes to send weak electric currents through the skull and into specific parts of the cortex. Previous studies have found evidence that by helping neurons to fire, these minor brain zaps can boost cognitive ability.

Continue reading “US military successfully tests electrical brain stimulation to enhance staff skills” »

““The School of Humanities and Sciences is systematically re-thinking how we teach entry-level courses in the sciences,” said Richard P. Saller, dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, during opening remarks for the event. “Half of all freshman enrollments in Stanford are in beginning-level sciences and math. We have tremendous impact by raising the level of teaching in these areas.””

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A NASA engineers explains why the fake technology that inspired Elon Musk wouldn’t work.

Scientists have struggled for millennia to understand human consciousness — the awareness of one’s existence. Despite advances in neuroscience, we still don’t really know where it comes from, and how it arises.

But researchers think they might have finally figured out its physical origins, after pinpointing a network of three specific regions in the brain that appear to be crucial to consciousness.

It’s a pretty huge deal for our understanding of what it means to be human, and it could also help researchers find new treatments for patients in vegetative states.

Continue reading “Harvard Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed the Physical Source of Consciousness” »

If you were to compare yourself to a neutron star, you probably wouldn’t find very many things in common. After all, neutron stars – celestial bodies with super strong magnetic fields – are made from collapsed star cores, lie light-years away from Earth, and don’t even watch Netflix.

But, according to new research, we share at least one similarity: the geometry of the matter that makes us.

Researchers have found that the ‘crust’ (or outer layers) of a neutron star has the same shape as our cellular membranes. This could mean that, despite being fundamentally different, both humans and neutron stars are constrained by the same geometry.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Found a Bizarre Similarity Between Human Cells and Neutron Stars” »

Great news if it turns out to be true!

Though scientists are still trying to figure out how it doesn’t violate the laws of physics.

Hey folks, great news! The Patrons Challenge is going really well and we have already passed the halfway mark for new Patrons which is superb. Thanks to Reason and Josh Triplett who are doubling all new pledges made this year. So if you are interested in being a Patron this is a great time to join us.

Our Winter fundraiser has also reached almost 25k and is going great guns. The more we can raise the more research we can do and as this year has shown, some truly great results are starting to arrive for the SENS approach to treating age-related diseases.

My new OpEd story on my campaign and transhumanist activism:

Author of The Transhumanist Wager, Zoltan Istvan explains how the social movement wants to change the future of humanity.

In Brief:

• A Type IV civilization is a society that has managed to harness the energy of the entire universe.
• To get here, we would need to tap into energy sources unknown to us using strange laws of physics (laws that may or may not exist).

To measure the level of a civilization’s advancement, the Kardashev scale focuses on the amount of energy that a civilization is able to harness. Obviously, the amount of power available to a civilization is linked to how widespread the civilization is (you can’t harness the power of a star if you are confined to your home planet, and you certainly can’t harness the power of a galaxy if you can’t even get out of your solar system).