Lifeboat Foundation

A medication called modafinil is commonly used to treat people who experience narcolepsy, but it’s suspected that the vast majority of those who use the drug are taking it for another purpose that isn’t medically authorised: as a general cognitive enhancer for tasks such as studying or meeting a deadline.

Now a comprehensive review of the medication has looked at this ‘off licence’ use of the drug by healthy, non-sleep-deprived subjects to determine whether modafinil is safe – and to confirm whether the belief that it acts as a general-purpose ‘smart drug’ is grounded in reality.

According to researchers from the University of Oxford in the UK and Harvard Medical School in the US, modafinil delivers on both counts, constituting what’s thought to be the first safe smart drug that can provide demonstrable cognitive and concentration benefits. Brainpower in a pill, in other words.

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Growing brain tissue in a dish has been done before, but bold new research announced this week shows that scientists’ ability to create human brains in laboratory settings has come a long way quickly.

Researchers at the Ohio State University in the US claim to have developed the most complete laboratory-grown human brain ever, creating a model with the brain maturity of a 5-week-old foetus. The brain, which is approximately the size of a pencil eraser, contains 99 percent of the genes that would be present in a natural human foetal brain.

“It not only looks like the developing brain, its diverse cell types express nearly all genes like a brain,” Rene Anand, professor of biological chemistry and pharmacology at Ohio State and lead researcher on the brain model, said in a statement.

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Global warming

Going back to 1880.

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SCIENTISTS have discovered MRI scanners, often used to diagnose cancer, can actually help combat the disease and with less side effects than some current treatments.

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“EXCLUSIVE: Could this asteroid destroy Earth in just SIX weeks?” According to NASA, the answer is “absolutely not, you imbeciles.”

NASA issued an official statement about the conspiracy-web theory that an asteroid is heading for the Atlantic with an impact on September 23rd. “That’s the rumor that has gone viral–now here are the facts,” the agency writes. “There is no scientific basis–not one shred of evidence–that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates,” says the manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object office, Paul Chodas.

Who could be perpetrating such rumors? The theory has actually been around for years, but it’s picked up steam over the past month or two. Unsurprisingly, a major role has been played by InfoWars, which has built a business out of circulating conspiracy theories about the government, impending apocalypse, and the shadowy machinations of world powers. “We are simply taking a look at what has being said,” says InfoWars’ John Bowne in a video about the forthcoming asteroid strike. Just a simple look! So what’s being said?

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In aviation circles, the talk of the future involves phrases like “space planes” and “hypersonic atmospheric flight vehicles.” A group presently in the spotlight is from Germany; they are carrying a roadmap for low-cost space access which involves calling upon the air passenger market for fast-travel flights.

Welcome to the world of SpaceLiner, which, when fully developed, could have dramatic impact in global aerospace. The DLR Institute of Space Systems said this suborbital, hypersonic, winged passenger transport idea is under investigation at DLR-SART. (DLR is a German aerospace research agency and it evaluates complex systems of space flight. SART is Space Launcher Systems Analysis.)

SpaceLiner is a rocket-propelled intercontinental passenger transport, described by the institute as a two-stage vehicle powered by rocket propulsion.

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Physicists have created a so-called magnetic wormhole that transports a magnetic field from one point to the other without being detected.

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https://soundcloud.com/a16z/a16z-podcast-techs-big-ideas-and…andreessen

If cancer is predominantly a random process, then why don’t organisms with thousands of times more cells suffer more from cancer? Large species like whales and elephants generally live longer, not shorter lives, so how are they protected against the threat of cancer?

While we have a great deal more to learn when it comes to cancer biology, the general belief is that it arises first from mutation. It’s becoming clear it’s actually an incredibly complicated process, requiring a range of variable factors such as mutation, epigenetic alteration and local environment change (like inflammation). While some students may have spent sleepless nights wondering how many mutated cells they contain after learning the fallibility of our replication mechanisms, the reality is that with such an error rate we should all be ridden with cancer in childhood — but we’re not. Our canine companions sadly often succumb around their 1st decade, but humans are actually comparatively good at dealing with cancer. We live a relatively long time in the mammal kingdom for our size and even in a modern environment, it’s predominantly an age-related disease.

While evolution may have honed replication accuracy, life itself requires ‘imperfection’ to evolve. We needed those occasional errors in germ cells to allow evolution. If keeping the odd error is either preferable or essentially not worth the energy tackling when you’re dealing with tens of trillions of cells, then clearly there is more to the story than mutation. In order to maintain a multi-cellular organism for a long enough period, considering that errors are essentially inevitable, other mechanisms must be in place to remove or quarantine problematic cells.

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