The Cosmological Noocene
Here is a sketch of the future, without any specific dates assigned to its milestones. The molecular biochemistry of living beings is fully mapped and understood. The human mind is reverse engineered. It is run in software. A million variants and improvements are constructed. Molecular nanotechnology is established and becomes a mature industry, available to everyone. Anything and everything can be built efficiently and at next to zero cost given the raw materials and a specification. All disease is abolished, and aging is defeated: these are problems that boil down to control over molecules, just another form of maintaini...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 28, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs

Magnetic Metamaterial Can Increase MRI Tesla Strength
Researchers from Boston University are using magnetic metamaterial to enhance lower strength magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, according to a  study published inCommunication Physics.With higher field scanners, MRI has a stronger signal-to-noise ratio, and images can be captured with better resolution and at faster speeds. Most facilities use machines with 1.5 or 3 Tesla, but the need for stronger imagers is growing. That ’s why professors Zin Zhang, PhD, and Stephan Anderson, PhD, decided to develop their magnetic metamaterial to enhance the imaging power of low field MRI.Their magnetic metamaterial is made up...
Source: radRounds - June 22, 2019 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 17th 2019
In this study, analysis of antioxidant defense was performed on the blood samples from 184 "aged" individuals aged 65-90+ years, and compared to the blood samples of 37 individuals just about at the beginning of aging, aged 55-59 years. Statistically significant decreases of Zn,Cu-superoxide dismutase (SOD-1), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activities were observed in elderly people in comparison with the control group. Moreover, an inverse correlation between the activities of SOD-1, CAT, and GSH-Px and the age of the examined persons was found. No age-related changes in glutathione reductase activiti...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 16, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Talking with Laura Deming: Aging is the World's Most Important Problem
Laura Deming is one of the people influential in the sweeping shift of the past few years in research and development of therapies to treat aging, in which rejuvenation biotechnologies such as senolytic therapies finally started the move from the laboratory into startup companies, on the way to the clinic. She founded the first venture fund to specialize in what people are now calling the longevity sector of the biotech industry, somewhat before that longevity sector actually existed in any meaningful way. Now, of course, funding is pouring into this area of development; the years ahead will be interesting. Now is very muc...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 14, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Crisper MRI Now Possible Thanks to Helical Resonator Metamaterials
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a complicated imaging modality and improving it requires a deep understanding of the physics involved. Scientists at Boston University have been working on improving MRI’s signal-to-noise ratio using special metamaterials that are made of arrays of helical resonators. Each of these resonators is just a piece of plastic with copper wound around it, all made to rigid specifications. These act like optical lenses, interacting with the magnetic field to optimize the image quality. Not only is the image clearer, it is produced faster than before, something that was studied after a trip ...
Source: Medgadget - June 10, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Critical Care Emergency Medicine Materials Neurology Radiology Source Type: blogs

People Agree It ’s Harder To Conjure A Frog With Magic Than Change Its Colour – Suggesting We Use Our Intuitive Physics To Make Sense Of Imaginary Worlds
via McCoy and Ullman (2019) By Christian Jarrett In a world with magic, how much effort do you think it would take to cast a spell to make a frog appear out of nowhere? What about to turn a frog invisible? Or make it levitate? And would it be easier to levitate a frog than a cow? The researchers John McCoy and Tomer Ullman recently put such questions to hundreds of participants across three studies and found they were in remarkable agreement. The findings, published in PLOS One, suggest that we invoke our intuitive understanding of the physical world – our “folk physics” – to make sense of imaginary worl...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - June 10, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Educational Magic Source Type: blogs

GROUP LEADER POSITION at the BCBL- Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebasti án, Basque Country, Spain)
 www.bcbl.eu (Center of excellence Severo Ochoa)The Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebasti án, Basque Country, Spain) offers permanent research positions for Group Leaders in three main broad areas or research: (1)-Language, reading and developmental disorders: How language acquisition, comprehension, production, and reading take place in the human brain. Special attention will be paid to language disorders and the development of computerized tools for their early diagnosis and treatment.(2)-Multilingualism and second language learning: The cognitive and brain mechanisms of language acqu...
Source: Talking Brains - June 6, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs

Speaking of Faux News . . .
Holy crap, this has got to be the stupidest goddamn thing I have ever read in my life.From Tucker Carlson. whose bow tie is evidently choking off the oxygen supply to his tiny brain:TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny -- the metric system. From Beijing to Buenos Aires, from Lusaka to London, the people of the world have been forced to measure their environment in millimeters and kilograms. The United States is the only major country that has resisted, but we have no reason to be ashamed for using feet and pounds. ... JAMES PANERO: I am joining you tonight as an anti-metr...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 6, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Enriching the neuroscience data commons: An interview with the Editors-in-Chief of NeuroCommons
NeuroCommons is a new Open Access journal published with BMC that welcomes submissions from across the full breadth of the neurosciences. Today the journal is launching a call for papers to invite submissions that demonstrate why data sharing matters and show how data reuse is leading to new scientific insights. Read more about the new series and how to submit here. What is the intent of the Commons and how does NeuroCommons fit in? The concept of the Commons relates to a set of resources shared by a community or the public. In our field, anytime someone makes their data, analyses code, protocols, workflows or related reso...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - May 29, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: Thomas Appleyard Tags: Biology Open Access Publishing Technology data Data sharing NeuroCommons Q&A Source Type: blogs

Meet Debara Tucci, Incoming Director of NIDCD
The recently appointed director of NIDCD brings an extensive research background in hearing loss, ear disease, and cochlear implantation—and an enthusiasm for addressing barriers to hearing health care. Interview by Jillian Kornak The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently named Debara L. Tucci the next director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), replacing acting director Judith Cooper. Tucci will leave her position as professor of surgery in the Division of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences at Duke University Medical Center, where she has served on the...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - May 24, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Jillian Kornak Tags: Academia & Research Audiology Health Care News Private Practice Schools Slider Aging and Hearing Loss audiologist hearing health care public health Source Type: blogs

Six DARPA-funded research teams aim at revolutionizing noninvasive brain-machine interfaces
_______ DARPA Funds Ambitious Brain-Machine Interface Program (IEEE Spectrum): “DARPA’s Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program has awarded funding to six groups attempting to build brain-machine interfaces that match the performance of implanted electrodes but with no surgery whatsoever. By simply popping on a helmet or headset, soldiers could conceivably command control centers without touching a keyboard; fly drones intuitively with a thought; even feel intrusions into a secure network. While the tech sounds futuristic, DARPA wants to get it done in four years … The N3 program fits right into...
Source: SharpBrains - May 22, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Technology brain training brain-machine interfaces DARPA N3 neurotechnologies Neurotechnology noninvasive noninvasive neurotechnologies Source Type: blogs

Chinese Ships on the Mississippi River: Just Another Jones Act Tall Tale
Did you know that the Jones Act prevents Chinese ships from sailing on the Mississippi River? That, at least, is what Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) claimed in a  recent speech on the House floor. For dramatic effect the congressmanused a picture of a ship flying an oversized Chinese flag with St. Louis ’s Gateway Arch prominently displayed in the background:“This is a hypothetical picture, thank goodness,” said the Texas congressman. “A Chinese-built vessel, subsidized by their communist regime, operated by the Chinese and delivering Chinese goods all in the very heartland of the United States of America. But this could...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 21, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Colin Grabow Source Type: blogs

The Long Emergency: It isn't just climate change
I ' m still sketching out the basic challenges facing humanity, in broad strokes. Last week I presented the history of human population in the past 2000 years and a very basic primer on climate. But there are much broader issues of resource depletion. Some people have expected bigger catastrophes sooner than they have actually happened, and it ' s perilous to make very specific predictions, but we ' re at the point now where we aren ' t just making predictions, we ' re observing what ' s already happening.Here ' s the basic problem:If 3 billion people are going to  achieve a standard of living comparable to that of a ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 20, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Avoiding medicine ’s Boeing 737 Max
I ’m sitting on a cross-country flight to California with utmost respect for the professionalism of the crew, especially considering my life will be in their hands for the next 6 hours. Despite understanding the physics, I am still amazed by flight, and even more so by the coordination required to m anage the logistics of shuttling […]Find jobs at  Careers by KevinMD.com.  Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now.  Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 20, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/marc-braunstein" rel="tag" > Marc Braunstein, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Malpractice Source Type: blogs