Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[palsch]

It's worth noting that the only observational study they cite, and the only one I'm aware of claiming a substantial positive benefit for the drugs, was published less than a month before the review and it's accuracy has been hotly contested.

[tahujdt]

On a totally unrelated note, I went to see that new documentary on the LHC, 'Particle Fever', last week. It was a smashing film.
*rimshot*
Anyway, the science is cool, the animations were cool, and the interview were cool.
What I thought was kinda cool is when they were doing the standard documentary 'focus on random s***' montage, they showed a statue of Shiva that was on the property. Several times, in fact. I'm probably one of the only ones who appreciated the symbolism in that.

Spoiler: Symbolism (click to show/hide)

In this depiction, Shiva is shown a) stamping out ignorance (represented by the little man) and creating the universe. What's more, he is represented inside of a circle.

[Sergarr]

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/24/apple-patents-a-3d-hologram-display-system-with-gesture-input/

Oh hey there.

[Scoops Novel]

Ganymede may have 3 layers of oceans, Ya'll.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-138

[Nirur Torir]

Blood plasma from young mice injected into old mice "reverses age-related impairments in cognitive function and synaptic plasticity."

Science.

_{(If I know anything about human nature, then within a year, an intrepid bio-hacker will regularly inject themselves with the identified protein and blog about the results.)}

[scrdest]

Just so people avoid talking about what the guys on the BBC article were talking about, it doesn't extend life, it just means that things like dementia have less of an effect.

...which extends life. Little use in rejuvenation of, say, skin, if you cannot live as you qua you because of dementia.

[Il Palazzo]

Check this out:
http://www.illustris-project.org/

It's a super-detailed simulation of a huge spatial chunk of the universe(~10^6 cubic Mpc), recently completed and just published.

Here's an article about it:
www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-10

There's a bunch of videos in the media section of the project page(quicktime, sadly).

[MonkeyHead]

Relevant SMBC is relevant:

Spoiler: Spolier for bigness (click to show/hide)

[Lagslayer]

Blood plasma from young mice injected into old mice "reverses age-related impairments in cognitive function and synaptic plasticity."

Science.

_{(If I know anything about human nature, then within a year, an intrepid bio-hacker will regularly inject themselves with the identified protein and blog about the results.)}

Then everyone became vampires.

[Loud Whispers]

Just so people avoid talking about what the guys on the BBC article were talking about, it doesn't extend life, it just means that things like dementia have less of an effect.

...which extends life. Little use in rejuvenation of, say, skin, if you cannot live as you qua you because of dementia.

Not a huge amount, though. You can still suffer from other organs giving up and dying.

We have replacements? Dammit I want my brain jar immortality.

[Knit tie]

Yes!

Suck it, senescence!

[Descan]

Really, all we need to do is support the brain to achieve immortality.

That's all the body is: Support system for the brain. Well, non-evolutionary speaking.

Step 1: Support the brain outside of the human body.

Step 2: Translate the brain to something indefinitely durable. I.E. won't succumb to Alzheimer, dementia, brain-damage, etc.

Whether that's brain-uploading (which has it's own philosophical issues) or replacing the neurons with a more durable analog, or basically bolting on new hard-drives to your brain that the brain can, over time, migrate into as new connections are formed and the various functions of the brain (memory, learning, sensation, thought, etc) are taken up by the silicon brain. Then even if you lose your original meat-brain, it'd be no more of an issue for you than if you were to lose a few dozen brain-cells right now. Relatively minor loss, getting even more minor as you bolt on more and more space and take it up. Basically the same as the second way, with some differences. (I.E. bolting on whole-cloth parts and waiting for it to be engaged versus replacing each connection individually, keeping the original connections versus making them irrelevant, retaining some semblence of the original neural structure versus "Eh, as long as it thinks, nevermind the structure" of bolt-on)

Bam, immortality. All you need now is some way to manipulate reality (hands, or radio-controlled nano-particles, or organic meat-sacks grown around a radio receiver instead of a brain, whatever) and to sense reality (cameras, aforementioned meat-sacks) and you're golden~

[Loud Whispers]

1. Upload brain to internet.
2. [CTRL] [C]
3. [CTRL] [V]
4. Everyone firewalls brain.exe

[Knit tie]

Oh yeah, I'm totally gonna turn my brain into a superfast quantum computer and then put it into an indestructible deathmachine murdercyborg body.

[Loud Whispers]

I don't know. Maybe it'd count as a victory for post-humanity?