Scientists Are Mixing Human Body Parts With Robots and Monkeys. We Don’t Want to See What’s Next

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It’s been a big month for sci-fi primates. On Apr. 8, Elon Musk’s start-up Neuralink announced they created a cyborg monkey who can play MindPong using a brain chip. The following week, scientists at the Salk Institute in California revealed they successfully grew human-macaque embryos in test tubes. These hybrid babies were aborted at 20 days.

The ethical implications of such experiments are now debated with a resigned shrug. There’s a sense of inevitability to it all. Powerful humans will indulge in any behavior that’s both pleasurable and possible. What could be more pleasurable than playing God?

The practical question isn’t how to stop them, but how to survive in their technocratic age. Where do we draw such boundaries? Do we reflexively reject technology’s terms and conditions? Or, when it’s our turn to get chipped, do we take the plunge?

Ultimately, these are religious questions. Many traditional cultures view living beings as sacred. Each creature is endowed with a spark of consciousness and is therefore deserving of dignity, even those we kill and eat. From this standpoint, tinkering with the fundamental make-up of any living being is a form of blasphemy, especially in the case of humans. (Read more from “Scientists Are Mixing Human Body Parts With Robots and Monkeys. We Don’t Want to See What’s Next” HERE)

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Putin Is Russia’s Sexiest Man, Russian Poll Finds

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. . .When asked who the most handsome man in their country was, 18% of Russia’s men and 17% of its women allegedly thought of their bare-breasted, horseback-riding, scandal-immune leader, Vladimir Putin.

The highly suspect and mildly terrifying poll by job board site Superjob.ru surveyed 2,000 Russians and determined that the 68-year-old bachelor is the sexiest man in the country, the Moscow Times reported. . .

And coincidentally, the “open-ended” survey, which was conducted in person, was published after Putin was granted permission by lawmakers to run for president until 2036.

No word yet on what happened to the 82% of men and 83% of women who didn’t vote for Putin in the poll. However, it should be noted that 19% of men named themselves as Russia’s most handsome man. And 18% of women said there does not exist a single handsome man in all the land, according to the Times. (Read more from “Putin Is Russia’s Sexiest Man, Russian Poll Finds” HERE)

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Google Maps to Start Directing Drivers to ‘Eco-Friendly’ Routes

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Google’s Maps app will start directing drivers along routes estimated to generate the lowest carbon emissions based on traffic, slopes and other factors, the company announced on Tuesday.

Google, an Alphabet Inc unit, said the feature would launch later this year in the U.S. and eventually reach other countries as part of its commitment to help combat climate change through its services.

Unless users opt out, the default route will be the “eco-friendly” one if comparable options take about the same time, Google said. When alternatives are significantly faster, Google will offer choices and let users compare estimated emissions.

“What we are seeing is for around half of routes, we are able to find an option more eco-friendly with minimal or no time-cost tradeoff,” Russell Dicker, a director of product at Google, told reporters on Monday. (Read more from “Google Maps to Start Directing Drivers to ‘Eco-Friendly’ Routes” HERE)

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Eating This Common Food Just Once a Day Increases Your Dementia Risk by 44%

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Eating processed meat could raise one’s chances of developing dementia, researchers from the UK say, with just a single rasher of bacon a day associated with a 44% increased risk of contracting the brain-wasting disease.

Researchers at the University of Leeds examined data from almost half a million people to assess how eating meat impacts on health. Their findings, released Monday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, show that eating a 25g serving of bacon – one rasher – every day could increase a person’s dementia risk by up to a half.

If processed meat is bad, then the researchers also say that eating 50g of unprocessed red meat – such as beef, veal, or pork – can help in fighting dementia, decreasing the risk of getting the disease by a fifth (19%). . .

“Our research adds to the growing body of evidence linking processed meat consumption to increased risk of a range of non-transmissible diseases,” said lead researcher Huifeng Zhang from the University of Leeds. (Read more from “Eating This Common Food Just Once a Day Increases Your Dementia Risk by 44%” HERE)

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Scientists Create Living Entities in the Lab That Closely Resemble Human Embryos

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By NPR. [S]cientists have created living entities in their labs that resemble human embryos; the results of two new experiments are the most complete such “model embryos” developed to date.

The goal of the experiments is to gain important insights into early human development and find new ways to prevent birth defects and miscarriages and treat fertility problems.

But the research, which was published in two separate papers Wednesday in the journal Nature Portfolio, raises sensitive moral and ethical concerns.

“I’m sure it makes anyone who is morally serious nervous when people start creating structures in a petri dish that are this close to being early human beings,” says Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a bioethicist at Georgetown University. (Read more from “Scientists Create Living Entities in the Lab That Closely Resemble Human Embryos” HERE)
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‘First complete models’ of a human embryo made in the lab

By Nicoletta Lanese. Scientists have created hollow spheres of cells that resemble human embryos in their earliest stages of development. The artificial embryos, called “blastoids,” could allow scientists to study early human development, infertility and pregnancy loss without experimenting on actual embryos.

Two separate research groups created these model embryos using different methods, and each published their results March 17 in the journal Nature Portfolio.

One research group started with adult human skin cells, which they genetically reprogrammed to resemble embryonic cells, according to a statement. The researchers then grew these modified cells over a 3D scaffold that guided them into a spherical shape. The resulting structure closely mimicked a human blastocyst, a structure that typically contains a few hundred cells and forms roughly four days after a sperm cell fertilizes an egg and later implants in the uterine wall, Nature News reported.

The second research group began with human stem cells, including both embryonic stem cells and stem cells derived from adult skin tissue, known as “induced pluripotent stem cells,” Nature News reported. The team treated the stem cells with specific chemicals known as growth factors to coax them into the shape of a blastocyst. (Read more about the creation of fabricated human embryos HERE)

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Eating This Seed Could Reduce the Risk of Parkinson’s

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Consuming a chemical found in sesame seeds can reduce the risk of Parkinson’s by preventing neuronal damage that decreases dopamine production, study shows.

Scientists from Osaka City University tested the chemical sesaminol on Parkinson’s cells, as well as feeding it to mice over 36 days to find out what impact it had on dopamine levels and neurons in the brain.

Parkinson’s is a neurological disorder that impairs movement, causes stiffness and can result in a loss of balance, tremors in the hands and slurred speech.

Study authors discovered that sesaminol protected against neuronal damage that caused Parkinson’s disease and believe it could be a cure for the condition.

They found that mice with Parkinson’s that consumed the chemical saw an improvement in dopamine levels, balance and motor function. (Read more from “Eating This Seed Could Reduce the Risk of Parkinson’s” HERE)

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Rooster Stabs Man to Death During Cockfight Training

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A man was killed by a rooster with a blade tied to its leg during an illegal cockfight in southern India, police said, bringing focus on a practice that continues in some Indian states despite a decades-old ban.

The rooster, with a 3-inch knife tied to its leg, fluttered in panic and slashed its owner, 45-year-old Thangulla Satish, in his groin last week, police inspector B. Jeevan said Sunday. . .

According to Jeevan, Satish was injured while he prepared the rooster for a fight. “Satish was hit by the rooster’s knife in his groin and started bleeding heavily,” the officer said, adding that the man died on the way to a hospital. (Read more from “Rooster Stabs Man to Death During Cockfight Training” HERE)

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Pigs Can Play Video Games With Their Snouts, Scientists Find

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Pigs can play video games, scientists have found, after putting four fun-loving swine to the test.

Four pigs – Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory – were trained to use an arcade-style joystick to steer an on-screen cursor into walls.

Researchers said the fact that the pigs understood the connection between the stick and the game “is no small feat”.

And the pigs even continued playing when the food reward dispenser broke – apparently for the social contact.

Usually, the pigs would be given a food pellet for “winning” the game level. But during testing, it broke – and they kept clearing the game levels when encouraged by some of the researchers’ kind words. (Read more from “Pigs Can Play Video Games With Their Snouts, Scientists Find” HERE)

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Country Confirms Ebola Resurgence, Declares New Epidemic

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Health officials in Guinea on Sunday confirmed that at least three people have died from Ebola there, the first cases declared since it was one of three West African nations to fight the world’s deadliest Ebola epidemic that ended five years ago.

An additional four people are confirmed with Ebola, according to a statement from the ministry of health. All seven positive cases attended the funeral of a nurse in Goueke on Feb. 1 and later showed Ebola symptoms including a fever, diarrhea, vomiting, said the ministry statement.

The government has declared an Ebola epidemic and started contact tracing and isolating suspected cases. It’s also sent an emergency team to support local teams in Goueke and has accelerated the procurement of Ebola vaccines from the World Health Organization. (Read more from “Country Confirms Ebola Resurgence, Declares New Epidemic” HERE)

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Prostate-Cancer Treatment Leaves Men Disease-Free

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Most people have probably heard or seen examples of sound waves so powerful they can break glass. Now, a new cancer treatment is using sound to destroy tumors and cure men dealing with the disease. The new, noninvasive technique for prostate cancer focuses sound waves on the tumor area, heating the cancer calls until they are blasted out of existence.

“The results so far have been very good,” says the University of Toronto’s Dr. Sangeet Ghai in a media release by the Radiological Society of North America.

“We treated a smaller area using this device, yet still had very good results. At the same time the patients preserved their erectile and urinary function.”

Researchers say the focused treatment is more effective than surgery or radiotherapy, especially for patients whose cancer is still confined to the prostate. (Read more from “Prostate-Cancer Treatment Leaves Men Disease-Free” HERE)

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