New Scientistin The Big Questions -osiosta löytyy myös James Hughesin vastaus kysymykseen What comes after humans?
The term "transhumanism" may be only 50 years old but it was implicit in the Enlightenment from its beginning. In 1769, French philosopher Denis Diderot wrote three essays called D'Alembert's Dream recounting imaginary dialogues between himself and his friend and fellow philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert, along with a "cultured ladyfriend" and a physician. In these dialogues Diderot prefigures many transhumanist ideas, arguing for instance that since consciousness is a product of brain matter, the conscious mind can be deconstructed and put back together. He suggests that science will bring the dead back to life and redesign animals and machines into intelligent creatures. Diderot also expounds the idea that humanity can redesign itself into a great variety of types "whose future and final organic structure it is impossible to predict".
Threshold and pattern dynamics
A similar pattern occurred with the World Wide Web, which didn't achieve widespread use until a certain level of connectivity was reached. "It looks more and more like this was a sudden process, a threshold. You had to reach some critical level in connections between the computers of the world before the usefulness of the Web became apparent to most people," says Rundle.
Lisää superhiiriuutisia: isot annokset resveratrolia tekevät hiiristä tuplasti tehokkaampia, elämän pidentymisen ja terveyden lisäksi.
Dr. Sinclair dosed his mice daily with 22 milligrams of resveratrol for each kilogram of weight, and Dr. Auwerx used up to 400 milligrams. No one could drink enough red wine to obtain such doses.
Kanalle kasvatetaan uusi siipi kuin salamanterille jalka.
"In this simple experiment, we removed part of the chick embryo's wing, activated Wnt signaling, and got the whole limb back - a beautiful and perfect wing," said the lead author, Juan Carlos Izpis�a Belmonte, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory. "By changing the expression of a few genes, you can change the ability of a vertebrate to regenerate their limbs, rebuilding blood vessels, bone, muscles, and skin - everything that is needed."