This is the sixth entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. After successfully reanimating rats from deep body temperatures of 0 – 2 degrees C and subsequent respiratory and cardiac arrest, Andjus allowed the survivors to live for many months afterward in order [...]
Depressed Metabolism
Cryonics, Life Extension, Anti-Aging, Health, Science, Neuroscience, Death, Liberty
Methods to resuscitate rodents from ultraprofound hypothermia
This is the fifth entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. As we have seen, Radoslav Andjus had determined a method for achieving excellent (75-100%) recovery rates in rats cooled to 0-2 degrees C by local cardiac heating prior to warming the whole [...]
Abandoned stations in Antarctica
Abandoned sites are found in (former) industrial areas, as highlighted in the post on the Monteponi mine in Sardinia and as photographed by Bernd and Hilla Becher, who are famous for their photographs of industrial buildings, or in cities, as highlighted in a previous post about Abandoned London Underground Stations.
And even Antarctica, although sparsely populated, [...]
Locations in Mark Samuels’ In the Face of Twilight
Mark Samuels’ bleak novella of urban horror, In the Face of Twilight, is set in London. Living in London, and being somewhat familiar with the settings in this story, this created a unique opportunity to see what places in his book actually do exist.
What follows is a selection of photos taken of locations that feature [...]
Robert White on brain death
Robert J. White is most known, or perhaps most notorious, for his work on primate head transplants. Less known, but more relevant to the practice of human cryopreservation, is his work in cerebral ischemia, hypothermia, and brain preservation. Most of White’s innovative work was published in the 1960s and 1970s. White also published a substantial [...]
Resuscitation of rats from high subzero temperatures
This is the fourth entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. Up to this point we have discussed the groundbreaking research in the early 1950s performed by Radoslav Andjus in resuscitating rats from body temperatures between 0 and 2 degrees C. Having determined [...]
Microwave diathermy to resuscitate hypothermic rats
This is the third entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. Andjus and Smith were delighted that they had managed to modify Andjus’ chest-wall heating technique from using a hot metal spatula to using a focused beam of light in order to preferentially [...]
Improved methods for resuscitation of cold rats
This is the second entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. As discussed previously, in 1951 Radoslav Andjus developed a simple method for resuscitating rats cooled to deep body temperatures between 0 and 2 degrees C which involved applying a hot spatula to [...]
London’s abandoned underground stations
Like Fritz Leiber and Thomas Ligotti, the setting for the weird fiction of Mark Samuels is often an urban environment. The British horror writer Ramsey Campbell describes Samuel’s stories as ‘Urban Tales of Terror’ in the introduction to Samuels’ latest collection of short stories, ‘Glyphotech and Other Macabre Stories.’
The setting for these urban tales of [...]
Resuscitation of rodents from hypothermic circulatory arrest
This is the first entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. Prior work in hypothermia began in the early 1900s, but because cardiac and respiratory arrest were observed in the animals around 15 degrees C, researchers assumed they were irreversibly dead [...]
The healthy skeptic
Consumers are constantly bombarded with advice about health. Lower your cholesterol, avoid carbs, take dietary supplements, avoid Teflon, get a full body scan, etc. Such advice does not fall on deaf ears. Who does not want to remain healthy, look good, and extend life? Two other factors contribute to our eagerness to consume and follow [...]
Against Politics
For most of the decade one of the authors of this blog maintained another website called Against Politics to disseminate information about the theory and practice of a depoliticized society. Topics that held Against Politics together included non-cognitivism, contractarianism, polycentric law, and an emphasis on the work of thinkers such as David Gauthier, Jan Narveson [...]
Robert Freitas discusses the future of nanomedicine
Nanotechnology idea-man Robert Freitas, Jr. has published an article in the January 2009 issue of Life Extension Magazine providing a tutorial in nanomedicine and documenting its progression toward real-world application.
In “Nanotechnology and Radically Extended Life Span,” Freitas describes several theoretical medical nanorobots, such as the microbiovore, which would “act like an artificial mechanical white cell, [...]
Greg Jordan on Buddhism, Epicureanism, and Immortalism
“Buddhism and Epicureanism combat the fear of death by accommodating the emotions to the reasonable certainty of death. Contemporary immortalism (which includes projects such as life extension, cryonic suspension, and universal immortalism) argues that scientific and technological solutions to the problem of death can be found, thus questioning the inevitability of death. Buddhist, Epicurean, and [...]
Monkey business
According to those who research them, capuchin monkeys think only about two things: food and sex. As a result, the vast majority of their behaviors are also geared toward the acquisition of food and sex. Not surprisingly, these desires can be exploited to teach the monkeys other behaviors. However, no one has ever observed animals [...]
Nanotechnology: The message matters
A recently conducted study brings a warning to technophiles who think that the facts are all that matter when informing a group of people about a new technology. The fact of the matter is that the message matters more.
In their article “What drives acceptance of nanotechnology?” (Nature Nanotechnology), the Cultural Cognition Project and the Project [...]
The purple prose of suspended animation
Esquire magazine features an article on scientist Mark Roth and his research into “suspended animation.” As the website title “The Mad Scientist Bringing Back the Dead…. Really” indicates, this is not supposed to be a detailed account of Ikaria’s recent advances in induction of depressed metabolism but a sensationalist piece on mad scientists. Although the [...]
Eric Drexler launches Metamodern blog
Molecular nanotechnology pioneer and cryonics advocate Eric Drexler has launched his own blog called Metamodern: The Trajectory of Technology. This is what we can expect:
In this blog, I’ll discuss current progress in science and technology, often with a specific perspective in mind: how current progress can contribute to the development of advanced nanosystems. This system-building [...]
Richard Dawkins on fashionable nonsense
The Dutch psychologist Piet Vroon once opined that philosophy has lost much of its relevance because it has lost touch with the (natural) sciences. Although philosophers associated with logical positivism and critical rationalism made great efforts to discipline the practice of philosophy by encouraging logical thinking and verification (or falsification), so far their efforts must [...]
Gender differences in stroke treatment and prevention
Over the years, experimental science has developed a standard protocol for the testing of medical hypotheses using animal models which calls for the use of males only. Why? Because no laboratory scientist wants to deal with those pesky female hormones. Female hormone fluctuations are viewed as just another variable to be controlled (generally by excluding [...]
Donald Judd’s minimalist art in Marfa, Texas
Minimalism was first recognized as an art and design movement in the 1960’s. The essence of minimalist art is the reduction of the art work to its bare essentials, which is expressed through simple geometric forms, repetition, neutral surfaces, and industrial materials. Minimal art downplays self-expression in favor of the object itself, which is a [...]
Robert Aumann on incentives and competition
On Barely A Blog, Ilana Mercer reports on Robert Aumann’s recent inaugural lecture of the Center for the Study of Judaism and Economics at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Robert Aumann, who won the 2005 Nobel prize in economics with Thomas Schelling, is known for his work on repeated games and the role of [...]
Experiment made on the mummy
As documented in David M. Friedman’s The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever, Lindbergh and Carrel considered the human body a living machine made of replaceable parts. A major reason why Carrel was interested in developing and refining equipment to perfuse isolated organs is because he believed that [...]
The bell curve of individual choice
What is the relationship between individual choice and collective choice? What should be the domain over which a democracy chooses? Prevailing answers to these questions are an important factor affecting the size of government. One argument why imperfect foresight should favor limited government, or no government at all, involves the difference between how individual and [...]
The black operating room of Alexis Carrel
From David M. Friedman’s The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever:
The initial stages of these studies were performed in Carrel’s operating suite, which the two men now entered. Lindbergh had never been in an operating room before, and this one defied his expectations. The floor, walls, and [...]
Cryonics sets example for emergency medicine
One of the most neglected aspects of cryonics is that its procedures, and the research to support them, can have important practical applications in mainstream fields such as organ preservation and emergency medicine. Contrary to popular opinion, cryonics does not just involve an optimistic extrapolation of existing science but can set the standard for these [...]
The Prisoner in Portmeirion
The Prisoner is a British television series from the 1960’s which over the years has reached cult status because of its intriguing story line, themes such as mind control, dream manipulation and various forms of social indoctrination, and ultimately, a lot of unanswered questions as to the meaning of the series.
The series is about a [...]
Facing death with Epicurus
James Warren is to be complimented for writing a thorough and persuasive book on Epicurean thinking about death. In Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics, Warren offers a detailed review of Epicurus’ view that “death is nothing to us.” His treatment of Epicurus’ critics should be considered a success for the following three reasons. The [...]
Brownian motion and nanotechnology
Brownian motion started when Robert Brown looked into his microscope and observed that pollen suspended in water moved around in a continuous random motion. Wanting to rule out some “vital life force,” Brown also investigated dead things such as sand and metals but he observed the same jittery motion. The dead danced as well. Or [...]
Human cryo-anabiosis
Recent advances with the use of hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide and “hibernation induction triggers” to depress metabolism in animal models have renewed interest in the possibility of human hibernation. The ability to drastically depress human metabolism without the use of cold (or in combination with cold) would have a number of important medical and scientific [...]
Cloning of frozen mice and cryonics
Japanese scientists have managed to clone a mouse that had been frozen without any cryoprotection for 16 years at minus 20 degrees Celsius. The researchers used the researchers used brain cell nuclei, and planted it into an egg of another living mouse, leading to the birth of the cloned mouse.
Although the objective of cryonics is [...]
- Behavioral effects of ultraprofound hypothermia in rats
- Methods to resuscitate rodents from ultraprofound hypothermia
- Abandoned stations in Antarctica
- Locations in Mark Samuels’ In the Face of Twilight
- Robert White on brain death
- Resuscitation of rats from high subzero temperatures
- Microwave diathermy to resuscitate hypothermic rats
- Improved methods for resuscitation of cold rats
- London’s abandoned underground stations
- Resuscitation of rodents from hypothermic circulatory arrest
Aging Alcor Alzheimer's Disease Anarchism Anthony de Jasay Audrey Smith Blood Pressure Brain Cardiac Arrest Cerebral Ischemia Child Rearing CPR Cryobiology Cryonics Cryonics Institute Cryopreservation David Gauthier Death Eric Drexler Ethics H.P. Lovecraft Health Hypothermia Immortality Ischemia John Rawls Libertarianism Life Extension Medications Meliorism Memory Mike Darwin Nanotechnology Neuroprotection Philosophy Politics Radoslav Andjus Resuscitation Science Shannon Vyff Stroke Suspended Animation Transhumanism Ultraprofound Hypothermia Vitrification
