Welcome to Cyborg - The Grendelcat contends that even if no catastrophe wrecks our planet over the next couple of generations, humans will make themselves extinct.  Whether AI helps us wipe ourselves out or we genetically modify natural humans out of existence, the human stock model will become an historical relic unless a humanism movement galvanizes and makes an effort to protect the species.

[Last Update: January 22nd, 2022.  Last overhaul: August 18th, 2021.]

AI, GMOs & Everything In Between

I Had A Gut Feeling and I Knew It In My Heart - Discoveries in embryology about internal communication pathways and the genesis and interactions of the heart, gut, brain and sex organs are a fascinating turnabout from the very organ specific functionality promoted in days of yore.  Everything we are, isn't all in our heads.  Discoveries about new communication pathways betwixt the organs are increasingly frequent.  In tandem with these breakthroughs, the ability to grow backup organs is knocking on the door.  This brings up some fundamental questions about what truly makes us us.

    A focus is figuring out how stem and blank cells know what part they need to play to build the organs needed to make up the overall organism.  Gene expression is a tricky thing since it turns out that it isn't just cellular DNA making a vote.  Through mitochondrial DNA and various other fascinating mechanisms being investigated, sometimes expression can be affected by conditions affecting a person's parents or even grandparents when they were young.  This gene expression lag effecting future generations has opened up an expanded dimension to consider when trying to understanding physiology and health trends.  Is the overweight trend in the US partially a result of the great depression affecting great-grandparents?  Are the designer drugs and foods we're stuffing ourselves with today likely to lead to unknown augmentations of genetics expression in our grandkids?  Are the ever increasing electrical and magnetic radiation levels we are exposing ourselves to having an impact we might not yet understand?  Worth considering . . .

- Human System Development - Organic document (Literally).
- This Person Does Not Exist - Each visit see a new computer generated phantom person.
- Human Embryogenesis - Wiki.
- Discovery of time-delayed gene regulatory networks based on temporal gene expression profiling - by Li et al / BMC Bioinformatics 18JAN06.
- Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains - by Robert Martone / Scientific American 04DEC12.
- Your Heart And Stomach May Be Smarter Than You Think - by Ed Decker / Rewire Me 03DEC13.
- The Boom In Mini-Stomachs, Brains, Breasts, Kidneys And More - by Cassandra Willyard / Nature.com 29JUL15.
- Starvation effects handed down for generations - by Duke University / Science Daily 31JUL15.
- Genetically engineered 'Magneto' protein remotely controls brain and behaviour - by Mo Costandi / Guardian 24MAR16.
- New Kinds Of Brain Cells Revealed - by Salk Institute / Science Daily 10AUG17.  Analyzing methylation patterns of neurons to find new subtypes.
- A Scientist Explores The Mysteries Of The Gut-brain Connection - by Karen Frances Eng / TED.com 06DEC17.
- Health of mom's gut a key contributor to autism risk - by Science Daily 18JUL18.
- Microbiota-Mediated Regulation of the Immune System in a Prenatal Immune Activation Model of Autism - by Lammert et al / Journal Of Immunology 01AUG18.
- Magnets dim natural glow of human cells, may shed light on how animals migrate - by Noboru Ikeya et al. / University of Tokyo 06JAN21.
- Dems Vote to Allow Scientists to Create Animal-Human Hybrids in Disturbing Move - by Taylor Penley / Western Journal 28MAY21.
- World’s first living robots can now reproduce - by Emily Crane / NY Post 30NOV21.
- Image: Pregnant by Janko Ferlic (Pexels) Link

Hybrid Robo Human - The barriers separating humans, animals, and machines are falling fast.  But with each new interface we connect to, are we becoming something else?  Will we all be cyborgs?

- Joe's Garage Act II No.3 Sy Borg - by Frank Zappa et al. (YT) 19NOV79.
- A Cortical Neural Prosthesis For Restoring And Enhancing Memory - by Journal Of Neural Engineering 15JUN11.
- Thought Reading Interface by Berkeley News - by Yasmin Anwar / Berkeley News 22SEP11.
- A New Vision-Restoring Brain Implant Could Give Sight To The Blind - by Don Galeon & Kristin Houser / Harvard Medical School 13FEB17.
- Sheep Human Hybrids Made in Lab Get the Facts - by Michael Greshko / National Geographic News 18FEB18.
- The Mind Reader is here.  Real-time Classification Of Auditory Sentences Using Evoked Cortical Activity In Humans - by David Moses / Journal of Neural Engineering 27FEB18.
- A Real Life Haptic Glove - Smarter Every Day 01MAR18.  The Haptic body suit will be just around the corner.  You will feel everything: touch, pain, forced feedback, hot, cold.
- Prosthetic Memory System Successful In Humans - by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California (USC)  28MAR18.
- Researchers Are Keeping Pig Brains Alive Outside The Body - by Antonio Regalado / MIT Tech Review / 24APR18.  The procedure would also work on humans.  Oddly, none of the researchers are named Victor Frankenstein or even Froderick Fronkensteen.
- BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains - by Cornell University 23SEP18.
- Scientists Can Now See Thoughts Of Rats Using Brain Map - by Henry Holloway / Daily Star 05DEC18.  The milestone of intent prediction using brain scanning is now in the rearview.
- Human-animal Hybrids To Be Developed - by Colin Drury / The Independent 30JUL19.
- Neuroscientists Decode Brain Speech Signals Into Written Text - by Ian Sample / The Guardian 30JUL19.
- Elon Musk’s Brain Chip Start Up About To Start Human Trials - by Niamh Harris / News Punch 22JAN22.
- Image: Cyborg by Prettysleepy2 (Pixabay) Link

Nextgen Robot Muscles - Development in innovative robotic actuator design has been picking up the pace.  This area of robotics has been lagging behind technologies such as AI that for decades have outrun physical mechanics.  All in the race toward delivering the much anticipated/feared robotic boon/doom for human civilization either as a mechanized slave class, our Cylon overlords, or the human supplanting Termatrixnator, depending on how things go. Perhaps all 3 in that order?  Guess we'll see.  I'm down with Borgifying, if that's the only other choice, and I can escape the collective, and 7 of 9 comes with . . .

- 3D Printing Living Tissues To Form Living Structures - by University Of Oxford / Science Daily 15AUG17 - A giant leap for "something"-kind.
- Synthetic Muscle Breakthrough Could Lead To 'Lifelike' Robots - by Kenneth Stack / Columbia Engineering 21SEP17.  Using 3D printed synthetic tissue, these new artificial muscles can push, pull, bend and twist, are 1000 stronger than natural muscle tissue, and are more easily and safely controlled.
- Robot Muscles Inspired By Origami Lift 1000 Times Their Weight - by Merrit Kennedy / NPR 28NOV17.  Using engineering inspired by oragami folding coupled with the concept of designing muscles into frame connection points resulting in specific desired motions to vastly simplify control capabilities for balance and motion.
- Soft, Self-healing Devices Mimic Biological Muscles - by Trent Knoss / University Of Colorado 04JAN18.  A new class of soft, electrically activated devices mimics the expansion and contraction of natural muscles.
- Living robots built using frog cells - by University of Vermont / Science Daily 13JAN20.
- Image: Mechlady by KELLEPICS (Pixabay) Link

Lairticles
---------------------
The Grendelverse || Global Warming || Vaccines & Plandemics || Sun Nova & Crust Displacement
Bad Arguments & Hatespeech || Cyborg || Glyphosate Roundup || Plasma Universe || Crack For Kids