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THIRD ROCK'S new (old) VC model appears to be attracting attention. VC companies traditionally were risk ventures incubating biopharma companies (before the internet craze). Third Rock has industry insiders who know the landscape and are going early stage driven by great science. Double take? http://lnkd.in/ccKmJE View in LinkedIn

ELECTRONICS VS CELLS: "computational capacity will grow exponentially in the 21st century...by 2023 computers will "run more than a billion times faster than the human brain". Furthermore, by 2030 computer capacity will "simulate the brain power of a small village...the entire population of the United States by 2048, and a trillion human brains by 2060". Drexler proffers that future super computers will be the size of a sugar cube and capable of 1021 instructions per second". But he forgets the head-start of billions of years of evolution. " " http://lnkd.in/_6bUrh View in LinkedIn

JAPAN LIFTS CHIMERAS BAN to make human organs."Stem cell biologist Hiromitsu Nakauchi of the University of Tokyo has been pursuing the idea of implanting human pluripotent stem cells, which can differentiate into any of the cells in the human body, into pig embryos engineered to be incapable of developing their own pancreases. If the technique works, the stem cells will develop into human pancreases in the pig fetus."" " http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=6963 View in LinkedIn

"HIVE MINDS": MULTIPLEXING 1,000 Human minds? Future digital divide? Human cloud exoselves? Real telepathy between humans? We could do it now, "But for a really stable, high bandwidth system in and out of the brain, that could take upwards of 15 to 20 years, which Naam concedes is optimistic". This is a dynamite article. " " http://lnkd.in/Ata33g View in LinkedIn

MICE WITH PART-HUMAN BRAINS. "Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human. Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice."" " http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0125_050125_chimeras_2.html View in LinkedIn

MICE WITH PART-HUMAN BRAINS. "Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human. Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice."" " http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0125_050125_chimeras_2.html View in LinkedIn

CHIMERIC HUMAN-MOUSE BRAINS. Human brain cells transplanted into mice brains enhances learning in many tests. Even though the brain is immunologically privileged and will not reject non-self, this experiment is a huge surprise. That the brain cells of distant species can talk together and problem solve is not intuitive. " " http://lnkd.in/pHMQd7 10.1016/j.stem.2012.12.015 View in LinkedIn

ORGANIC MULTIPLEXED COMPUTERS. In his recent book, Beyond Boundaries, Nicolelis proposes the idea of a brain net – multiple, interconnected brains that work collectively to solve problems. "We can test the emergent behaviour that would come out when many rats or monkeys exchange information via brain-to-brain interfaces. I have no doubt that human brain nets will be possible in the future, but I certainly won't see this in my lifetime."" "" " http://lnkd.in/26VmMh View in LinkedIn

EVOLVING META-INTELLIGENCE. Peter H Diamandis MD, Singular University. "As we are going through the metamorphosis process of becoming this new meta-intelligence organism, we are going from evolution by natural selection—Darwinism—to evolution by intelligent direction. We are starting to direct the evolution of our biology and of our minds ourselves. Before long, this will result in our minds becoming independent from their original biological substrate—the biological human brain , this will allow us to evolve far faster and ever faster. "" " http://gf2045.com/diamandis/ View in LinkedIn

BIOBRAIN CHIP. "The brain-on-a-chip project itself combines cellular neuroscience, tissue engineering and microfluidics. The chip aggregates cultured neurons, astrocytes, microglia and brain endothelial cells from rats on two micro-fabricated layers. A microfluidic pump was used to circulate nutrients or therapeutics across the vascular channels simulating blood flow". (Draper Labs). " " http://semimd.com/blog/2012/11/15/how-to-make-a-brain-on-a-chip/ View in LinkedIn