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Science fiction is rapidly becoming fact as 59-year-old scientist Dr Peter Scott-Morgan tries to cheat death and battle muscle-wasting motor neurone disease by becoming a cyborg A scientist is taking a leaf out of sci-fi novels as he embarks on a mission to transform himself into a real-life human cyborg. In 2017, 59-year-old scientist Dr Peter Scott-Morgan was given the devastated news he had the muscle-wasting motor neurone disease – similar to that of Stephen Hawking. Instead of accepting the diagnosis as a death sentence, Peter wants to use it as the motivation to transform himself with hi-tech "upgrades". He...

With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of US service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known in the military as “autonomous weapons systems,” include robotic sentries, battlefield-surveillance drones, and autonomous submarines. So far, in other words, robotic devices are merely replacing standard weaponry on conventional battlefields. Now, however, in a giant leap of faith, the Pentagon is seeking to take this process to an entirely new level—by replacing not just ordinary soldiers and their weapons, but potentially admirals and generals with robotic...

Last week’s lopsided showdown between a human F-16 pilot and an artificially intelligent one — the robot won 5-0 — was just the latest sign that we need to be thinking harder about the changes that smart machines are bringing to the battlefield. Among them: as relatively cheap robots play larger roles, the focus of warfare will shift to attacking and defending the humans that operate, maintain, and even build them. Now and for the foreseeable future, military robots still need humans. Robots are not (yet) capable of the complex thinking required for warfare; advances in speed and computational power...

(CNN)Dutch authorities believe a mink may have infected a human with Covid-19, and are instituting mandatory testing at all mink farms in the Netherlands. "On the basis of new research results from the ongoing research into Covid-19 infections at mink farms, it is plausible that an infection took place from mink to human," the Dutch government said in a statement late Tuesday night. "It also appears from this research that minks can have Covid-19 without displaying symptoms." The government said antibody testing of minks would be expanded to "all mink farms in the Netherlands and will become mandatory." The government...

It is not often that people appreciate being quarantined for 21 days. But the time I spent in quarantine on my return home on April 21 was a good time to reflect. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our Bodhisattva Dharma King for his selfless love and caring, our government for providing such good facilities in the quarantine, and all the frontline service staffs, healthcare workers and Desuups for their selfless service. The atmosphere at the quarantine centre, Centre Point Hotel, Paro, is no different from the peaceful meditation retreats that we have...

Called BAZ1B, it may also help explain why domesticated animals look cuter than their wild kin Domestic animals’ cuteness and humans’ relatively flat faces may be the work of a gene that controls some important developmental cells, a study of lab-grown human cells suggests. Some scientists are touting the finding as the first real genetic evidence for two theories about domestication. One of those ideas is that humans domesticated themselves over many generations, by weeding out hotheads in favor of the friendly and cooperative (SN: 7/6/17). As people supposedly selected among themselves for tameness traits, other genetic changes occurred that...

An Oxford University professor Dr. Young-hae Chi has claimed aliens are already breeding with humans to create a new hybrid species that will save the planet. Poor Dr. Chi, he has stumbled across the story of the century, but hasn’t the foggiest idea why his ‘crazy theory’ is actually largely correct. And the funny part is, all it would take to clear things up for the good doctor is a King James bible from his local Five and Dime shop. Aliens interbreeding with humans, eh? Yep, that happened in Genesis 6 3,500 years ago, and Matthew 24 says that in...

Dr Chi said it was 'not only scientists and theologians, but also non-human species who appear to be greatly concerned about the survivability of the human species.' Reversing climate change now would not only save the world but would also prove to aliens that their low estimation of humans' moral capacity was wrong, he said. He added: 'It may be more or less assumed that the hybrid project is a response to this impending demise of human civilisation.' His new book, which is written in Korean, is called Alien Visitations and the End of Humanity. There are four types of...

California Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) has introduced a bill that would ban high school biology classes from dissecting animals as part of their learning about anatomy. Kalra says that “the current law allowing students with moral objections to opt out of the dissection lesson is unsatisfactory. For one, it still allows the callous exploitation of animals to go forward. Second, it allows students without moral scruples to receive a more complete education than their morally superior peers.” “The whole premise of these dissections is founded on an unwarranted notion that humans are more important than other creatures,” Kalra observed....

A Clemson philosophy argued recently that he wants all humans to die off as a punishment for their treatment of animals and the environment. Since his article was published in the New York Times, he has refused to defend his opinion. According to a report from The College Fix, Clemson University Professor Todd May recently called for the end of human existence and has refused to defend his argument. May argued that humans do far more bad than good. What are humanity’s worst crimes according to the professor? These include oppression of animals and destruction of the environment. The New...

All humans are descended from just TWO people and a catastrophic event almost wiped out ALL species 100,000 years ago, scientists claim Genetic 'bar codes' of five million animals from different species were surveyedThe research deduced that humans and animals sprang from single pair This happened after a catastrophic event a long time after the last ice age All modern humans descended from a solitary pair who lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, scientists say.Scientists surveyed the genetic 'bar codes' of five million animals - including humans - from 100,000 different species and deduced that we sprang from a...

Ever since the Renaissance, the sciences have dealt human beings a steady stream of humiliations. The Copernican revolution dismantled the idea that humanity stood at the center of the universe. A cascade of discoveries from the late-18th to the early-20th century showed that humanity was a lot less significant than some had imagined. The revelation of the geological timescale stacked millions and billions of years atop our little cultural narratives, crumbling all of human history to dust. The revelation that we enjoy an evolutionary kinship to fish, bugs, and filth eroded the in-God’s-image stuff. The disclosure of the size of...

About 709,000 years ago, someone butchered a rhinoceros using stone tools on the Philippine island of Luzon. That may not seem remarkable -- except that humans weren't supposed to be in the Philippines so long ago. Before this discovery, the earliest indicator that early humans, or hominins, were even on those islands had been a single foot bone from 67,000 years ago, uncovered in the Callao Cave on Luzon. That's quite a time jump. Research says that the new findings push back the date for humans inhabiting the Philippines by hundreds of thousands of years. A study published Wednesday in...

Just a week after scientists reported evidence that our species left Africa earlier than we thought, another discovery is suggesting the date might be pushed back further. omo sapiens arose in Africa at least 300,000 years ago and left to colonize the globe. Scientists think there were several dispersals from Africa, not all equally successful. Last week's report of a human jaw showed some members of our species had reached Israel by 177,000 to 194,000 years ago. Now comes a discovery in India of stone tools, showing a style that has been associated elsewhere with our species. They were fashioned...

According to Hawking, our planet will become overcrowded, and increased energy consumption will turn Earth into a ball of fire because of the rising population and exponential consumption. But he seems to have a solution. Physicist Stephen Hawking has warned that the human race will cease to exist on Earth after humans turn it into a giant fireball by 2600 year. To escape from the catastrophe, humans must "boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking declared during his video appearance at the Tencent WE Summit in Beijing, as quoted by the New York Post. The physicist appealed to...

WASHINGTON — Directly contradicting much of the Trump administration’s position on climate change, 13 federal agencies unveiled an exhaustive scientific report on Friday that says humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization.

Humans love dogs more than their fellow man. Two major studies showed that mankind has more empathy for pooches in dire circumstances than suffering people, according to a report in the Times of London. A UK medical research charity staged two phony donation campaigns – one with a dog and the other featuring a man. Of course, the pooch drew more contributions. “Would you give pounds 5 to save Harrison from a slow, painful death?” the separate ads said, featuring a canine and human “Harrison.” Then a Northeastern University study showed that only a baby human could compete with man’s...

A genomic analysis of ancient human remains from KwaZulu-Natal revealed that southern Africa has an important role to play in writing the history of humankind. A research team from Uppsala University, Sweden, the Universities of Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand, South Africa, presents their results in the September 28th early online issue of Science. The team sequenced the genomes of seven individuals who lived in southern Africa 2300-300 years ago. The three oldest individuals dating to 2300-1800 years ago were genetically related to the descendants of the southern Khoe-San groups, and the four younger individuals who lived 500-300 years ago were...

Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are not just incrementally superior to any other hominid or animal; we’re qualitatively different, both as the only known technologically-intelligent species and by virtue of dozens of unique abilities. It is not a claim but a demonstrable fact that anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are vastly superior to every other form of life and, for whatever reason, all the genetic mutations that make us unique and confer over 40 traits and behaviors that result in evolutionary advantages over every other animal, occurred within a short period of time, within just one genus, and nowhere...

When and how the first humans made their way to Australia has been an evolving story. While it is accepted that humans appeared in Africa some 200,000 years ago, scientists in recent years have placed the approximate date of human settlement in Australia further and further back in time, as part of ongoing questions about the timing, the routes and the means of migration out of Africa. Now, a team of researchers, including a faculty member and seven students from the University of Washington, has found and dated artifacts in northern Australia that indicate humans arrived there about 65,000 years...