Page 11«..10111213..»

Category Archives: Cryonics

This company freezes your body so that you could one day be resurrected – AsiaOne

Posted: August 20, 2017 at 6:14 pm


AsiaOne
This company freezes your body so that you could one day be resurrected
AsiaOne
If you have around US$90,000 (S$122,733) to spare and are of a gambling disposition, perhaps your final journey should be to Australia. A company called Southern Cryonics is looking to open a facility in New South Wales this year that will allow its ...

See more here:

This company freezes your body so that you could one day be resurrected - AsiaOne

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on This company freezes your body so that you could one day be resurrected – AsiaOne

The Future is Here! Human Body Cryogenically Frozen for First Time Ever in China – Sputnik International

Posted: August 18, 2017 at 5:13 am

Society

17:40 17.08.2017 Get short URL

A 49-year-old woman has become the first to have her body cryogenically frozen in a procedure performed completely on Chinese soil, media reported on Monday.

Zhan Wenlian, who was declared dead oflung cancer onMay 8, underwent the operation atthe Yinfeng Biological Group center inShandong Province.

First developed inthe US, cryogenics (also known ascryonics) involves preserving an ailing body atextremely low temperatures inthe hopes it may be revived and treated inthe future.

Zhan's full body is currently being stored atYinfeng ina 2,000 liter tank ofliquid nitrogen, where she is kept attemperatures of196 C.

Before her death, Zhan had agreed todonate her body tomedical science.

As Zhan underwent chemotherapy, her husband Gui Junpin applied forthe cryonic procedure bydonating her body toShandong University Qilu Hospital, legally qualifying her toundergo the experimental procedure atYinfeng.

All fees are paid througha fund established byYinfeng.

Zhan is not the first Chinese tobe cryogenically frozen. In 2015, Chinese author Du Hong had her brain preserved atAlcor, the US-based cryonics center where it is currently being stored.

Aaron Drake, a senior consultant forAlcor, was onhand atYinfeng forZhan's cryonic operation inMay.

This article originally appeared onthe Global Times website

Follow this link:

The Future is Here! Human Body Cryogenically Frozen for First Time Ever in China - Sputnik International

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on The Future is Here! Human Body Cryogenically Frozen for First Time Ever in China – Sputnik International

Walt Disney Was NOT Frozen – MousePlanet

Posted: August 16, 2017 at 6:14 pm

I recently did a presentation at the Museum of Military History in Kissimmee, Florida, about Disney and World War II. During the question-and-answer session, I was asked if I actually believed Walt was cremated and his ashes interred at Forest Lawn Glendale, because they had heard from a reliable source "that worked at Disney" that it was obvious he was frozen.

I was even asked about this during a question-and-answer session after a presentation I did at the Walt Disney Family Museum a few years ago about Disney and outer space.

It is a question I keep getting asked not out of idle curiosity, but because the person often wants to prove that they know this "secret fact" and if I am simply a Disney apologist who only promotes the official Disney line.

First, it is always challenging to try to prove a negative to the satisfaction of all people.

Second, just the mere mention of these falsehoods about Walt continues to give them additional life, with people claiming they saw this assertion in a book or heard it somewhere, like from a Disney cast member, so it must be true.

Finally, there will be people who despite common sense and all the evidence to the contrary will condescendingly assume that where there is smoke, there must be fire, or that someone is trying to cover-up the real story.

The one image that sticks in my mind when someone asks me if Walt were frozen is the memory of his oldest daughter Diane Disney Miller. I remember her telling me with a mixture of sadness and anger in her face and voice about how upsetting it was to the Disney family over the years for this question to even be asked in the first place.

She told me that one of the reasons she was so adamant about creating the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco was "Other little kids would say to my kids, 'Your grandfather is frozen, isn't he?' And I just couldn't let that stand. What if someone said that about their parent? How would they feel?"

When I lived in California, some California Institute of the Arts students as an art project raised some money by producing a limited amount of "Waltsickles" that featured a full-figured model of Walt Disney in a suit inside of a popsickle. That never happened again although gags about "Disney on Ice" with Walt frozen in a block of ice and skaters performing on top of him abound.

An editorial cartoon jokingly referred to Disney on Ice as being Walt frozen in ice.

Walt Disney was not cryogenically frozen, but was cremated on December 17, 1966. Rumors still persist that Walt was put into cryogenic suspension and buried somewhere underneath Disneyland, in particular under the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, since it was still under construction when he died.

However, I have had people tell me, he was put under the dedication plaque on Main Street or directly in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle. Interestingly, I haven't yet had anyone tell me Walt's supposed frozen body is somewhere in the Haunted Mansion. I guess that is because the Mansion is supposed to be for dead people and in theory, if he were frozen, Walt would still be alive.

Articles and books about the preservation of animal tissue through freezing appeared in medical and scientific journals and occasionally the general press starting in the late 1950s. Perhaps the most prominent book during Walt's lifetime, The Prospect of Immortality by Robert C.W. Ettinger, was published in 1964.

However, this book still discussed cryonics as merely theoretical although eventually possible. Just as it was possible Walt "might" have heard about this topic, but there is no documentation that he ever did. Neither his family nor his closest associates ever heard him talk about the topicand Walt talked about everything he was interested in at the moment.

Certainly, there are several untrustworthy and unreliable sources that have proposed that he did but there is no evidence, including interviews with those who actually knew and worked with Walt.

Again, this is one of those Walt Disney Urban Legends that "everyone knows" but nobody seems to know where the information originated.

Waking Walt was a novel published in 2002 by former Disneyland and Walt Disney World Vice-President Larry Pontius about Walt Disney supposedly being defrosted by a very small group of former confidants to save the Disney Company from the machinations of Michael Eisner.

It is no surprise that Walt's disgust about what has happened to his dream, especially Epcot, is clearly apparent in the novel. Pontinus never knew Walt, but worked as a Disney marketing executive from 1976-1982.

Diane Disney Miller asserted in 1972: "There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics."

Walt's official death certificate clearly shows that his body was cremated at Forest Lawn Glendale on December 17, 1966. The name, license number and signature of the embalmer, Dean Fluss, are those of a real embalmer who worked at the mortuary at the time. Court papers show that the Disney family paid $40,000 to Forest Lawn for the interment location of his ashes.

Certainly, Walt did not like attending funerals and even avoided the ones for his own father and brother.

"He never goes to a funeral if he can help it," wrote Diane in 1956. "If he had to go to one it plunges him into a reverie which lasts for hours after he's home. At such times he says, 'When I'm dead I don't want a funeral. I want people to remember me alive'."

Walt did not want people to see him in the hospital, and so only the immediate family was allowed into his room. Very few people, even those close to him, knew how really sick Walt actually was. The story told to the public was that he was undergoing surgery for an old neck injury from playing polo that most people knew had troubled him for decades and then re-entered the hospital days later for a routine post operative checkup.

Walt's death was not immediately announced to the press until several hours after it occurred at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 15, 1966. Walt lay in his hospital bed for a few hours while his family arrived and said their farewells. If Walt was to be put into cryonic suspension, it would have had to be done immediately to preserve him or even just moments before his death. That did not happen.

He lay there as his daughter Diane tried to get her mother to hurry up to get to the hospital but Lillian kept delaying the inevitable. His older brother Roy sat at the edge of the bed rubbing one of Walt's feet that was sticking out from the under the sheets. Walt had always complained his feet were cold in the hospital.

The cause of Disney's death was initially announced as being "acute circulatory collapse" and, on the death certificate, "cardiac arrest," which meant simply that his heart had stopped beating. It was a standard medical phrase giving no indication of what caused the heart to stop beating, which, in this case, was cancer. The cause was considered of secondary importance and to the general public the actual cause was unimportant. Walt Disney was gone.

Walt's funeral was quietly held at the Little Church of the Flowers in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale at 5 p.m. on Friday, December 16, the day after his death. No funeral announcement was made until after it had taken place. Only immediate family members attended, no friends, people who worked at the studio or business associates.

The Disney characters and cast members mourn Walt Disney in this cartoon.

His widow Lillian; daughters Diane and Sharon, with their husbands (Ron Miller and Robert Brown); his brother Roy and his wife Edna; and their son, Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney, with his wife Patty, were the only ones there. His sister Ruth was told not to fly down from Portland, Oregon, where she lived for fear the press would follow her to the service.

The Los Angeles Times reported, "Secret rites were conducted at the Little Church of the Flowers at Forest Lawn. The services were a closely-guarded secret. Family services were announced only after they had been concluded. Studio and cemetery officials refused to reveal details."

Forest Lawn officials refused to disclose any details of the funeral or disposition of the body, stating only that "Mr. Disney's wishes were very specific and had been spelled out in great detail."

The situation that people were not fully aware how ill Walt was, never saw him in the hospital and how badly he had deteriorated, nor attended his funeral to see him lying in state sparked the speculation that like other popular celebrities who died somewhat suddenly, including Elvis Presley, Walt was not really dead.

While the Disney family were a private family and felt this was a private matter, others saw it as a mystery.

The origin of the rumor of Walt being frozen has often been credited to Disney Studios animators who "had a bizarre sense of humor" and perhaps the earliest known printed version appeared in the French magazine Ici Paris in 1969.

In 1985, I asked animator Ward Kimball if he was the source for the rumor since he was well known for his pranks. "When Disney fans ask me if it's true that Walt's body is kept frozen for future resurrection, I answer that question by pointing out that Walt was always intensely interested in things scientific and he, more than any person I knew, just might have been curious enough to agree to such an experiment."

A decade earlier, Kimball had told another interviewer, "The smoking may have set the stage for his death. It probably weakened his physical condition. But I'm convinced it was the emotional stress he was under that killed him. It's such a dull world. So when I am asked if Walt's body was frozen and if he believed he could come back someday, just to stir things up I tell everybody he is frozen. Actually, he was cremated."

in 1972, Bob Nelson, who was then the president of the Cryonics Society of California, gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times. He specifically stated that Walt was not cryogenically frozen and reaffirmed that he had been cremated. However, he continued that he felt that Walt wanted to be frozen and based it on the fact that he had been contacted by someone at the studios prior to Disney death that asked elaborate questions about the process, the facilities, the staff, and their history.

That someone may have been writer Charles Show, who had worked on the Tomorrowland episodes for the Disney television series and has admitted doing research on the topic before Walt's death.

Nelson pointed out that the first cryonic suspension took place just a month after Disney's death. Dr. James Bedford, a 73-year-old psychologist from Glendale, was suspended by Nelson and his team on January 12, 1967. Bedford has yet to be revived from his comfortable rest in Arizona.

"If Disney had been the first it would have made headlines around the world and been a real shot in the arm for cryonics," said Nelson who had hoped to put Walt in a nitrogen filled capsule chilled to minus 371 degrees Fahrenheit. Interestingly, Nelson's organization had its incorporation papers approved by the state of California on December 15, 1966, the same day Walt passed away.

Nelson was later asked if some other facility than his own might have been involved.

"There was no other facility at that time. The only other group was the Cryonics Society of New York and they had nothing no mortician, no doctor, no nothing," Nelson said.

Author Ray Bradbury said later, "There was a rumor that (Walt) had been frozen in a cryogenic mortuary to be revived in later years. Nonsense! He's alive now! People at the studio speak of him as if he were present! That's immortality for you. Who needs cryonics?"

In the 1970s, the National Enquirer revealed the grave site of Walt Disney.

For nearly a year after the cremation, Walt Disney's ashes remained un-interred. When Sharon's husband, Bob Brown, died less than a year later, in September 1967, Sharon made the arrangements for her father and her husband to be interred together so that neither would be alone. She and her older sister, Diane, chose a remote plot outside the Freedom Mausoleum.

A modest bronze rectangular tablet on a wall lists the name of Walter Elias Disney; his wife, Lillian; his son-in-law, Robert Brown; and a mention that daughter Sharon's ashes were "scattered in paradise."

To locate the site, drive through the entrance to a road called Cathedral Drive. Stay on the road to the eastern edge of the park where Cathedral Drive intersects with Freedom Way. At that intersection, turn right onto Freedom Way. On your left will be trees, fountains, and statues. This area is called Freedom Court.

At the far end of Freedom Court is a large mausoleum. Pull over and park on the right-hand side of the street. There should be a "33" painted on the curb opposite your car, indicating 33 Freedom Way. Standing at the base of the steps leading to the main entrance of the Freedom Mausoleum, turn to your left and walk to the far edge of the steps.

There is a small, private, low-gated courtyard garden near the brick wall. Inside this area guarded by a hedge of orange olivias, red azaleas, and a holly tree there is a small statue of Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid sitting on a rock.

In recent years, another huge falsehood has circulated in regards to Walt Disney's death and I have no clue where this could have originated.

According to the myth, in Walt Disney's Last Will and Testament dated March 1966, he stipulated that the first man to get pregnant or give birth would receive millions of dollars, all of Walt Disney World or even the entire Disney Company. The vagueness of the reward should be the first clue that this is bogus.

Walt Disney's will is a public document and easily accessible so it is easy to see that no such statement exists or anything else like it relating to bizarre statement.

In addition, Walt was a highly conservative Midwest Christian and such a decree would certainly be out of character even for a man interested in innovation and the latest technology. In any case, this would not be something the traditional Walt would likely want to encourage at all nor did he ever discuss anything like it.

In any case, The Walt Disney Company was a publicly held corporation so Walt wouldn't have been able to give away the company or Walt Disney World. He didn't own them. In his will, Disney clearly left 45 percent of his estate to his wife and daughters and another 45 percent to be distributed primarily to California Institute of the Arts and the remaining 10 percent to be divided among his sister, nieces, and nephews.

So there were no extra millions of dollars to be distributed to any other bequest.

While there have been stories of eccentric wealthy people making unusual bequests in their wills, Walt never did.

However, even Walt knew that a good story is hard to extinguish and will often take on a life of its own. You might think that the information in this column is enough to put the story to rest but I can tell you that I shared this with an avid and somewhat knowledgeable Disney fan before publication and her immediate reaction was, "documents can be forged!"

I just sighed.

So the falsehoods will probably continue while the facts are forgotten. I just keep remembering how sad it made Diane Disney Miller and I wish there were more I could do.

More:

Walt Disney Was NOT Frozen - MousePlanet

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on Walt Disney Was NOT Frozen – MousePlanet

A first in China cryonics: Dead woman put in deep freeze – EJ Insight – EJ Insight

Posted: August 15, 2017 at 12:15 pm

A 49-year-old Chinese woman who died from lung cancer has been put in deep freeze in the hope that she will be brought back to life and reunited with her husband once science has found a cure for her fatal illness.

Thecryonics procedure was performed at Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute in Jinan on May 8, several minutes after Zhan Wenlian died at Shandong Universitys Qilu Hospital, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reports.

Zhan and her husbandGui Junmin had agreed to put her through the procedure, which involves low-temperature preservation of a person whose life can no longer be sustained under current science and medical knowledge, with the hope that he or she can be resuscitated and restored to full health in the future.

While some people suspect that the procedure is just another hoax, Gui expressed in a letter of consent that he knew it was not possible to revive his wife in the near future but he still he would like to give it a try.

He said he and his family believe that future advances in science and medicine will enable experts to revive his wife.

The cryopreservation was the first for a whole human body in China, although a female writer in Chongqing had had her brain frozen and preserved in 2015.

The procedure was done by Aaron Drake, a specialist in cryogenics, in cooperation with doctors from Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute and specialists from the hospital.

After more than 60 hours of work, Zhans body temperature was lowered to below minus 190 degrees Celsius before she was kept in a liquid nitrogen tank that provides a stable temperature of minus 196 degrees.

The procedure is said to cost more than 7 million yuan (US$1.05 million) plus an annual charge of 50,000 yuan for the refilling of liquid nitrogen.

But Gui only needs to pay a small portion of the amount since his wife volunteered.

Jia Chunsheng, who is in charge of Shandong Yinfeng, said cryogenics projects remain asserious scientific studies and the institute has no intention to commercialize the procedure anytime soon, news website hk01.com reported.

Jia also praised Zhan for being willing to contribute her body to scientific research, adding that her consent fuels the hope that dead people can be revived and restored to full health in the future.

In the United States, there have been about 250 people placed in cryopreservation as of 2014.

Contact us at [emailprotected]

TL/JC/CG

Here is the original post:

A first in China cryonics: Dead woman put in deep freeze - EJ Insight - EJ Insight

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on A first in China cryonics: Dead woman put in deep freeze – EJ Insight – EJ Insight

Brain Freeze: Have yours preserved in Salem for possible future revival – KATU

Posted: July 29, 2017 at 7:11 pm

by Joe Douglass, KATU News and KATU.com Staff

Oregon Cryonics Executive Director Jordan Sparks cools brains to be revived in the future to negative 300 degrees using liquid nitrogen. (KATU Photo)

If there were a way to preserve your mind after you died, would you do it, even if it cost tens of thousands of dollars?

Oregon Cryonics is working to make that idea a reality. Its facility is one of only four offering the service worldwide.

From the outside the facility looks like a normal office building, and inside it looks like a normal lab, complete with gas tanks, computer screens, a refrigerator and nearby buckets.

But inside the refrigerator there is a human brain, and the buckets are full of brains, too.

Oregon Cryonics is a nonprofit group with a very specific goal.

We preserve brains. We try to preserve them with the very best structure that we can, says Executive Director Jordan Sparks, who is a computer programmer and a dentist by trade.

He wrote the software for the endeavor, and part of the facility was his previous dental office.

Sparks started working on Oregon Cryonics full time four years ago. The first brain the group preserved belonged to a dog named Cupcake. Since then it has preserved around 50 or 60 human brains.

We try to lock all the molecules in place so that future scientists can decide what to do with those molecules afterwards revive the person somehow, says Sparks.

He says the preservations are done in two ways.

One: By pumping the brain full of chemicals with a complex electronic system soon after the person dies. Two: By keeping brains cold, around negative 300 degrees.

If you have a brain thats been preserved well, the laws of physics say that you should be able to pull out all the memories, the personalities, the way that person thinks, Sparks says. Clearly, the revival technology is well over 100 years away, but were doing the preparatory work right now to let those future scientists do the revivals.

Most of the brains the ones in the buckets are not kept cold. Theyre preserved only with chemicals.

Those are ones where people donated their body to science, and were trying to perfect the technology, Sparks says. And so we do the same process on those, and then we slice up and analyze and see how good of a job we did.

He says six of the brains are being kept cold through a multistep process. It ends with them chilling in a tank filled with liquid nitrogen.

Those six are ones that are trying to get revived. Thats why theyre here, says Sparks. And so for those, we treat them differently. We treat them with extra care.

He says two of those brains are from folks who spent about $25,000 each.

Anyone can sign up for services, but you have to die close by, Sparks says, because they need to start pumping chemicals into the brain as soon as possible after death to successfully preserve it.

Also, certain life insurance policies do cover cryonics.

Excerpt from:

Brain Freeze: Have yours preserved in Salem for possible future revival - KATU

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on Brain Freeze: Have yours preserved in Salem for possible future revival – KATU

Comic-Con: Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Brings Unique Fan … – Deadline

Posted: July 20, 2017 at 3:10 am

EXCLUSIVE:Everyone is looking to stand out from the pack at Comic-Con and Seth MacFarlanes upcoming sci-fi satire The Orville is set to plant a flag with a first of its kind San Diego sweepstake for this life and beyond.

With an aim to snag attention for the latest project from the Emmy winner and Family Guy boss, Fox has built the Orville Space Training Station, which opens Thursday on the Hilton Bayfront Lawn. However, pushing into another final frontier, The Orville activation will also see a cryonics sweepstakes, a first for any entertainment company at SDCC.

Yep, you heard that right, fans can enter for the chance to win a membership to a Cryopreservation program. Along with all the bells and whistles weve come to expect from such SDCC activations, of which FX, Amazon and many more have up this year, one applicant will be randomly selected for the opportunity to be cryopreserved at the end of his or her life and revived in 2417 seriously. Interested applicants can apply in person or online, as of tomorrow.

Applicantscomplete a fictional job application process for a crew member spot on the ship in 2417, with in-person applicants then invited to conquer the stations spinning gyroscope ride. One application will be randomly selected for the cryopreservation.

This all comes as the September 10 and 17th debutingThe Orvillehas a SDCC panel set for July 22 at 4:15 in the convention centers Room 6A. Confirmed to attend are MacFarlane, along with fellow cast members Adrianne Palicki, Scott Grimes, Penny Johnson Jerald, Peter Macon, Halston Sage, J Lee, Mark Jackson and Chad Coleman, and producers David A. Goodman and Brannon Braga. While not expected at SDCC, Transparent star Jeffrey Tambor will be appearing on The Orvilles first season, MacFarlane has revealed.

Set four centuries from now, The Orville followsthe obviously Star Trek inspired adventures in the final frontier of the middling U.S.S. Orville. Its human and alien crew tackles the battles and politics of speed of light galactic travel and the workplace dramas that never change, no matter what century it is.

Fueled by FOX Doubleheaders NFL games, The Orvillewill start with a special two-night series premiere on Sunday, September 10 and a week later. With that double launch date, the series then makes its real time-period premiere on September 28 at 9 PM.

Read more from the original source:

Comic-Con: Seth MacFarlane's 'The Orville' Brings Unique Fan ... - Deadline

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on Comic-Con: Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Brings Unique Fan … – Deadline

Interview with entertainment professional Khu – Blasting News

Posted: July 15, 2017 at 11:10 pm

The artist known simply as Khu is an #Actress, director and producer who hails from Southern California. She has twelve feature films to her credit--eight of which have been distributed globally. Khu serves as the COO of Pikchure Zero Entertainment and is presently in the process of developing a scripted television series whilst finishing up her second script for a feature film.

In an exclusive #Interview, Khu recently discussed her career, her hopes for the future, and more.

Meagan Meehan (MM): What prompted you to enter the field of acting and how have you landed movie roles?

Khu: I think the want and allure of acting has always been inside of me.

I was brought up in a very conservative household and acting has allowed me to be more outspoken and to break down cultural barriers. I have always had this out-of-body experience of how I am and how I would want to be seen so acting was a natural magnet to gravitate to. When I started to audition for roles, it was easy to fit those model castings since I was 510 and unique looking. First starting out as a producer has helped me understand how characters are portrayed on screen and in turn helped me better understand these roles. Having this experience has helped me land movie roles.

MM: How many projects have you acted in and do you have any favorite characters?

Khu: I have acted in eight projects and my favorite character is El from a romantic comedy called Dark Cupid I produced, directed, and starred in.

The other lead actress was Deanna Congo, as Kit, who also stars in Alien: Reign of Man.

In this movie, my character was kicked out due to bad behavior. She is then warned by G, played by Eric Roberts, if she doesnt change she will never regain her wings. Not heeding his words, El goes around shooting unsuspecting people with her special guns because she believes bow and arrows are out-dated. She dresses the way she wants and acts the way she wants. These guns shoot its target with a temporarily truth serum that makes people reveal what they truly feel. For El, true love is masked with falsity and personal gain and she wants to save these tainted souls and cleanse them. During her rant against love, El meets Kit, the only person who sees her. Even though Els presence was not welcomed, she starts to force herself into Kits everyday life. El tries to show Kit that love is no longer pure; that her relationships and the people around her are not as they seem.

I love the role of El because she started off believing she is the one who was wronged by the people who took her wings.

And with the relationship she builds with Kit, through her relentless torment, she learns that love is more than unfiltered truth and selflessness. I got to play a vengeful trouble maker who had powers, guns, and nice outfits. The dialogue was playful and the story was refreshing, even though I was technically the protagonist; the role was fun.

MM: How did you get involved with "Alien: Reign of Man" and what character do you play?

Khu: This film was a collaboration between Producer/Director Justin Price and me. We produced and distributed a few horror/thriller films and some romantic comedies so we decided a sci-fi/action film was a great change. In this movie, I play Zan, the leader of a secret order on a mission to find a cure for Terminus which is an autoimmune disease plaguing humans on their home planet.

MM: What most interested you about this film and your role in it?

Khu: My favorite genre is science fiction and to be able to work on an original story with open creativity was amazing. The films premise, alongside its diverse cast, is the most interesting aspects. The story touches on the idea of evolution, survival, and ones own personal battle with completing the mission and finding their purpose in life. These soldiers are humanitys last hope and they are individually challenged during their journey. They are led by two headstrong women, played by Susan Traylor and Torrei Hart, with conflicting goals.

Since the movie had no precedent, we were able to be more open in casting, which gave us more female characters and diversity. The best thing about this film is what it represents, hope. And I got to play Zan, the leader in this quest! Zan is a willful, resourceful, and talented soldier. She doesnt use her looks or sex appeal to navigate through dangerous terrains in search of this unknown key, which is destined to save all mankind. She uses her training and intuition to find the Spire that unlocks the cure she seeks, all whilst knowing its a suicide mission.

It was a pleasure to play this role because, as history has shown, there arent many people with my cultural background fulfilling these roles, let alone by a woman. It was also challenging and different to play opposite an invisible creature. I had to be powerful and vulnerable with a CGI creature in scenes by myself.

MM: What were your favorite parts of filming and do you have any interesting behind-the-scenes stories?

Khu: Within Pikchure Zero Entertainment, we like to keep our production company fueled with like-minded and talented individuals. Traveling to new countries, while filming, was a highlight in this production. We got to see some amazing views and different cultures and lifestyles. I also got to drive on the opposite side of the road which was challenging and fun! There was one day we even had to delay filming because our path was block by cattle. We waited two hours for them to decide to move. Their owner said they are a rare breed and get spooked easily so we had to be really quiet.

MM: What are a few of your upcoming acting projects?

Khu: I have two acting projects that will be release later this year, The 13th Friday and Almost Amazing, and two new projects that will be in pre-production next month, Reapers and Cryonics. The 13th Friday is about a group of friends who unlock a mysterious calendar that curses them with the task of doing its sacrificial biddings. Almost Amazing is about three friends who lean on each other for love advice, but none of them are qualified to give any. With a wedding and jobs on the line, they end up finding what they werent seeking: love. Reapers is an action/sci-fi thriller about four grim reapers who appears on Earth to restore the balance of good and evil. Each Reaper is given an assignment to take souls spread throughout the wretched city known as Arcane. Cryonics is a sci-fi /action/ thriller about a group of immortals who crash-land in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by an indigenous population. Malach, one of the last to awake, must survive the dangers of the planet in order to complete a sacred mission. There are other projects in the works, but it would be easier to check my Facebook page for current updates.

MM: What are some of your big goals for the future of your career as an entertainer?

Khu: I foresee myself directing, producing, and acting in large scale sci-fi, action thrillers. It would be awesome to be a part of a comic book rendition or pre-existing franchise, like James Bond. I would love to portray the live action film version of Mulan. Ive already got the hair, drive, and stubbornness down. But the ultimate goal is to change a narrative, to make a difference in entertainment and positively impact audiences viewpoint of people like me in this field.

MM: Can you offer any words of advice to aspiring actresses and is there anything else that you would like to discuss?

Khu: The best advice I can give to aspiring actresses now is to never doubt yourself, its never too late to start, and with hard work, a stuck car will start moving if you keep on pushing. There will always be road bumps made to keep you from your goals and I remind myself these are just to make sure you really want it. People like working on projects with like-minded people and kindness is never unwelcomed. #Movies & TV

See the rest here:

Interview with entertainment professional Khu - Blasting News

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on Interview with entertainment professional Khu – Blasting News

How Would the Human Body Respond to Carbonite Freezing? – Inverse

Posted: at 11:10 pm

In one of the most iconically frustrating scenes in all of modern cinema, Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite at the end of Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. The carbonite chamber fills with clouds of thick, white vapor as Han Solo, his face scrunched up in anxious anticipation, disappears in the carbonite gas. And while the feelings we feel during that famous scene are real, carbonite freezing is (currently) not.

But what if it were? Could our hero survive the freezing process? And if so, could he be successfully thawed? We spoke to cryonics expert Ben Best to find out. He hasnt seen Empire, but he says carbonite freezing seems similar in principle to cryonic preservation, in which human bodies are preserved at extremely low temperatures.

That sounds very similar to what is actually being done in practice by cryonics organizations, Best, the former president and CEO of the Cryonics Institute, tells Inverse. Much like carbonite freezing, cryopreservation involves cooling a body from the outside. Unlike carbonite freezing, though, cryopreservation is a gradual process, involving some very specific precautions meant to help protect the sensitive tissues of the human body against the harm that can occur during freezing. In fact, Best doesnt even like to use the word freeze to describe cryonics.

The patient is cooled down, and their blood is replaced, he explains. The water in their body is actually replaced with a vitrification solution to prevent ice formation so that the tissues harden like glass rather than freeze.

This process of vitrification is key to cryonics, allowing the human body to cool without experiencing the cell damage that can accompany crystallization. To put it crudely, think of freezer burn but inside of you. Cryonics companies avoid freezing by replacing a patients blood with a cryoprotectant, a liquid that will become viscous as it cools but wont form crystals that could damage the tender cells and tissues of the human body.

Heres the thing, though: The carbon freezing chamber in Cloud City didnt utilize any sort of cryoprotectants because, unlike in other cinematic depictions of cryogenic sleep, it wasnt made to preserve humans. Lando Calrissians mining facility was set up to process tibanna gas and encase it in blocks of carbonite so it could be shipped safely. This highly reactive substance, used to power starship blasters, needed to be stabilized for transport but didnt share humanoids unique biological needs. As such, it was fortunate that Han Solo survived freezing in the first place.

Darth Vader, who experienced carbonite freezing in his younger years, probably knew it was safe, but the fact remains that it definitely wasnt designed for living beings.

Neither is cryopreservation, though. This process isnt currently applied to living people, says Best. They have to be legally dead, as far as cryonics is concerned. Theres some talk of doing it to a living person, but its not reversible by current technology. Typically, a person is cryogenically preserved immediately after death. The hope is that science will advance to the point that eventually humans will find a cure for whatever ailment killed the person, whether its cancer, congenital illnesses, or traumatic injuries. At that point, a patient could be reanimated and healed.

As far as reanimating a cryopreserved human, well, the hope is that scientists will find a way to do that too, as there is currently no way to safely warm human tissue back up. Even if human tissue is successfully vitrified without any crystals forming, crystals almost always form during warming. Best explains that part of the problem is that cryoprotectants are too toxic to use in sufficient quantities to fully protect human tissue. And while scientists are working on developing less toxic cryoprotectants, theyre not quite there yet.

So even if Han Solo somehow survived carbonite freezing without his bodily fluids crystallizing and turning his body into a huge mass of destroyed cells, it is highly unlikely that he would be reanimated without suffering cell damage. Granted, crystallization could theoretically be avoided if a cryopreserved body was brought back up to temperature tens or hundreds of times faster than it was cooled. It also must be warmed uniformly, a huge challenge when dealing with a human body, which is made up of many types of tissues. So its possible that the intensely bright light that emanates from the carbonite block during Han Solos thawing is the byproduct of an advanced warming technology. But since the machine in which he was frozen isnt intended for humans, this seems highly unlikely.

Strangely, one of the most notable effects of Han Solos hibernation sickness was blindness, whereas corneas are one of the only human organs that scientists actually have been able to successfully vitrify and warm.

So while it may come as little surprise that a space opera didnt quite hit the mark in terms of scientific accuracy, perhaps its fitting that Han Solo, a pilot known for defying all odds, survived a procedure that should have killed him.

See the original post:

How Would the Human Body Respond to Carbonite Freezing? - Inverse

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on How Would the Human Body Respond to Carbonite Freezing? – Inverse

What is cryonics?

Posted: July 10, 2017 at 8:17 pm

Cryonics is an effort to save lives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by today's medicine might be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health. Cryonics is a second chance at life. It is the reasoned belief in the advancement of future medicinal technologies being able to cure things we cant today.

Many biological specimens, including whole insects, many types of human tissue including brain tissue, and human embryos have been cryogenically preserved, stored at liquid nitrogen temperature where all decay ceases, and revived. This leads scientists to believe that the same can be done with whole human bodies, and that any minimal harm can be reversed with future advancements in medicine.

Neurosurgeons often cool patients bodies so they can operate on aneurysms without damaging or rupturing the nearby blood vessels. Human embryos that are frozen in fertility clinics, defrosted, and implanted in a mothers uterus grow into perfectly normal human beings. This method isnt new or groundbreaking- successful cryopreservation of human embryos was first reported in 1983 by Trounson and Mohr with multicellular embryos that had been slow-cooled using dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO).

And just in Feb. of 2016, there was a cryonics breakthrough when for the first time, scientists vitrified a rabbits brain and, after warming it back up, showed that it was in near perfect condition. This was the first time a cryopreservation was provably able to protect everything associated with learning and memory.

More:

What is cryonics?

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on What is cryonics?

From Inequality to Immortality – INSEAD Knowledge (blog)

Posted: at 8:17 pm

A burgeoning industry promises to help the wealthy defeat the ultimate equaliser: Death.

In the year 42 I.E. (Inequality Era, post-Piketty), mankind built its first hibernation machine. This allowed some to jump to the future. A brighter future, a better future. More precisely, hibernation machines became an actualisation of a powerful idea that tomorrow is better than today. A tomorrow that has a cure for cancer and diabetes, where strokes, respiratory diseases and heart attacks are a hazy remembrance (much as we think of typhoid and tuberculosis today), where longevity spans centuries, and Ray Kurzweil's Singularity, in which humans merge with A.I. to transcend biological limitations, is within reach. The end of Death and a future everlasting beckon.

But only a select few can afford hibernation machines and jump to the future: The rich and the powerful, the rentiers and the capitalists, the titans of industry and the masters of finance. Those who can afford it skip to a future paradise, while those who cannot remain in what they now perceive as a dark and depressing present, whilst building the paradise for the few.

This is a short chapter in Death's End, the culmination of Liu Cixin's stunning trilogy, Remembrance of Earth's Past. Former U.S. President Barack Obama recommended it, in a bygone era when leaders used to read, reflect, and write, rather than rant in 140 characters. It is fascinating to think systematically about . Are we willing to tolerate inequality in income and wealth as long as our basic needs in Maslow's hierarchy are satisfied? Or will we have a revolution in our hands when inequality is literally a matter of life and death?1 Hollywood which gave us Elysium which certainly sees revolution as the most probable outcome.

This is not some abstract sci-fi scenario. Today, there are four major companies that provide cryogenic or cryonic services Alcor in Arizona, Cryonics Institute in Michigan, American Cryonics Society in California and KrioRus in Russia. Alcor seems the most developed and well-funded. Morbid as it sounds, this could be you in the future, vitrified and then stored in a thermos. Their pricing policy has a weird two-part tariff structure an annual membership fee of US$525 and then an additional US$200,000 for Whole Body Cryopreservation. There is a discount if you only cryogenically freeze your brain; and a US$10,000 premium if you live outside the United States and Canada which rises to US$50,000 if you live in China. A topic for another day is whether this is price discrimination or whether the price differences reflect cost differences.

Interestingly, only 5 percent of the U.S. population has an annual income exceeding the US$200,000 charged by Alcor. But since the amount can be paid out of retirement savings, slightly more than 10 percent of U.S. households theoretically could afford to freeze at least one person (see below). Ironically, most would be bankrupted in the process, meaning they would thaw out to penury. Theyd have to hope that the utopian future awaiting them would be free of the sort of inequality that enabled them to cheat death in the first place.

Meanwhile in Silicon Valley...

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, are reading Homo Deus, by Yuval Harari. On page 28, the book predicts that they are going to die. Death, after all, is the ultimate equaliser. Steve Jobs was unable to beat pancreatic cancer. Harari is sceptical whether Googles Calico, short for the California Life Company and founded in 2013 with a billion dollars in funding, will solve death in time to make Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin immortal. This is immensely frustrating to the likes of Brin, Page, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel, all billionaires eager to stretch lives, or, at least their own, to forever in Thiel's words.

Many believe that aging is encoded in our DNA and if anything is encoded it can be cracked. If something can be cracked, then it can be hacked. Cue applause! And cue billions of dollars for aging research with Bill Maris, the founder and CEO of Google Ventures, leading the way. In the fall of 2016, the life extension start-up Unity Biotechnology raised an enormous round of funding from Silicon Valley billionaires interested in the prospect of humans living much longer lives.

Others are bringing big data and machine learning tools to bear. BioAge Labs, whose tagline is faster drug discovery for aging, has been using machine learning and crunching genomics data to search for biomarkers that predict mortality.

Venture Vampire Capital

In 1615, a German doctor suggested that the hot and spirituous blood of a young man will pour into the old one as if it were from a fountain of youth. In 1924, the physician and Bolshevik Alexander Bogdanov performed young-blood transfusions on himself. He claimed that his eyesight improved, that he stopped balding and a fellow-revolutionary wrote that he seems to have become seven, no, ten years younger. Ironically, Bogdanov injected himself with blood from a student who had both malaria and tuberculosis, and subsequently died. Today, this procedure goes by the innocuous-sounding name parabiosis a surgical union of two organisms sharing the circulation of blood. And the search for the fountain of youth continues.

Of mice and men

Researchers at Stanford University showed in a 2014 study that infusions of blood from young mice reversed cognitive and neurological impairments seen in older mice. These reinvigorated mice performed like ones half their age in memory based tests. Immediately, emails flooded the inbox of the lead researcher, Tony Wyss-Coray. Numerous billionaires, some of whom were experiencing onset of Alzheimers, wanted infusions of young blood. Some had even arranged for what the HBO show Silicon Valley termed blood boys.

There is currently a clinical trial called Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers looking for participants. The trial, run by a start-up called Ambrosia, injects young people's blood into older people. Healthy participants aged 35 and older, pay US$8000 for a transfusion of blood plasma from donors under 25, and researchers monitor their blood over the next two years for indicators (biomarkers) of health and aging. Thiel (yes, him again) is looking seriously into parabiosis.

Today, most reporting on these advances takes one of two perspectives: weary scepticism or unadulterated wonder. In either case, my grim forecast is that a world where such miracles of longevity are confined to billionaires will see socio-political upheaval, the likes of which will make the current hand-wringing and brow-furrowing on the rise of inequality seem quaint in comparison. In the meantime, expect a lot of books and articles and blog posts, targeted at the thought-leader industrial complex, that will at the least, make for stimulating conversation.

Pushan Dutt is the Shell Fellow of Economic Transformation and a Professor of Economics and Political Science at INSEAD. Professor Dutt directs the Asian International Executive Programme.

Follow INSEAD Knowledge on Twitter and Facebook

1Of course, with unequal access to health care in many countries, with direct consequences for differential mortality rates among the rich and the poor, we already live in such a world.

View post:

From Inequality to Immortality - INSEAD Knowledge (blog)

Posted in Cryonics | Comments Off on From Inequality to Immortality – INSEAD Knowledge (blog)

Page 11«..10111213..»