Day's Headlines: Scottish Church Votes Anti-God; Cuban Flights Cleared(ish); LA Parks' Bathroom of Choice; Scores of Attacks, UN Condemns One; 10,000 Leagues Below the Sea; Elon's Dream; MS Stem Cell Treatment; Brain Bifocals; 3D Printed Brain Funded; and Vyo

Friday, June 10, 2016

Scottish Church Votes Anti-God; Cuban Flights Cleared(ish); LA Parks' Bathroom of Choice; Scores of Attacks, UN Condemns One; 10,000 Leagues Below the Sea; Elon's Dream; MS Stem Cell Treatment; Brain Bifocals; 3D Printed Brain Funded; and Vyo

Apostasy

Scottish Episcopal church leaps towards allowing gay marriage theguardian

The Scottish Episcopal church voted on Friday by 97 to 51, with three abstentions, to remove a clause in its canon law that states that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. Before the change can be enacted, it must win a two-thirds majority in a second vote next year.

Synod members voted to delete the first clause of canon 31, which states: “The doctrine of this church is that marriage is a physical, spiritual and mystical union of one man and one woman.”

Society

U.S. clears 6 airlines for takeoff to Cuba, but flights won’t start right away miamiherald v

Allowing commercial service between the two countries for the first time in more than half a century is part of the Obama administration’s effort to normalize relations with Cuba. The United States and Cuba have agreed in principle to the resumption of scheduled flights, but the airlines still must seek Cuban permission for the slots.

L.A. looks to amend city ordinance to allow transgender bathroom access at parks latimes

Written by Councilman Mitch O’Farrell and co-written by council members Mike Bonin and Nury Martinez, the council’s action on Wednesday pdf was the first step in expanding bathroom access rights for the transgender community in Los Angeles, beginning with park facilities.

Israel

UN Security Council condemns Tel Aviv attack for the first time since current terror wave jpost

The Security Council members also expressed their “deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims and to the Government of Israel” and stated that “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security.”

Also see France: Israel's ban on Palestinians could escalate violence

China

China wants to build an underwater 'space station' 10,000 feet below the surface theverge

The project, which was described in a Chinese Science Ministry presentation viewed by Bloomberg, is included in the country’s current five-year economic plan and ranks number two among the top 100 science and technology priorities for the Chinese government.

"The deep sea contains treasures that remain undiscovered and undeveloped," China’s president Xi Jinping said last month at a national science conference, "and in order to obtain these treasures we have to control key technologies in getting into the deep sea, discovering the deep sea, and developing the deep sea."

Space

Elon Musk provides new details on his ‘mind blowing’ mission to Mars washingtonpost

Starting as soon as 2018, Musk’s SpaceX plans to fly an unmanned spacecraft to Mars. The unmanned flights would continue about every two years, timed for when Earth and Mars are closest in orbit, and, if everything goes according to plan, build toward the first human mission to Mars with the goal of landing in 2025, Musk has said.

The months-long journey is sure to be “hard, risky, dangerous, difficult,” Musk said, but he was confident people would sign up to go because “just as with the establishment of the English colonies, there are people who love that. They want to be the pioneers.”

This is like Elon Musk week, or something :)

Research

New stem cell transplantation method may halt multiple sclerosis symptoms long-term, but therapy comes with high risk medicalxpress

Dr Harold L Atkins and Dr Mark S Freedman...tested whether complete destruction, rather than suppression, of the immune system during aHSCT t would reduce the relapse rate in patients and increase long-term disease remission.

Out of the 24 patients, one (4%) died from hepatic necrosis and sepsis caused by the chemotherapy. Prior to the treatment, patients experienced 1.2 relapses per year on average. After treatment, no relapses occurred during the follow up period (between 4 and 13 years) in the surviving 23 patients.... These clinical outcomes were mirrored by freedom from detectable new disease activity on MRI images taken after the treatment. The initial 24 MRI scans revealed 93 brain lesions, and after the treatment only one of the 327 scans showed a new lesion....

Bifocals in the brain sciencedaily t

Neuroscientists from Tübingen have discovered...More neural tissue is assigned to the upper visual field than to the lower. As a result, visual stimuli above the horizon are processed sharper, stronger, and faster: our brain is wearing bifocals, so to speak.

Brain

Cambridge firm's funding to help print a 3D brain cambridge-news.co.uk

The project, which includes stem cells company Axol Biosciences at Chesterford Research Park, aims to develop 3D human neural networks and the ability to interrogate brain-like activity.

It is expected the MESO-BRAIN will bring a better understanding of human disease progression, neuronal growth and enable the development of large-scale human cell-based assays to test the effects of drugs.

(Note: this article ends abruptly - last word or two is missing)

Robotics

Vyo Is a Fascinating and Unique Take on Social Domestic Robots spectrum.ieee.org v

Vyo is “a personal assistant serving as a centralized interface for smart home devices.” Nothing new there, but what sets Vyo apart is how you interact with it: it combines non-anthropomorphic design with anthropomorphic expressiveness and a tactile object-based control system into a social robot that’s totally, adorably different. But is it practical?

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