Center for Consciousness Center . Tucson . Arizona

THE SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS CONFERENCE

April 25-30, 2016 - Tucson

Pre-Conference Workshop - optional

Monday, April 25, 9 am to 1 pm

QUANTUM BIOLOGY AND NATURE OF LIFE

Stuart Kauffman, Jack A. Tuszynski, Katherine T. Peil, Travis Craddock, Anirban Bandyopadhyay, Stuart Hameroff, Dean Radin

Stuart Hameroff Headshot

Kauffman Tuszynski Peil Craddock Bandyopadhyay Hameroff Radin

Functional quantum effects occur in plant photosynthesis, bird navigation, and brain microtubules. As consciousness (thus far at least) occurs only in living systems, one may ask ‘What is life?’, how essential are quantum processes to its origin and evolution, and how do they relate to consciousness and the measurement problem in quantum mechanics?

What is life? Functional definitions fail to capture life’s essence, and vitalist approaches based on electromagnetism were banned from science in the 19th century. More recently Erwin Schrodinger suggested life may involve quantum coherence in periodic lattices, and Herbert Frohlich proposed oscillating biomolecular dipoles condense to unitary quantum states. Such proposals were dismissed as biology was considered too ‘warm, wet and noisy’ for seemingly delicate quantum effects to have functional traction. But in recent years plants have been shown to utilize quantum coherence in photosynthesis in warm sunlight, Frohlich coherence has been demonstrated in room temperature enzyme lattices, and quantum resonances shown in microtubules.

If quantum biology is at play in living systems, what are its implications for consciousness, evolution, cancer and developmental biology, the origin of life and the future of medicine?

Stuart Kauffman

Quantum criticality in biomolecules, poised realm between classical and quantum regimes

Stuart Kauffman

Stuart Alan Kauffman MD is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (MD) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruitfly, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago 1969-1973, National Cancer Institute 1973-1975, then at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1995, where he served as Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship, 1987–1992. He also holds an Honorary Degree in Science from the University of Louvain; and was awarded a Gold Medal of the Accademia Lincea in Rome. Kauffman proposed the self-organized emergence of collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers, specifically peptides, for the origin of molecular reproduction. Reproducing peptide, DNA, and RNA collectively autocatalytic sets have now been made experimentally. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for applying models of Boolean networks to simplified genetic circuits. His hypotheses stating that cell types are attractors of such networks, and that genetic regulatory networks are "critical" have found experimental support. Kauffman rose to prominence through his association with the Santa Fe Institute (a non-profit research institute dedicated to the study of complex systems), where he was faculty in residence from 1986 to 1997, and through his work on models in various areas of biology. These included autocatalytic sets in origin of life research, gene regulatory networks in developmental biology, and fitness landscapes in evolutionary biology. Kauffman holds the founding broad biotechnology patents in combinatorial chemistry and applied molecular evolution. continued.... TSC Plenary 2016-S. Kauffman

Jack A. Tuszynski PhD

Overview of microtubules, models of microtubule information processing, tubulin C termini dynamics, ion conductance along and through microtubules, exciton hopping, microtubule pharmacology and cancer

Jack A. Tuszynski PhD
Departments of Physics and Experimental Oncology; University of Alberta and Cross Cancer Institute - Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Jack A. Tuszynski, Ph.D. serves as a Member of Scientific Advisory Board of OncoVista Innovative Therapies, Inc. (also known as Oncovista, Inc.). Mr. Tuszynski was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics of the Memorial University of Newfoundland from 1983 to 1988, and at the University of Alberta Physics Department from 1988 to 1990. He joined the University of Alberta Physics Department in 1993. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Physics. Prof. Tuszynski received his M.Sc. with distinction in Physics from the University of Poznan (Poland) in 1980. He received his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Calgary in 1983. He holds a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Calgary Chemistry Department in 1983.

Katherine T. Peil

‘Quantum hedonism’ - The primacy of emotions in life, evolution and human behavior

Katherine T. Peil: Founding Director of non-profit EFS International, whose mission is fostering global emotional wisdom. From a background in Pantheistic spirituality and clinical and social psychology, her lengthy interdisciplinary inquiry into the biophysical substrates of emotion led to the identification of its previously mysterious biological function: as an ancient “self-regulatory sense” – an evaluative perceptual mechanism through which living systems directly participate in self-organizing and evolutionary processes, and one that invites deeper inquiries into the physics of consciousness. A former affiliate of Northeastern University and the Harvard Divinity School, Ms. Peil has spoken internationally on the function, evolution, physio-chemical, and informational nature of emotion, as well as its central role in optimal health, human development, moral reasoning, universal spiritual experiences, and its informative value toward creating nonviolence in a global village. Introductions to this work can be found at: http://emotionalsentience.com/.

Travis Craddock, PhD

Memory encoding in microtubules (CaMKII phosphorylation), microtubules and Alzheimers disease, conduction pathways (‘quantum channels’), tryptophan excitations, anesthetic binding.

Travis Craddock, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Psychology, Computer Science and Medicine applying systems biology and biophysics methods towards the purpose of identifying novel treatments for complex chronic illness involving neuroinflammation. His postdoctoral work was conducted under the supervision of Gordon Broderick, Ph.D., in the Broderick Laboratory for Clinical Systems Biology in the Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta. His work with Gordon Broderick, Ph.D., focused on using a theory driven systems biology approach to investigate neuroendocrine-immune interaction dynamics in neuroinflammation and its relation complex diseases such as Gulf War Illness, and chronic fatigue syndrome. This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. Travis received his BSc. in co-op physics from the University of Guelph and went on to finish a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in the field of biophysics at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Jack Tuszynski, Ph.D. His graduate research activities focused on subneural biomolecular information processing, and nanoscale neuroscience descriptions of memory, consciousness and cognitive dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Areas of Academic Focus:

cellular information processes: Molecular Neuroscience
biophysics of neurological/neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer's, Parkinson's Traumatic Brain Injury
network theory in systems biology

Anirban Bandyopadhyay PhD

Nanotech stimulation and recording of multiple electron conductances

(kilohertz, megahertz and gigahertz resonances) from single microtubules

at ambient temperature, fractal frequencies, non-local coupling, neuronal

microtubule bundle dynamics and initiation of action potentials

Anirban Bandyopadhyay is a Senior Scientist in the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan. PhD from Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata 2005, on supramolecular electronics. During 2005-2008 selected as Independent Researcher, ICYS Research Fellow in the International Center for Young Scientists (ICYS), NIMS, Japan, worked on brain-like bio-processor building. In 2007, started as permanent Scientist in NIMS, working on cavity resonator model of human brain & brainlike organic jelly. During 2013-2014 a visiting professor in MIT, USA. Hitachi Science and Technology award 2010, Inamori Foundation award 2011-2012, Kurata Foundation Award, etc, few of 40 Keynote/Plenary lectures available in YouTube. Cavity resonator based complete human brain model, argues to replace Turing tape with a fractome tape, and built a new geometric-musical language is made to operate that tape. Built number system metric as foundation to time metric to replace space-time metric. Designed & built multiple machines & technologues: (1) angstrom probe for neuron signals (2) dielectric imaging of neuron firing, (3) Single protein and its complex structure’s resonant imaging (4) Fourth circuit element study infrastructure. A new frequency fractal model is built to represent biological machines. His group has designed and synthesized several forms of organic brain jelly (programmable matter) that learns, programs and solves problems by itself for futuristic robots during 2000-2014, also several software simulators that writes complex codes by itself.

Stuart Hameroff MD

The Penrose-Hameroff ‘Orch OR’ theory of consciousness, role of OR-mediated

feelings in the origin and evolution of life (from Primordial Soup to the human brain),

brain ultrasound (megahertz vibrational) effects on mood, mental states and cognitive function.

Stuart Hameroff Headshot
Stuart Hameroff MD

Center for Consciousness Studies

Anesthesiologist, Professor and Researcher joined the faculty at University Medical Center in 1975. Dr. Stuart Hameroff's research for over 35 years has involved consciousness (how the pinkish gray meat between our ears produces the richness of experiential awareness). Studying anesthetic gas mechanisms, he focused on how quantum effects control protein conformational dynamics. Following an interest which began in medical school in the computational capacity of microtubules inside neurons, Dr. Hameroff proposed in the early 1980's that microtubules functioned as molecular computers. Hameroff’s 1987 book Ultimate Computing suggested downloading consciousness into microtubule arrays. In the mid-1990s Hameroff teamed with British physicist Sir Roger Penrose to develop the controversial theory of consciousness called “orchestrated objective reduction” - Orch OR theory - in which consciousness derives from quantum computations in microtubules inside brain neurons, quantum computations connected to the fine- scale structure of spacetime geometry. Dr. Hameroff has published five books and well over 100 research articles, and appeared in the film ‘What the Bleep do We Know?’ and numerous TV documentaries on the problem of consciousness including BBC, Discover Channel, History Channel, PBS, OWN, Huff Post Live and the film “What the Bleep?” As Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, established in 1997 at the University of Arizona, Hameroff co-organizes the international, interdisciplinary biennial conference series ‘Toward a Science of Consciousness’ since 1994 - now known as The Science of Consciousness - Tucson Conference. For the past 20 + years TSC, CCS has been providing opportunities for researchers to meet in an international and interdisciplinary setting and has provided scholarships, grants, webcourses, seminars, symposiums. The Center is grateful for the past research support from Pfizer-Roerig, NSF, Fetzer Institute The Chopra Foundation, The Bhaumik Foundation, YeTaDeL Foundation, Google, Elata Foundation, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Journal of Cosmology, Monroe Institute, NIMS, and Mind Event AB, AOARD, EOARD, AFOSR.

TSC Plenary 2016-Hameroff

Dean Radin PhD

Consciousness and the double slit experiment.

How does consciousness collapse the wave function?

Dean Radin PhD
Chief Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences

Dean Radin, PhD, is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and Volunteer Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held appointments at AT&T Bell Labs, Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, and SRI International. He is author or coauthor of over 200 technical and popular articles, a dozen book chapters, and three books including the award-winning The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997), Entangled Minds (Simon & Schuster, 2006), and the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award winner, Supernormal (Random House, 2013).

TSC Plenary 2016-Radin

QUANTUM BIOLOGY AND NATURE OF LIFE

Pre-Conference Workshop - Optional

Monday, April 25, 9 am to 1 pm

Stuart Kauffman, Jack A. Tuszynski, Katherine T. Peil, Travis Craddock, Anirban Bandyopadhyay, Stuart Hameroff, Dean Radin

Optional - Pre-Conference Workshops

Workshops are held: Monday/Tuesday, April 25 - 26

Monday Morning 9-1: Monday Afternoon 2-6

Monday Evening 7-10 and Tuesday Morning 9-1

half day and evening Workshops

Early Workshop Fees:

TSC General Registrants $60 half day

TSC Student Registrants $40 half day

General Public - Workshop only $125 half day

General Public - Student - Workshop only $75 half day

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