Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, scientists use gene therapy to successfully reverse obesity and insulin resistance in an animal model of type 2 diabetes.

The HybridHeart consortium is a European Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Open project. HybridHeart proposes to develop and bring to the clinic a soft biocompatible artificial heart, which can completely replace a patient’s heart in a procedure similar to a heart transplant.

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology can now assess a person’s intelligence in moments with nothing more than a brain scan and an AI algorithm, university officials announced this summer.

Caltech researchers led by Ralph Adolphs, PhD, a professor of psychology, neuroscience and biology and chair of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center, said in a recent study that they, alongside colleagues at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of Salerno, were successfully able to predict IQ in hundreds of patients from fMRI scans of resting-state brain activity. The work is pending publication in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Adolphs and his team collected data from nearly 900 men and women for their research, all of whom were part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-driven Human Connectome Project. The researchers trained their machine learning algorithm on the complexities of the human brain by feeding the brain scans and intelligence scores of these hundreds of patients into the algorithm—something that took very little effort on the patients’ end.

Continue reading “Caltech’s new machine learning algorithm predicts IQ from fMRI” »

A disclaimer on the new article that I wrote: while I do think the Beta-amyloid plaque plays a key role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease I do not think it’s the only thing. I’ll be writing more on Alzheimer’s disease as I study more.

The abnormal accumulation β-amyloid peptide is the leading candidate for the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is currently ranked the 6 th leading cause of death in the United States while some statistics claim it may rank as high as the third leading cause of death.

What is Alzheimer’s disease?

Continue reading “Deletion of BACE 1 Enzyme Reverses The Symptoms of Alzheimer’s” »

It’s in a bad taste to say that other global issues are more urgent than ageing, when pretty much all global issues—ageing included—affect the life, and the quality of life, of many people.

Suppose you’re in your mid-seventies, and you find out that your aortic valve doesn’t work very well. Undergoing a replacement operation—nowadays, a relatively simple and safe procedure—is not only going to help you with your unpleasant episodes of fatigue, chest pain, and dizziness, it may well save your life, minimizing your risk of sudden cardiac arrest.

Your doctor suggests that you undergo the procedure and sends you to a surgeon for the operation; however, when you get there, the surgeon starts yelling at you that, rather than using resources to replace your valve and extend your life, we should fund initiatives to save children in poor countries, build health clinics, train midwives, and fight for equal opportunity and for women’s rights. He then goes on rambling that, until these issues are addressed, he doesn’t want to hear about extending your natural lifespan—after all, since you’re in your mid-seventies, you’re well above the world’s average lifespan; he shoos you and your family out and slams the door on you.

Continue reading “Minoring in the majors” »

Pills hailed as the first real “anti-aging” drugs inched a little closer to the market after a study found they cut the number of respiratory infections in the elderly by half.

The drugs: The pills act on an aging-related pathway called TORC1. Inhibiting this pathway “has extended life span in every species studies to date” (like mice and worms), according to Joan Mannick, who lead the study for drug giant Novartis.

Will humans live longer, too? Maybe. But that will take time to figure out. For now, what’s known is that giving people 65 and older these drugs seems to boost their immune function. Elderly people taking the drugs got about 40 percent fewer colds or bronchial infections. About 264 people got the drugs over six weeks and then were tracked for a year.

Continue reading “These anti-aging pills look like they’re actually working” »

Sexually transmitted infections can be worrisome and embarrassing, but with a few notable exceptions, most of them are quite treatable these days. Unfortunately, a new one may be on the rise. British public health officials say that Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacterial infection known as MGen for short, could soon become immune to antibiotics. If this happens, the bacterium would become what’s known as a superbug, the growing class of bacteria that have developed resistance to antibiotic drugs.

The bacterium, which can live in humans’ urinary and genital tracts, is transmitted through sexual intercourse. Women infected with the bacterium can experience pelvic inflammation and cervical inflammation, while men can experience inflammation of the urethra. An infected patient would feel these symptoms, generally speaking, as pain. Perhaps most disconcertingly, though, sometimes the infection will not cause any noticeable symptoms, meaning that an infected person can transmit it without even realizing that they’re doing so. If the infection is left untreated for too long, it can cause female patients to become sterile.

In response to the emerging threat posed by MGen, the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV on Sunday issued its draft guidelines for dealing with MGen. The organization also warned that antibiotic-resistant MGen could become much more prevalent in the coming years.

Continue reading “Public Health Officials Warn This STD Could Become a Superbug” »

Biologist Dan Gibson edits and programs DNA, just like coders program a computer. But his “code” creates life, giving scientists the power to convert digital information into biological material like proteins and vaccines. Now he’s on to a new project: “biological transportation,” which holds the promise of beaming new medicines across the globe over the internet. Learn more about how this technology could change the way we respond to disease outbreaks and enable us to download personalized prescriptions in our homes.

Researchers made a neural network out of DNA that can recognize handwritten numbers.