Part man, part machine: Researchers at the University of Oxford are making The Terminator a reality.
Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy and Andrew Carr, of the Oxford Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit, test medical technology by dressing robots in human flesh.
The cyborgs “wear” tissue grafts to help develop artificial muscles and tendons before transplantation.
Coffee turns up some interesting properties and it isnt the caffeine in that is the star of the show.
Could coffee be a geroprotector?
Many people like to start the day with a hot cup of coffee to help get their motor running, but there could be more to this popular beverage than meets the eye. Nothing quite like the taste of hot fresh coffee and it is no surprise it has been the drink of choice in many cultures for centuries. Coffee has also long been associated with having geroprotective properties, meaning it is a substance that protects against the aging process.
A number of epidemiologic studies suggest that drinking coffee can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Based on the cardiovascular risk factors, aging and dementia studies, the consumption of 3–5 cups of coffee a day is associated with a reduced risk for Alzheimer’s in later life. Some studies have suggested the reason coffee is beneficial is due to caffeine and its antioxidant properties, however a study in 2015 found there was no significant difference between caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee so something else other than caffeine must be responsible for its protective properties.
A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and La Jolla-based startup Nanovision Biosciences Inc. have developed the nanotechnology and wireless electronics for a new type of retinal prosthesis that brings research a step closer to restoring the ability of neurons in the retina to respond to light. The researchers demonstrated this response to light in a rat retina interfacing with a prototype of the device in vitro.
They detail their work in a recent issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering. The technology could help tens of millions of people worldwide suffering from neurodegenerative diseases that affect eyesight, including macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and loss of vision due to diabetes.
Despite tremendous advances in the development of retinal prostheses over the past two decades, the performance of devices currently on the market to help the blind regain functional vision is still severely limited—well under the acuity threshold of 20/200 that defines legal blindness.
Yorktown Heights, N.Y. — 06 Mar 2017: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today an industry-first initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computing systems. “IBM Q” quantum systems and services will be delivered via the IBM Cloud platform. While technologies that currently run on classical computers, such as Watson, can help find patterns and insights buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be seen because the data doesn’t exist and the possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous to ever be processed by classical computers.
IBM Quantum Computing Scientists Hanhee Paik (left) and Sarah Sheldon (right) examine the hardware inside an open dilution fridge at the IBM Q Lab at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, NY. On Monday, March 6, IBM announced that it will build commercially available universal quantum computing systems. IBM Q quantum systems and services will be delivered via the IBM Cloud platform and will be designed to tackle problems that are too complex and exponential in nature for classical computing systems to handle. One of the first and most promising applications for quantum computing will be in the area of chemistry and could lead to the discovery of new medicines and materials. IBM aims at constructing commercial IBM Q systems with ~50 qubits in the next few years to demonstrate capabilities beyond today’s classical systems, and plans to collaborate with key industry partners to develop applications that exploit the quantum speedup of the systems. (Connie Zhou for IBM)
I thought this interesting enough to share:
Zoltan Istvan was my favorite presidential candidate in 2016. He toured the country in a bus modeled to look like a coffin, with the message that death is a curable disease.
And it’s not just people on the fringe who are involved in the anti-aging cause. There is a sister company of Google called Calico whose goal is “tackling aging.”
Ray Kurzweil, inventor, senior engineer at Google and holder of 21 honorary doctorates, has written a book called Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. At age 69, he expects technology to improve enough in his lifetime that he will live forever. (In the meantime, he takes extremely good care of himself!)
But hold on a second. While we’re waiting for Istvan, Calico, and Kurzweil succeed, let’s take a moment to ponder the possible dystopian consequences.
—In a statement, co-author Monica Driscoll of Rutgers University said that “the real goal of aging research should not be longevity at all, but rather a person’s health span — how long they can maintain an active, disease free, high quality of life.”–
NO. The real goal is extending lifespan. The lifespan of the organism was doubled, that is why people will like this when I share it.
Most of us try to avoid artificial coloring, but a dye that is used to detect plaques in Alzheimer’s brains is being tested for its seeming ability to counteract the effects of aging.
Bowles says. “We’re not changing what is in your genetic code. We’re altering what is expressed. Normally, cells do this themselves, but we are taking engineering control over these cells to tell them what to turn on and turn off.”
Now that researchers know they can do this, doctors will be able to modify the genes via an injection directly to the affected area and delay the degeneration of tissue. In the case of back pain, a patient may get a discectomy to remove part of a herniated disc to relieve the pain, but tissue near the spinal cord may continue to breakdown, leading to future pain. This method could stave off additional surgeries by stopping the tissue damage.
So far, the team has developed a virus that can deliver the gene therapy and has filed a patent on the system. They hope to proceed to human trials after collecting initial data, but Bowles believes it could be about 10 years before this method is used in patients.
Summary: Researchers use CRISPR to modulate genes in order to reduce tissue damage and inflammation for people with neck and back pain.
Source: University of Utah.
For millions of sufferers, there is nothing more debilitating than chronic back or joint pain. It can feel like a lifetime of misery.
