Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: food – Page 182

Rather than releasing any new cameras for CES 2021, Canon is doing something different: Letting you take pictures from space. The company has unveiled an [interactive site](https://redefinethelimits.us/space/cornerstone/experience) that allows you to use its CE-SAT-1 satellite, equipped with a lightly modified 5D Mark III DSLR, to grab simulated photos of locations including New York City, the Bahamas and Dubai.

Canon launched the wine barrel-sized microsatellite back in June of 2017. It holds an EOS 5D Mark III camera that’s fitted with a 40 cm Cassegrain-type (mirror) 3720mm telescope. Orbiting at a 600 km orbit (375 miles), it provides about a 36-inch ground resolution within a 3×2 mile frame, Canon claims. (By contrast, the world’s highest-resolution satellite, [WorldView-4](https://apollomapping.com/worldview-4-satellite-imagery?gcli…rT_D_BwE), can resolve down to 12 inches.) It also houses a PowerShot S110 for wider images.

Take ‘photos’ of Earth from space with Canon’s 5D Mark III camera.

Canon.

The interactive demo allows you take images from multiple locations, with each shot showing the location and altitude of the image. However, it uses pre-captured imagery, so you’re not actually grabbing live or unique photos. If it was live, CE-SAT-1 would be zipping around the Earth at nearly 17, 000 miles per hour, circling the globe in just over an hour and half. The demonstration does give you a feel for the satellite’s capabilities and resolution, however.

The experience is narrated by astronaut Marsha Ivins, who explains the satellite’s purpose and design. The microsatellites are much smaller and cheaper than regular satellites, and Canon hopes to build a [billion dollar business](https://en.canon-elec.co.jp/space/) around them by 2030. After launching the CE-SAT-1 in 2017, Canon attempted to launch an updated [CE-SAT-1B](https://www.engadget.com/watch-rocket-lab-canon-satellite-launch-191456033.html) last summer. However, it was lost when RocketLab’s Electron rocket [failed](https://www.engadget.com/rocket-lab-13th-mission-failure-142717244.html) shortly after launch.

Read more | >

We are creating compelling homegrown solutions in education, health care, agriculture, infrastructure, financial services and new commerce,” Ambani said in his speech. “Each of these solutions, once proven in India, will be offered to the rest of the world to address global challenges.

Mukesh Ambani has spent years trying to turn his inherited oil business into a tech empire. In 2020, that pivot really kicked into overdrive.

Read more | >

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered that fruit flies with genetic modifications to enhance glucose uptake have significantly longer lifespans. Looking at the brain cells of aging flies, they found that better glucose uptake compensates for age-related deterioration in motor functions, and led to longer life. The effect was more pronounced when coupled with dietary restrictions. This suggests healthier eating plus improved glucose uptake in the brain might lead to enhanced lifespans.

The brain is a particularly power-hungry part of our bodies, consuming 20% of the oxygen we take in and 25% of the glucose. That’s why it’s so important that it can stay powered, using the glucose to produce (ATP), the “energy courier” of the body. This , known as glycolysis, happens in both the intracellular fluid and a part of cells known as the mitochondria. But as we get older, our become less adept at making ATP, something that broadly correlates with less glucose availability. That might suggest that more food for more glucose might actually be a good thing. On the other hand, it is known that a healthier diet actually leads to longer life. Unraveling the mystery surrounding these two contradictory pieces of knowledge might lead to a better understanding of healthier, longer lifespans.

A team led by Associate Professor Kanae Ando studied this problem using Drosophila . Firstly, they confirmed that brain cells in older flies tended to have lower levels of ATP, and lower uptake of glucose. They specifically tied this down to lower amounts of the enzymes needed for glycolysis. To counteract this effect, they genetically modified flies to produce more of a glucose-transporting protein called hGut3. Amazingly, this increase in glucose uptake was all that was required to significantly improve the amount of ATP in cells. More specifically, they found that more hGut3 led to less decrease in the production of the enzymes, counteracting the decline with age. Though this did not lead to an improvement in age-related damage to mitochondria, they also suffered less deterioration in locomotor functions.

Read more | >

The result was a bizarre, Lego-like human tissue that replicates the basic circuits behind how we decide to move. Without external prompting, when churned together like ice cream, the three ingredients physically linked up into a fully functional circuit. The 3D mini-brain, through the information highway formed by the artificial spinal cord, was able to make the lab-grown muscle twitch on demand.

In other words, if you think isolated mini-brains—known formally as brain organoids—floating in a jar is creepy, upgrade your nightmares. The next big thing in probing the brain is assembloids—free-floating brain circuits—that now combine brain tissue with an external output.

The end goal isn’t to freak people out. Rather, it’s to recapitulate our nervous system, from input to output, inside the controlled environment of a Petri dish. An autonomous, living brain-spinal cord-muscle entity is an invaluable model for figuring out how our own brains direct the intricate muscle movements that allow us stay upright, walk, or type on a keyboard.

Read more | >

The Federal Aviation Administration has released new and looser rules for flying drones over highly populated areas and at night, effectively laying a welcome mat for future aerial deliveries of takeout food, Amazon packages, prescription drugs — you name it.

Why it matters: While the prospect of Jetsons-style convenience with less street gridlock is tantalizing, there are still plenty of logistical hurdles, and it will take some time for cities to figure out how to manage low-altitude air traffic as routinely as they do today’s road traffic.

Driving the news: FAA rules — handed down late last month — will require drones flying over cities to use remote identification technology, so people on the ground can tell what they’re doing and who owns them.

Read more | >

It can be done. And it can be done sooner than many realise…even within YOUR lifetime. Imagine… Reaching triple digits with the health, fitness and body of an athletic 30 year old… It is entirely within reach now, it may be even less than a decade away. All we need to do is repair the damage that living and our metabolism create, it is slowly accumulating, which is why it takes 7 or 8 decades to rear its ugly head in most people, so one treatment should keep things under control for many years, and by then science will have advanced immeasurably, improving the treatments to whole new levels… Then you can dream of reaching 4 digits…then 5…then 6… BUT You need to stay in good enough shape to last long enough to see the treatments perfected and available. So watch your diet, your mental and physical health, your weight, and look to use occasional fasting, and time restricted eating, along with saunas and cold showers (or any hot/cold therapy), etc., to keep yourself at your optimum until that days arrives. If you want to know more, then this video breaks it down into even more detail. Have a great day and enjoy your journey into the future…

In a roadmap to end aging — understand the hallmarks to change your direction.

Getting old, grey hair, wrinkles, less strength, fragile bones, slower healing… And these are just the visible obvious factors, a slow continual decline towards your final grave. But if you know what is at fault, you can start to make lifestyle changes to alter their trajectory. Watch this video on Stress to find out more about what you can do and why it works https://youtu.be/s17UP_Ia4pQ And we do not only know what is happening, we also have some very good ideas of how to reverse, or at least, slow their decline whilst science works on real solutions. So, this will show you what the problems are, and then we shall start looking at what YOU can do to turn back the clock. With an aging population the benefits of more living their extended years in good health and able to lead whatever lifestyle they desire, is taking on ever more importance. Once you understand the mechanisms and follow the processes you will be able to build a better lifestyle aimed at a long and enjoyable existence. What are you actively doing to extend your healthspan?
And these are just the visible obvious factors, a slow continual decline towards your final grave.

But if you know what is at fault, you can start to make lifestyle changes to alter their trajectory.

Watch this video on Stress to find out more about what you can do and why it works.

Continue reading “Roadmap To End Aging — Understand The Hallmarks To Change Your Direction” | >

Review: Meat Planet (2019) by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft

In the words of the book’s author, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food (2019) is “not an attempt at prediction but rather a study of cultured meat as a special case of speculation on the future of food, and as a lens through which to view the predictions we make about how technology changes the world.” While not serving as some crystal ball to tell us the future of food, Wurgaft’s book certainly does serve as a kind of lens.

Our very appetites are questioned quite a bit in the book. Wondering about the ever-changing history of food, the author asks, “Will it be an effort to reproduce the industrial meat forms we know, albeit on a novel, and more ethical and sustainable, foundation?” Questioning why hamburgers are automatically the default goal, he points out cultured meat advocates should carefully consider “the question of which human appetite for meat, in historical terms, they wish to satisfy.”

Wurgaft’s question of “which human appetite” – past, present, or future – is an excellent one. If we use his book as a lens to observe other emerging technologies, the question extends well beyond our choices of food. It could even have direct implications for such endeavours as radical life extension. Will we, if we extend our lifetimes, be satisfactory to future people? We already know the kind of clash that persists between different generations, and the blame we often place on previous generations for current social ills, without there also being a group of people who simply refuse to die. We should be wary of basing our future on the present – of attempting to preserve present tastes as somehow immutable and deserving immortality. This may be a problem such futurists as Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near (2005) need to respond to.

Continue reading “Artificial Flesh” | >