The International Papillomavirus Society has announced that Australia could become the first country to eliminate cervical cancer entirely.
According to a new study, Australia’s efforts to distribute a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for free in schools have been a resounding success.
The sexually transmitted infection causes 99.9 percent of cases of cervical cancer.
Someday we won’t need curtains or blinds on our windows, and we will be able to block out light—or let it in—with just the press of a button. At least that’s what Keith Goossen, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Delaware, hopes.
Goossen and Daniel Wolfe, who earned a doctoral degree from UD last year, developed panels that can switch between allowing light in and blocking it out. This “smart glass” technology could be utilized in eco-friendly windows, windshields, roof panes and building envelopes, absorbing light and heat in the winter and reflecting it away in the summer.
Although Goossen isn’t the first scientist to make smart glass, his team’s invention is about one-tenth the price of other versions. It is also more transparent in its transparent state and more reflective in its reflective state than competitors, he said.
Some cancer cells express some of the same genes that senescent cells do, so it makes sense that drugs that destroy senescent cells may also destroy cancer cells. This was what the researchers in this new study set out to test.
However, in this experiment, the researchers discovered that the chosen senolytic drugs were not effective at destroying cancer cells with senescence-associated gene expression. While cancer cells and senescent cells do share some common properties, they are also quite different at an epigenetic level.
The researchers did, however, demonstrate that a so-called “suicide gene therapy” that causes both senescent cells and cancer cells to kill themselves worked by targeting senescence-associated p16Ink4a. This approach is similar to that of SENS spin-off company Oisin Biotechnologies, which is using a suicide gene therapy to eliminate senescent cells.
And what the media and scientists think of it.
Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., Vice President of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, discusses the “Methuselarity” — the point at which technology enables humans to live to more than 1,000 years of age. Dr. de Grey believes this could happen within the coming decades and posits that some people born today may live to be 1,000 years of age. He further states that people who are 30 years old today have a 50/50 chance to live to be 1,000 years old. Dr. de Grey bases his assumptions on the research into aging that companies like Agex Therapeutics are pursuing. This video is the third in a series from AgeX about the future of aging and its impact on humanity. For more information on the company, please visit www.agexinc.com.
Two pivotal conferences on the topic of “death” coming up!!
First at the INSERM Liliane Bettencourt School on March 16–18 will be “Death: From Cells to Societies — Aging, Dying, and Beyond” -
Then, April 11–13 at Harvard Medical School, will be “Defining Death: Organ transplantation and the 50-year legacy of the Harvard report on brain death”
http://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/annual-bioethics-conference-2018
An important inflection point for all!!
Our galaxy may contain billions of habitable worlds that don’t host any life. Should we attempt to change that?Claudius Gros at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, thinks we should. He believes in directed panspermia: deliberately seeding life throughout the cosmos. And to do that, he proposes we use a laser propulsion system that may not be technically out of reach.
Breakthrough Starshot is a project with ambitious aims to use such systems to send tiny, lightweight probes to Alpha Centauri. The goal is to take pictures of our nearest star, but these systems could also deliver much larger payloads into orbit around nearby stars, says Gros.
Kind of funny, but probably a sign of what will come in the mid 2020’s.
Technology and automotive companies touting self-driving cars as the future of transportation may have some work to convince San Franciscans, who keep attacking the vehicles.
A third of traffic collisions involving autonomous vehicles in 2018 so far featured humans physically confronting the cars, according to data released by California.
In one case, a taxi driver exited his cab and slapped the front passenger window of a General Motors Cruise parked behind him. No one was hurt, though the car sustained a scratch.
Yet several defense contractors are developing these engineering concepts for the U.S. military, hoping to get a piece of what is surely going to be a lucrative and lengthy contract.
Speaking to reporters at Lockheed Martin’s media day on Monday, CEO Marillyn Hewson touted investments in hypersonics, laser weapons, electronic warfare and artificial intelligence.
“Lockheed Martin has taken a leadership role in these four technology areas, and many others, to build an enterprise that can successfully support our customers’ rapidly evolving technology needs well into the future,” Hewson said.
