Lifeboat Foundation

Tiny electric airplanes could transform air travel.

On its own, swapping conventional aircraft engines for electric motors could have significant benefits, reducing the cost of air travel and emissions per flight. But the bigger opportunity here is to make air travel practical in situations where no one would think to take an airplane today.

Back in October, Uber published a white paper describing its vision of the future small VTOL aircraft could make possible. Uber envisions a network of on-demand aircraft carrying passengers among many landing spots distributed throughout a metropolitan area. For example, right now it takes at least an hour to drive from San Jose, California, to San Francisco — and closer to two hours during rush hour. In contrast, Uber estimates, the same trip could take 15 minutes in a VTOL airplane.

Continue reading “Why Google co-founder Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars” »

Struggling with your diet? Your microbiota could be to blame.

Your microbiota may not be on your side as you try improving your diet this New Year’s. In a study published December 29 in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers explore why mice that switch from an unrestricted American diet to a healthy, calorie-restricted, plant-based diet don’t have an immediate response to their new program. They found that certain human gut bacteria need to be lost for a diet plan to be successful.

“If we are to prescribe a diet to improve someone’s health, it’s important that we understand what microbes help control those beneficial effects,” says Jeffrey Gordon, Director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis and senior author of the paper. “And we’ve found a way to mine the gut microbial communities of different humans to identify the organisms that help promote the effects of a particular diet in ways that might be beneficial.”

Continue reading “Your microbiota’s previous dining experiences may make new diets less effective” »

Two councils, Fife and Glasgow, are investigating idea of offering everyone a fixed income regardless of earnings.

For a few lucky patients, 2016 was the year when gene therapy turned from promises to cures. The technology, long contemplated as a way to erase disease by revising people’s DNA, made big advances and began turning into a real business offering some of the world’s most expensive and revolutionary medicines.

So what is gene therapy, anyway? The US Food and Drug Administration says it’s any treatment in which a replacement gene is added to a person’s body or a disease-causing one is inactivated. That’s usually done by adding­­­­­­ new instructions to cells via billions of viruses stuffed with correct DNA strands.

It sounds complicated, and it is. Gene therapy was first tested in a person in 1990, but scary side effects turned the gene-fix idea into a scientific backwater. And the field hasn’t conquered all its problems. We started the year with the tale of Glybera, heralded as the first gene treatment ever approved that sought to correct an inherited gene error. Yet the drug came with an eye-popping price tag of $1 million and, dogged by questions over how well it works, has turned into a medical and commercial flop.

Continue reading “Gene therapy is here, and it could radically change modern medicine” »

Cultured couture.

The very basics of living beings may solve a serious government-wide problem.

Researchers have discovered a technique that could block the effects of a powerful gene-editing tool to protect adjacent genes against accidental alteration. The breakthrough could be the beginning of a major step forward for genetic engineering.

Scientists at the University of California (UC) in San Francisco researchers have discovered how to switch off the effects of the CRISPR gene editing system. CRISPR has been a major advance for gene editing, but there are difficulties in limiting its effects on adjacent genes. So far this has militated against its use in research, most obviously, into the human genome.

Solar manufacturers led by China’s Trina Solar Ltd. are probably selling at a loss after prices fell to a record low this week.

I’m excited to have my #transhumanism interview included in Marc Fennell’s favorite 2016 interviews, with lots of other people like Matt Damon, Quentin Tarantino, Jodie Foster, Steve Wozniak, the South Park creators, etc. Marc Fennell is one of Australia’s favorite tv journalists:

These interviews are the most fun thing I do. I love getting lost in someone’s work, I love editing them and I love getting to show them to you. Here is my 2015 list.