Lifeboat Foundation

It is literally a moonshot.

Last fall, the biotech executive Martin Shkreli became widely reviled for hiking the price of a life-saving drug by more than 4,000 percent overnight, to $750 per pill.

Public outrage at Shkreli has apparently reverberated all the way to a high school science lab in Australia, where a group of 11th grade students claim to have proven a point: the drug can be made for much, much cheaper.

The group of 11 high school students, ages 16 and 17, successfully recreated the drug, Daraprim, for a mere $2 a pill, according to scientists from the University of Sydney.

Continue reading “Sydney high school students ‘show up’ Martin Shkreli, recreating price-hiked pill for $2” »

New research at MIT might be a game-changer for Alzheimer’s. But you don’t have to wait to strengthen your brain’s memory system.

University of Sussex physicists have found a new way to create quantum gates – apply voltage to microchips.

The future for hospitals.

The new facility will build tissues like bones and cartilage for surgery patients as a first step toward printers in every operating room.

AI (someday once things are more secured) is going to drastically reduce our cost of government. At least the VA believes AI is going to make them better at treating folks; my guess it’s a mix of cost saving potential via automation and improving diagnosis.

Flow Health and the VA are building a medical knowledge graph with deep learning to inform medical decision-making and train AI to personalize care plans.

This has been worked on since WWII using various methods that never fully worked out. However, our technology has advance; so it could be within reach this time.

An expert from Rutgers University Newark explores the proper role of neuroscience in defense and war efforts, and how technologies designed with this science can be misused to harm people.

Continue reading “Is BRAIN HACKING the future of war? Experts predict drone control chips, ‘neural dust’ to treat PTSD and remote weapons to disrupt soldier’s thoughts all set to become commonplace” »

The first thing I learned about Cozmo is that it doesn’t like to stay put very long. Roused from slumber, the little robot’s face illuminates, and it begins zooming around the table in front of me. A moment later, it notices I’m watching and turns to greet me, saying my name with a computerized chirp.

Cozmo, which came out on Oct. 17, is the latest toy from six-year-old San Francisco startup Anki. It’s also an attempt to bring the burgeoning fields of robotics and artificial intelligence to consumers. While companies large and small work on both, applications tend to be in high-end computing, defense and government. Anki is betting toys will give the technologies a foothold at home. And Gartner predicts sales of such smart toys will grow, globally, from 8 million units this year to 421 million by 2020.

Toymakers have been cramming circuit boards and wireless chips into their products for years. Mattel and Hasbro, for example, sell high-tech versions of classics Barbie and Furby. But toys like Cozmo differ in the way they interact with the people and objects around them, changing their behavior over time as their software “learns.” Right out of the box, cameras and sensors allow Cozmo to recognize individuals, avoid falls or bumping into obstacles and play simple games like keep-away. But Anki says it will evolve; in December it will be able to recognize pets and learn new words. “Every input trigger, no matter what happens to him, will influence his future behavior,” says Hanns Tappeiner, Anki’s president.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Invades the Home … In Toys” »

Osteoarthritis and senescent cells the connection becomes a little clearer!

Another step closer to the link between senescent cells and Osteoarthritis. Here we see mice receiving transplanted senescent cells which induce a disease state similar to Osteoarthritis. Yet further confirmation that the SENS approach to removing senescent cells is beneficial.

“Osteoarthritis (OA) is the leading form of arthritis in the elderly, causing pain, disability, and immobility. OA has been associated with accumulation of senescent cells in or near joints. However, evidence for a causal link between OA and cellular senescence is lacking. Here, we present a novel senescent cell transplantation model involving injection of small numbers of senescent or nonsenescent cells from the ear cartilage of luciferase-expressing mice into the knee joint area of wild-type mice. By using bioluminescence and 18FDG PET imaging, we could track the injected cells in vivo for more than 10 days. Transplanting senescent cells into the knee region caused leg pain, impaired mobility, and radiographic and histological changes suggestive of OA. Transplanting nonsenescent cells had less of these effects. Thus, senescent cells can induce an OA-like state and targeting senescent cells could be a promising strategy for treating OA.”

Continue reading “Transplanted Senescent Cells Induce an Osteoarthritis-Like Condition in Mice” »