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Sep 8, 2016

Blockchain Art Exhibitions Explore the Bitcoin Technology’s Future — By Steven Norton | The Wall Street Journal

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, media & arts

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“That contemporary artists are exploring blockchain further suggests the technology has reached a level of cultural significance beyond bitcoin’s initial hype.”

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Sep 8, 2016

Obama on Climate Change: The Trends Are ‘Terrifying’ — By Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Mark Landler and Coral Davenport | The New York Times

Posted by in category: environmental

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“In an exclusive interview on his legacy, President Obama speaks to The Times’s Mark Landler and Coral Davenport on climate change while visiting Marine Corps Base Hawaii.”

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Sep 8, 2016

Scientists ‘find key to longevity’ in Italian village where one in 10 people live beyond 100 years

Posted by in category: life extension

Acciaroli vila italiana, onde um em cada 10 pessoas vivem além de 100 anos.

Depois de passar seis meses na área, pesquisadores da Universidade de Sapineza de Roma e da Escola de Medicina Sandiego encontraram que os idosos da região têm invulgarmente boa circulação sanguínea para a sua idade.

A equipe de pesquisa analisou amostras de sangue de mais de 80 residentes, e descobriu extraordinariamente baixos níveis de adrenomedullin, um hormônio que alarga os vasos sanguíneos.

Continue reading “Scientists ‘find key to longevity’ in Italian village where one in 10 people live beyond 100 years” »

Sep 8, 2016

Google, Singularity University futurist Ray Kurzweil on the amazing future he sees — thanks to technology

Posted by in categories: business, computing, engineering, health, life extension, nanotechnology, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI, singularity

Ray Kurzweil is a futurist, a director of engineering at Google and a co-founder of the Singularity University think tank at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. He is a nonfiction author and creator of several inventions.

Kurzweil met with the Silicon Valley Business Journal to discuss how technology’s exponential progress is rapidly reshaping our future through seismic shifts in information technology and computing power, energy, nanotechnology, robotics, health and longevity.

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Sep 8, 2016

THINKING Podcast

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, health, life extension, neuroscience

Biohacking, nootropics, and the notion of optimizing one’s human performance are on a rapid rise. Nootrobox founders Geoffrey Woo and Michael Brandt are some of the foremost thinkers in this space, and they are here to have intellectual conversations that will make you THINK.

Episode 9 features Aubrey de Grey, the Chief Scientist Officer of the SENS Research Foundation. In this episode, Geoff, Michael, and Aubrey discuss the nuances of aging and health and their differing opinions and tactics of how to fully optimize these notions.

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Sep 7, 2016

Reconciling dwarf galaxies with dark matter

Posted by in category: cosmology

Dwarf galaxies are enigmas wrapped in riddles. Although they are the smallest galaxies, they represent some of the biggest mysteries about our universe. While many dwarf galaxies surround our own Milky Way, there seem to be far too few of them compared with standard cosmological models, which raises a lot of questions about the nature of dark matter and its role in galaxy formation.

New theoretical modeling work from Andrew Wetzel, who holds a joint fellowship between Carnegie and Caltech, offers the most accurate predictions to date about the dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way’s neighborhood. Wetzel achieved this by running the highest-resolution and most-detailed simulation ever of a galaxy like our Milky Way. His findings, published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, help to resolve longstanding debates about how these dwarf galaxies formed.

One of the biggest mysteries of dwarf galaxies has to do with , which is why scientists are so fascinated by them.

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Sep 7, 2016

Parkinson’s Disease Diagnosed with help from Virtual Reality

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience, virtual reality

I cannot wait to see how we can use VR for obtaining additional insights on other central nervous system diseases and disorders such as MS, Dystonia, GBM, etc.


Medical applications for VR continue to spread. Just a few weeks ago I wrote about how Paraplegics can learn to walk again with help from Virtual Reality. Scientists from Tomsk Polytechnic University and the Siberian State Medical University, in Russia, believe that it could be the future of diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

Methods to diagnosis many of these conditions is accomplished by visual assessment in most parts of Russia. The brain scanning technology such as a CAT scan or MRI to confirm the diagnosis is only available in a handful of cities. The VR system being developed would be cheap and easy to roll out across the country.

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Sep 7, 2016

Surprisingly, Plant Microbes May Be An Answer To Our Growing Food Needs

Posted by in categories: biological, food, sustainability, transportation

By Sveta McShane: Organizations as diverse as the United Nations and Monsanto are in agreement that we need to double our food production globally by 2050 to feed the world’s population…

Awaken

But our current agricultural process is one of the biggest contributors to global warming. It emits more greenhouses gases than all the world’s cars combined and is a major consumer and polluter of our precious water resources.

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Sep 7, 2016

3 Big Trends Shaking Up the Energy Industry

Posted by in categories: energy, singularity, transportation

We are at the cusp of an energy revolution.

This post is a look at how three technologies — solar, batteries, and electric vehicles (EVs) — are poised to disrupt a $6 trillion energy industry over the next two decades.

I had the chance to sit down with Ramez Naam, chair of Energy and Environmental Systems at Singularity University and acclaimed author of the Nexus series, to discuss these major forces and their implications.

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Sep 7, 2016

Device Detects Malignant Melanoma Type to Prescribe Proper Medication

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, nanotechnology

NICE.


Scientists at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, the University of Basel, and the University Hospital Basel have developed and have been testing a device that can screen people with malignant melanoma for a spcific genetic mutation. About half of malignant melanoma cases involve the BRAF gene that results in rapid cell division and drugs targeting this type of cancer are available. The problem is that without knowing if a patient exhibits the mutation, it is dangerous to prescribe the medications since they will not work and will only cause additional problems.

The new device was used to analyze malignant melanoma tissue samples and to find whether the relevant genetic sequence is present. It relies on microscopic cantilevers, some of which have a coating to which the particular genetic sequence sticks to. Other cantilevers have a coating without the sequence. RNA isolated from the biopsy samples was then introduced into the device and the molecules that stuck to the cantilevers made them bend. This bending can be detected, pointing to the presence of the searched for mutation.

Continue reading “Device Detects Malignant Melanoma Type to Prescribe Proper Medication” »