Lifeboat Foundation

My new Huff Post Op-Ed on the Immortality Bus and transhumanism: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/why-a-presidenti…28826.html And if you haven’t donated something to the Indiegogo campaign for the bus, please consider doing so, as there’s only four days left and we’re currently short $9000. Anyone from any country can donate. Please also share the campaign. Thanks! https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/immortality-bus-with-pres…406#/story

On my tour called the “Immortality Bus,” I’m hoping to share with others that we should support a society and culture that is strongly pro-science and pro-longevity. My team and I plan to have embedded journalists aboard the bus, documenting our trip and enlivening the conversation.

Unfortunately, many people in America and around the world — especially those who believe in afterlives — are neutral or even oppose stopping biological death and aging with science. They feel it challenges what is natural in the human species. Transhumanists call these people “deathists,” those who believe and accept that death is a desirable fate.

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via The Spudd.

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It can be all too easy to drift through life on automatic, forever putting things off, but statistics and data can give a physicality to things we barely notice or consider most of the time. These diagrams might just give you an entirely new perspective on your life.

Read the full article at The Longevity Reporter: http://www.longevityreporter.org/blog/2015/7/16/think-80-yea…hink-again.

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Peter Thiel, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Maris, Mark Zuckerberg…investment in biotech by leading figures in the world of technology is reaching new heights, with the regenerative medicine market projected to reach $20 billion by 2025 and the overall anti-aging market $345.8 billion by 2018.

These forecasts combined with a recent biotech boom mean that the economic reasons for investing are becoming clear and rising demand is virtually inevitable as the proportion of older individuals continues to grow to unparalleled levels. Bill Gates may have labelled anti-aging efforts as ‘egocentric’, but the investment doesn’t appear to be due to economic reasons alone; there is also a strong humanitarian and aspirational aspect that links some of these individuals together — the desire to utilise technology to create a better society.

‘With all being from a scientific background, Page, Brin and Maris particularly are clear in their belief that science holds the key to radically improving both the human condition and the world we live in — the pinnacle of this being radically prolonging human lifespan. In a recent Bloomberg interview Maris points out we live in an era where science can make all the tools available for any audacious vision out there…To these tech billionaires, evolution is meant to be transcended, and the resources put into organ regeneration, drugs that control ageing, or reprogramming DNA reflects their conviction that people have the right to lead better lives.’

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Misfolding proteins and aggregates are a serious problem for a cell; a great range of research has been able to link poor protein ‘quality control’ with a whole range of diseases, perhaps most famously Alzheimer’s disease. Recent work also suggests that the ‘heat shock’ response, a mechanism that protects against misfolding and corrects badly made proteins, may also become impaired with aging. This gradual deterioration could turn out to be one of the most significant drivers of both aging and age-related disease.

In research that support this theory, a recent paper provides evidence that the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a cellular compartment which is responsible for creating and correctly forming protein structures, loses its oxidative power with age. This means that it loses the ability to form a type of bond called a disulphide bridge, a strong chemical bond which normally stabilises protein structures and holds them in particular shapes. The chemical environment within the ER was shown to change with age, disrupting the delicate equilibrium in the cell and leading to increased oxidative damage in other areas. Proteins moving through the ER on a production line often require disulphide linkages to mature correctly and stabilise their structure, but without this step they’re unable to do so and remain unstable.

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This is the product that Google wanted to buy for $300 million and just got denied…

The first vegan burger that ‘bleeds’ like meat.

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The brain’s glymphatic pathway clears harmful wastes, especially during sleep. This lateral position could prove to be the best position for the brain-waste clearance process (credit: Stony Brook University)

Sleeping in the lateral, or side position, as compared to sleeping on one’s back or stomach, may more effectively remove brain waste, and could reduce the chances of developing Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases, according to researchers at Stony Brook University.

Stony Brook University researchers discovered this in experiments with rodents by using dynamic contrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to image the brain’s glymphatic pathway, a complex system that clears wastes and other harmful chemical solutes from the brain. They also used kinetic modeling to quantify the CSF-ISF exchange rates in anesthetized rodents’ brains in lateral, prone, and supine positions.

Continue reading “Sleeping on your side may clear waste from your brain most effectively” »

A thing of beauty!

We all need a little cosmic perspective from time to time, and this is as good as it gets. NASA has released this truly stunning GIF of the Moon passing in front of the Earth. The image sequence offers an unprecedented look at the relationship between the two planetary objects, and also gives a detailed look at the rarely seen far side of the Moon.

The resulting GIF is so amazing that it’s almost unbelievable, but the images are completely real. The whole sequence was taken by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (or “EPIC,” a wonderfully appropriate acronym) on the DSCOVR satellite that was launched in February.

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