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May 14, 2019

Death could soon become a curable disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, transhumanism

I’m excited to share my new #transhumanism article out at Metro, on of UK’s largest sites. It’s part of their #FutureofEverything series. Check out the artwork too:


Whatever science transhumanists want to use to become a better species, overcoming biological death is the movement’s primary goal.

Most deaths in the world are caused by ageing and disease. Approximately 150,000 people die every day on planet Earth, causing devastating loss to loved ones and communities.

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May 14, 2019

This morning

Posted by in category: space travel

I’m at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington D.C. sharing about NASA’s plans to use the Moon as a proving ground for our ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars. Watch:

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May 14, 2019

It’s not just fish, plastic pollution harms the bacteria that help us breathe

Posted by in category: biological

“We looked at a group of tiny, green bacteria called Prochlorococcus which is the most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth, with a global population of around three octillion (~1027) individuals,” says Sasha.


Ten per cent of the oxygen we breathe comes from just one kind of bacteria in the ocean. Now laboratory tests have shown that these bacteria are susceptible to plastic pollution, according to a study published in Communications Biology.

“We found that exposure to chemicals leaching from interfered with the growth, photosynthesis and oxygen production of Prochlorococcus, the ocean’s most abundant photosynthetic bacteria,” says lead author and Macquarie University researcher Dr. Sasha Tetu.

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May 14, 2019

The Rise of India’s New Billionaires (And the Fall of the Old)

Posted by in categories: business, economics

While old business clans continue to dominate India’s rich lists, a tenfold expansion in its economy since its opening in the 1990s has spawned new tycoons in fields like technology. The number of billionaires in India more than doubled to 119 between 2013 and 2018, according to Knight Frank. And the country will lead the global growth in ultrahigh net worth individuals, with its numbers rising 39 percent to 2,697 by 2023, the researcher estimates.


India is going through one of the greatest periods of wealth creation — and destruction — all at the same time.

A new breed of self-made entrepreneurs is vaulting into the ranks of the wealthy, offsetting billions lost by debt-burdened industrialists and members of the country’s old dynasties. The changes are set to help India’s ultra-rich population grow at the world’s fastest pace.

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May 13, 2019

NASA To Put Woman On Moon By 2024; Commercial Space Will Play Major Role

Posted by in category: space

NASA finally seems serious about a crewed lunar return; this time with the first female astronaut to walk on the Moon’s surface.

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May 13, 2019

Common food additive E171 found to affect gut microbiota

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health, nanotechnology

University of Sydney research provides new evidence that nanoparticles, which are present in many food items, may have a substantial and harmful influence on human health.

The study investigated the impacts of food additive E171 ( nanoparticles) which is commonly used in high quantities in foods and some medicines as a whitening agent. Found in more than 900 such as chewing gum and mayonnaise, E171 is consumed in high proportion everyday by the .

Published in Frontiers in Nutrition, the mice study found that consumption of food containing E171 has an impact on the gut microbiota (defined by the trillions of bacteria that inhabit the gut) which could trigger diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases and colorectal cancer.

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May 13, 2019

CRISPR might soon create spicy tomatoes

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Looking for perfect heat and lots of it? Gene engineers in Brazil think they might be able to create eye-watering tomatoes.

Hot stuff: Even though chili peppers and tomato plants diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago, tomatoes still possess the genetic pathway needed to make capsaicinoids, the molecules that make chilis hot.

Now, Agustin Zsögön from the Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil writes in the journal Trends in Plant Science that gene-editing tools like CRISPR could turn it back on.

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May 13, 2019

Electric food – the new sci-fi diet that could save our planet

Posted by in category: food

Growing food without plants or animals sounds far-fetched. But it could stop environmental destruction, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot.

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May 13, 2019

This Hubble photo captures more than 265,000 galaxies in one image

Posted by in category: cosmology

The image mosaic was created using 16 years’ worth of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and it shows roughly 265,000 galaxies stretching back 13.3 billion years, to just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

Background: This isn’t the first Hubble deep-field image. The first one was released back in 1995, with further deep-field images following in 2003, 2004, and 2012. However, this is by far the most comprehensive. It was created by weaving together several of the previous Hubble photos. The image, dubbed the Hubble Legacy Field, represents 7,500 separate exposures. It contains about 30 times as many galaxies as the previous shots. The image above is just a section of the whole: you can see the full thing here.

A time machine: Because many of the galaxies Hubble captures are so far away, it has taken billions of years for their light to reach us. That makes the telescope a sort of time machine, letting us see galaxies as they were billions of years ago.

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May 13, 2019

Elon Musk’s startup connecting brains to computers raises $39 million

Posted by in categories: computing, Elon Musk, neuroscience

Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup raises $39 MILLION as it seeks to develop tech that will connect the human brain with computers…


An Elon Musk-backed startup looking to connect human brains to computers has raised most of its $51 million funding target. According to a report Neuralink has raised $39 million.

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