Lifeboat Foundation

For a core of longevity true believers, the time to intervene is now.

“How old are you?” James Clement wanted to know.

I turn 50 this year. There’s a new creaking in my bones; my skin doesn’t snap back the way it used to. It’s developed a dull thickness—you can’t tickle me at all. My gums are packing it in and retreating toward my jaw. These changes have been gradual or inexplicably sudden, like the day when I could no longer see the typed words that are my profession. Presbyopia, the ophthalmologist told me. Totally normal. You’re middle-aged.

Continue reading “The transhumanists who want to live forever” »

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a new antibiotic that, when combined with two existing antibiotics, can tackle the most formidable and deadly forms of tuberculosis. The trio of drugs treats extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), along with cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) that have proven unresponsive to other treatments.

Tuberculosis is the single leading infectious killer in the world, infecting an estimated 10 million people in 2017 and killing 1.6 million of them. XDR-TB and MDR-TB are even more savage forms of the disease, which is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The drug-resistant strains of TB kill an estimated 60% and 40% of their victims, respectively.

MDR-TB strains can resist at least the two most powerful anti-TB drugs, isoniazid and rifampin. A strain gets into XDR-territory when they also become resistant to any fluoroquinolone drug, such as ciprofloxacin or levofloxacin, plus at least one of three injectable second-line drugs, which are amikacin, kanamycin, and capreomycin. Drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis infected an estimated 558,000 people in 2017.

‘Pain does not occur only in the skin’s nerve fibres, but also in this pain-sensitive organ’

A team of scientists at UC San Francisco and the National Institutes of Health have achieved another CRISPR first, one which may fundamentally alter the way scientists study brain diseases.

In a paper published August 15 in the journal Neuron, the researchers describe a technique that uses a special version of CRISPR developed at UCSF to systematically alter the activity of genes in human neurons generated from stem cells, the first successful merger of stem cell-derived cell types and CRISPR screening technologies.

Though mutations and other genetic variants are known to be associated with an increased risk for many neurological diseases, technological bottlenecks have thwarted the efforts of scientists working to understand exactly how these genes cause disease.

A new study outlines multiple ways in which epiblast stem cells can be reprogrammed back into a fully pluripotent state, paving the way for a better understanding of epigenetics.

The role of epigenetics

Epigenetics are why our cells, which all have the same DNA, differ in function. A bone cell has the same genetics as a nerve cell, but its epigenetic switches instruct it to perform the functions of a bone cell and not a nerve cell. Epigenetic alterations, however, are one of the primary hallmarks of aging. As we age, harmful epigenetic switches are activated and beneficial ones are deactivated, causing age-related dysfunction. This may even lead to inflammation, which causes further epigenetic damage, leading to a dangerous feedback loop.

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Ronald Kohanski, PhD. is the Deputy Director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging, and he gave the keynote for day two of our recent conference in New York City.

Promise yields hype; hype yields false promises.

Engineer.ai says it uses artificial intelligence to help automate app-development. Current and former staffers say the company inflates its technical prowess to attract customers and investors.

LinkSpace’s test flight on Saturday came on the heels of a historic delivery of a satellite into orbit last month by privately owned Chinese firm iSpace.

BEIJING (Reuters) — Chinese startup LinkSpace on Saturday completed its third test of a reusable rocket in five months, stepping up the pace in China’s race to develop a technology key to cheap space launches in an expected global boom in satellite deployment.

A new organ involved in the sensation of pain has been discovered by scientists, raising hopes that it could lead to the development of new painkilling drugs.

Researchers say they have discovered that the special cells that surround the pain-sensing nerve cells that extend into the outer layer of skin appear to be involved in sensing pain – a discovery that points to a new organ behind the feeling of “ouch!”.