Lifeboat Foundation

Today we will be discussing new research published in nature where researchers modified a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease into a more harmless form, allowing them to remove the damage caused by Alzheimer’s in human cells. This is especially important because the research was not conducted on mice but rather human cells, and shows a potential way to halt the formation of the plaques associated with Alzheimer’s in the first place.

Some time ago, we discussed the matter of beauty in the context of life extension; in particular, we tried to dispel the belief that the motivation behind life extension might be simply vanity. The article argued that there is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve youthful looks and attempted to explain the evolutionary reasons for our perception of beauty, but it did not discuss a perhaps even more important fact: aesthetics are not the main problem of elderly looks. The main problem, as it always is with age-related decay, is a decline in health and functionality.

What do elderly people look like?

If I ask you to imagine an old person, you’re likely to imagine somebody with grey hair, slack, wrinkled skin, and weak and flaccid muscles. While these features may vary from person to person, this is an accurate enough description of anyone past the age of 70, and it generally gets worse and worse as aging progresses. Exercise might help improve your physical condition, and perhaps a good facial cream might make you look slightly younger than your chronological age, but, after a certain point, the signs of age-related decay are unmistakable and irreversible.

Today, we have a guest article from Dr. Marion Tible, a scientist, and author over at the aging research-focused blog Long Long Life. What follows is an introduction to the senescent cell-clearing therapies known as senolytics, these therapies are poised to enter human trials and if successful could revolutionize how we treat age-related diseases.

What are senolytics?

Discovered in 2015 by a team from Mayo Clinic and the Scripps Research Institute in the United States, senolytics are a growing trend in the anti-aging community. They are very promising drugs in the fight against cellular senescence, a hallmark of aging.

“Here are some AI generated nude portraits I’ve been working on🍑

Usually the machine just paints people as blobs of flesh with tendrils and limbs randomly growing out — I think it’s really surreal. I wonder if that’s how machines see us…”

Photo: General Atomics

General Atomics has been awarded a contract to develop electromagnetic railgun technology for the Army as the service pursues cutting-edge weapons to take on advanced adversaries.

The Army’s growing interest in this capability comes after years of research by the Navy, which has yet to field one of the weapons.

Continue reading “Armys Pursuit of Electromagnetic Railguns Heats Up” »

There are certain classes of technology that, by their nature, put those who possess their secrets in danger: Nuclear weapons. Ballistic missiles. Advanced encryption software.

Now, add unmanned aerial vehicles—drones—to that list.

A Palestinian electrical engineer who had published research on drones was assassinated in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported (paywall). A helmeted person on a motorcycle fired 10 shots at 35 year-old Fadi al-Batsh, killing him as he walked to a mosque for morning prayers.

Continue reading “The Israel-linked killing of Fadi al-Batsh in Malaysia shows that drone technology is now dangerous enough to kill for” »

A spinning black hole could provide enough energy to power civilization for trillions of years — and create the biggest bomb known to the universe. Using the rotation of a black hole to supercharge electromagnetic waves could create massive amounts of energy or equally massive amounts of destruction. Kurzgesagt explains what it would take to harness a black hole and the potential risks of the process.

Accelerating rejuvenation therapies to repair the damage of aging. Berlin, March, 15 — 17.

1. blame the American public that lost serious interest in science in the 1990’s, And 2. the US government who’s only real interest now is war, and how to spend money on war.

If you want to crunch the world’s biggest problems, head east. According to a newly published ranking, not only is China home to the world’s two fastest supercomputers, it also has 202 of the world’s fastest 500 such devices—more than any other nation. Meanwhile, America’s fastest device limps into fifth place in the charts, and the nation occupies just 144 of the top 500 slots, making it second according to that metric.

The world’s fastest supercomputer is still TaihuLight, housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China, and pictured above. Capable of performing 93 quadrillion calculations per second, it’s almost three times faster than the second-place Tianhe-2. The Department of Energy’s fifth-placed Titan supercomputer, housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, performs 17.6 quadrillion calculations per second—making it less than a fifth as fast as TaihuLight.

Continue reading “America Just Can’t Match China’s Exploding Supercomputing Power” »