Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Month: September 2018

Only a lucky handful of artists and a Japanese billionaire will take a trip on a rocketship to the moon with SpaceX. But the moonshot won’t just be televised; you’ll get to experience it from Earth in virtual reality.

That’s the message from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on the upcoming private moon flight of entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, which Musk unveiled to the world Monday (Sept. 17). Maezawa will launch on a trip around the moon on SpaceX’s new Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), and he plans to take between six and eight artists along for the ride. The flight, called the Lunar BFR Mission, could launch as early as 2023, and we’ll all be able to watch it live and in VR, Musk said.

“Moon mission will be livestreamed in high def VR,” Musk announced on Twitter Tuesday (Sept. 18), “so it’ll feel like you’re there in real-time minus a few seconds for speed of light.” That speed-of-light reference is apparently a nod to the ever-so-slight time lag for a signal to cross the 238,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) between Earth and the moon. [How SpaceX’s Passenger Moon Flight Will Work].

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The oldest known animal in history has been discovered thanks to some well-preserved animal fat that’s been sitting in northwest Russia for the past 558 million years. The find expands the confirmed existence of animals by three million years.

The ancient animal is a Dickinsonia, which looks more like a creature from a sci-fi movie than something you’d expect to run into on Earth. Dickinsonia were oval-shaped creatures spread flat like pancakes that could grow up to four and a half feet long. Previously, the oldest macroscopic animal in the geological record was the mollusc-like Kimberella from 555 million years ago.

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Buck Institute on the elimination of aging diseases for this and further generations:

September is Healthy Aging Month, and here at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, we are on a mission to end the threat of age-related disease for this and future generations. We believe it is possible for people to enjoy healthy lives at age 95 as much as they do at 25, and to achieve that, we’re seeking a more comprehensive understanding of the biology of aging itself.

Over the last century, average human lifespan has been increasing at a rate of approximately 2 years per decade, primarily due to advancements in antibiotics and other medical treatments, as well as improved public health efforts. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by 2035, people over the age of 65 will outnumber people under 18 for the first time in U.S. history. This means that there is an increasing population of older adults who suffer in the later years of life from chronic diseases including diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. While basic scientific research has provided a lot of insight into the causes and potential treatments of individual diseases, the root cause of these and many other chronic diseases is the biological process of aging.

The goal of the Buck Institute and several other aging research groups across the country is to study and understand more about the underlying mechanisms of aging so that we may find new therapeutic targets to help us delay or even eradicate age-related diseases. The results so far are very compelling. By focusing on the biological mechanisms of aging such as cellular senescence (normal cells stop dividing), chronic inflammation, and changes in metabolism, scientists have been able to extend the disease-free lifespan of laboratory model organisms including flies, worms, and mice. The challenge now is to translate these discoveries into the clinic and determine the best preventative practices to maintain health throughout our lifetime.

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This video is the second in a two-part series discussing big data. In this video, we’ll be discussing how we can utilize the vast quantities of data being generated as well as the implications of linked data on big data.

[0:33–4:43] — Starting off we’ll look at, what exactly big data is and delving deeper into the types of data, structured and unstructured and how they will be analyzed both by humans and machine learning (AI).

[4:43–11:37] — Following that we’ll discuss, how this data will be put to use and the next evolution of data, linked data, and how it will change the world and the web!

[11:37–12:37] — To conclude we’ll briefly overview the role cloud computing will play with big data!

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Despite much speculation and conspiracy theories, the reason for the mysterious closure of New Mexico’s Sunspot Solar Observatory by the FBI earlier this month was an ongoing child pornography investigation, court documents show.

The secret behind the 11-day closure of the facility was finally explained in newly unsealed FBI records and its application for a search warrant. According to the court documents, the federal agents were investigating a janitor suspected of using the observatory’s WiFi network to download child pornography.

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If you are able to get to Leiden there is an event in support of Lifespan.io on September 29, 12:00 AM – 2:00 PM CEST.

Ending aging and getting rid of its associated conditions is one of humanity’s most ancient dreams. Some of our earliest myths are about heroes going on a quest to find a way to make the whole of mankind forever young. With the current progress in aging research, this is not a dream anymore. In laboratories around the globe, researchers are conducting experiments that show that aging is amenable to medical intervention; we can slow it down and even reverse some age-related changes. As recent experiments on mice demonstrate, there are various ways to postpone aging. Among the most promising treatments are the elimination of harmful senescent cells, drugs that enhance metabolism, genetic and cellular therapies, and calorie restriction. These treatments extend the healthy period of life, and, as a welcome side effect, lifespan in mice by over 25–30%. Some of these methods are currently in human clinical trials and are expected to reach the market 5–10 years from now.

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When the California two-spot octopus isn’t attempting to bring more eight-legged cephalopods into this world, it prefers to be alone. Known to scientists as Octopus bimaculoides, the alien-like invertebrate spends most of its time hiding from the world or searching for food, asocial males avoiding asocial females until their biological clocks say it’s time to partner up. That is, until they are on MDMA. In a groundbreaking study released Thursday, researchers describe how octopuses on the drug act similarly to a socially anxious human on MDMA: They open up.

Gül Dölen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and the co-author of the new Current Biology paper. She tells Inverse that when octopuses are on MDMA, it’s like watching “an eight-armed hug.”

“They were very loose,” Dölen says. “They just embraced with multiple arms.”

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