Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses — such as Zika — mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

While there have been more than 7300 dengue cases reported in the United States between 2010 and 2020, a majority are contracted in Asia and the Caribbean, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, however, there were 41 travel-related cases in 2020, compared with 71 cases that were transmitted locally.

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FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: FLIR) announced it has won a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to rapidly develop novel fabrics with embedded catalysts and chemistries that can fight and reduce chemical and biological threats upon contact.

The revolutionary fabrics will be incorporated into protective suits and other equipment such as boots, gloves, and eye protection that can be worn by troops on the battlefield, medical experts, healthcare workers, and more. FLIR received $11.2 million in initial funding for the potential five-year effort worth up to $20.5 million, including options.

The goal of DARPA’s Personalized Protective Biosystems (PPB) program is to reduce the substantial weight and physiological burden of current Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) so soldiers and other specialists can better perform their tasks. PPB will combine novel, lightweight protective materials with new prophylactic medical technologies that mitigate chemical and biological threats at vulnerable tissue barriers, notably the eyes, skin and lungs.

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This method of finding light patterns that penetrate an object largely undisturbed could also be used for imaging procedures. “In hospitals, X-rays are used to look inside the body—they have a shorter wavelength and can therefore penetrate our skin. But the way a light wave penetrates an object depends not only on the wavelength, but also on the waveform,” says Matthias.

Why is sugar not transparent? Because light that penetrates a piece of sugar is scattered, altered and deflected in a highly complicated way. However, as a research team from TU Wien (Vienna) and Utrecht University (Netherlands) has now been able to show, there is a class of very special light waves for which this does not apply: for any specific disordered medium—such as the sugar cube you may just have put in your coffee—tailor-made light beams can be constructed that are practically not changed by this medium, but only attenuated. The light beam penetrates the medium, and a light pattern arrives on the other side that has the same shape as if the medium were not there at all.

This idea of “scattering-invariant modes of ” can also be used to specifically examine the interior of objects. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Photonics.

An astronomical number of possible wave forms

The waves on a turbulent water surface can take on an infinite number of different shapes—and in a similar way, can also be made in countless different forms. “Each of these light wave patterns is changed and deflected in a very specific way when you send it through a disordered medium,” explains Prof. Stefan Rotter from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at TU Wien.

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Aubrey de Grey’s talk during the South Summit that took place in Spain last October 2020. Aubrey explains why he thinks science and technology is close to bringing aging under complete medical control.

He also describes how along the process we will reach what he calls “Longevity Escape Velocity”. Once we reach it, we will be able to stay one step ahead of the curve of aging, and extend significantly, eventually indefinetely, human health and lifespan.

During the South Summit that took place in Spain last October 2020, gerontologist Aubrey de Grey explains why he thinks science and technology is close to bringing aging under complete medical control.

He also describes how along the process we will reach what he calls longevity escape velocity. Once we reach it, we will be able to stay one step ahead of the curve of aging, and extend significantly, eventually indefinetely, human health and lifespan.

El video cuenta con subtítulos en Español.

Link a versión original sin subtítulos: https://youtu.be/Akl6xiN68M0

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In a new study published in Cell Stem Cell, a team led by USC Stem Cell scientist Michael Bonaguidi, Ph.D., demonstrates that neural stem cells—the stem cells of the nervous system—age rapidly.

“There is chronological aging, and there is , and they are not the same thing,” said Bonaguidi, an Assistant Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Gerontology and Biomedical Engineering at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “We’re interested in the biological aging of neural stem cells, which are particularly vulnerable to the ravages of time. This has implications for the normal cognitive decline that most of us experience as we grow older, as well as for dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and .”

In the study, first author Albina Ibrayeva, a Ph.D. candidate in the Bonaguidi Lab in the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, joined her colleagues in looking at the brains of young, middle-aged and .

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Food is big business.

In the U.S., the weight-loss industry is worth $78 billion.

Meat is worth $218 billion.

Sugar processing is worth $11 billion.

Soybeans are worth $65 billion.

As a point of comparison, the U.S. cigarette industry is worth about $50 billion.

We are kidding ourselves if we think that corporate interests have no effect on nutrition research. For example, Coca-Cola spent “$132.8 million on scientific research and partnerships over a five-year period” from 2010 to 2015 as a part of a campaign to absolve sweetened beverages of contributing to America’s obesity epidemic. (And it worked.)

In 2003, when I was roughly 14, my parents sat my brother and me down at the kitchen table. “We’re going to make a lifestyle change as a family,” they said.

I already knew that “lifestyle change” was code for “diet.” My parents—like many well-educated, upper-middle-class Americans—were frequently reevaluating their food choices throughout my childhood. I can remember phases of forgoing beef, milk, and fish, all for fears of lifestyle diseases. This time, our newest lifestyle change was coming for fruit.

In pace with every other time we’d changed our diet, my father presented a book: Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. My brother wasn’t old enough to read it, but I was.

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The film features Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence; Japanese roboticist, Hiroshi Ishiguro; Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human; Ben Goertzel, founder of Singularity.net; and Deepak Chopra, who is creating his own A.I. mind twin.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s the first trailer for Hot Docs opener Artificial Immortality by filmmaker Ann Shin.

The documentary explores the latest advancements in AI, robotics and biotech with visionaries who argue for a new age of post-biological life. It poses the questions: if you were able to create an immortal version of yourself, would you?; and will AI be the best, or the last thing we ever do as a species?

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Antisense oligonucleotide therapy works by altering the RNA, the messenger that carries instructions from your DNA to crank out proteins.

An article in Nature Reviews Neurology describes antisense oligonucleotides as “short, synthetic, single-strand” molecules, which can alter RNA to cause protein creation to be reduced, enhanced, or modified.

In the Penn study, the targeted protein was created by the mutated LCA gene.

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