Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2413
May 31, 2017
First Look: Behind-the-scenes with DragonflEye
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: biotech/medical
Researchers from Draper and Howard Hughes Medical Institute performed DragonflEye flight tests at Janelia Research Campus. http://bit.ly/2m2STa1
May 31, 2017
Dr. Michael Lustgarten – Using an Evidence Based Approach for Optimal Health and Longevity
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
LEAF interviews Dr. Michael Lustgarten author of ‘Microbial Burden: A Major Cause Of Aging And Age-Related Disease’.
As part of our series covering the various researchers working on aging, we finally caught up with Dr. Michael Lustgarten author of ‘Microbial Burden: A Major Cause Of Aging And Age-Related Disease’ and we did this short interview which we hope may be of interest to you.
Hi Mike can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work?
May 31, 2017
Chan Zuckerberg donate $3 billion toward curing all disease
Posted by Dan Kummer in category: biotech/medical
For people looking for funding, might be worth a shot to investigate.
The Facebook co-founder and his wife, who is a pediatrician, say they believe we can prevent, diagnose and treat or cure all illnesses in their child’s lifetime.
May 30, 2017
Zoltan Istvan: The Economy Of The Future Will Be Powered By Neural Lace
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, economics, employment, finance, government, robotics/AI, transhumanism
A write-up on about neural lace and the future economy: https://altleft.host/zoltan-istvan-the-economy-of-the-future…ural-lace/ #transhumanism
Zoltan Istvan, a leading Transhuman, shows us that the economic system of Technocracy needs Transhuman citizens to make it work. This is not surprising because Transhumanism and Technocracy are two sides of the same coin. ⁃ TN Editor.
The battle for the “soul” of the global economy is underway. The next few decades will likely decide whether capitalism survives or is replaced with a techno-fuelled quasi-socialism where robots do most of the jobs while humans live off government support, likely a designated guaranteed or basic income.
Continue reading “Zoltan Istvan: The Economy Of The Future Will Be Powered By Neural Lace” »
May 30, 2017
Death gives meaning to life
Posted by Nicola Bagalà in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
Death gives as much meaning to life as having your stomach ripped out gives meaning to having a stomach.
You’ve probably heard this sentence a bagillion times. It’s the kind of statement people assume to be deeply philosophical and meaningful by default. In my humble opinion, though, it’s a pile of sh—oh, well, you know what.
If death gives meaning to life, I suppose diseases give meaning to being healthy, and thus we should leave some diseases around so that people can appreciate not being sick, right? How often do you say yourself, ‘Hmm… I haven’t been sick in a while… I should get one of those nasty cancers, before I stop appreciating how it feels being healthy. Where’s my emergency plutonium bar?’ Personally, I don’t say that to myself very often. I mean, I can totally appreciate the feeling of not being kicked in the nuts even without ever being kicked in the nuts, really. And I can appreciate not having a certain disease even if I’m not aware the disease exists. I can totally enjoy life without dying, and I could still enjoy it even if it were impossible for me to die.
People reason by analogies. They know there are some concepts that would be more difficult to grasp without their opposite, and think the analogy can be extended to ANYTHING AT ALL. For example, if you’ve never been sad, you can’t be sure just how different it is from being happy. I’m not sure how you can get from this to ‘you need to be mortal to enjoy life’, especially when there are no real-life examples of immortal people incapable to enjoy life because of their immortality. Can you smell the pungent aroma of foxes disdaining grapes?
May 29, 2017
The Need for Better Aging Biomarkers
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
There is an urgent need to develop better biomarkers and to use the in cost effective packages for accurate measurement of aging.
As human life expectancy has increased throughout the 20th and 21st centuries this has led to a steady increase in the population of older people. With that increase has come the rise of age-related diseases and disabilities. As a result it is becoming ever more important to develop preventative strategies to monitor and maintain health as well as therapies that directly address the various aging processes to delay or prevent the onset of age-related diseases.
One of the ways we can do this is by developing more effective ways to measure how someone is aging, this means developing high quality aging biomarkers. The challenge in creating such biomarkers has always been the fundamental question – what do we measure?
May 29, 2017
Bioelectricity is a new weapon to fight dangerous infection
Posted by Roman Mednitzer in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, neuroscience
By Kim Thurler, Tufts University
(MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass.) — Changing the natural electrical signaling that exists in cells outside the nervous system can improve resistance to life-threatening bacterial infections, according to new research from Tufts University biologists. The researchers found that administering drugs, including those already used in humans for other purposes, to make the cell interior more negatively charged strengthens tadpoles’ innate immune response to E. coli infection and injury. This reveals a novel aspect of the immune system – regulation by non-neural bioelectricity – and suggests a new approach for clinical applications in human medicine. The study is published online May 26, 2017, in npj Regenerative Medicine, a Nature Research journal.
“All cells, not just nerve cells, naturally generate and receive electrical signals. Being able to regulate such non-neural bioelectricity with the many ion channel and neurotransmitter drugs that are already human-approved gives us an amazing new toolkit to augment the immune system’s ability to resist infections,” said the paper’s corresponding author Michael Levin, Ph.D., Vannevar Bush Professor of Biology and Director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology in the School of Arts and Sciences. Levin is also an Associate Faculty member of the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Continue reading “Bioelectricity is a new weapon to fight dangerous infection” »
May 29, 2017
For The First Time Ever, CRISPR Gene Editing Was Used in Humans. So What’s Next?
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, space
- With Chinese scientists announcing that they have tested CRISPR on a human for the first time, the U.S. must decide soon whether it will be a leader or a follower in advancing the tech.
- While gene editing technology could be used in nefarious ways, it could also cure diseases and improve millions of lives, but we won’t know how effective it is until we begin human trials.
While the middle part of the 20th century saw the world’s superpowers racing to explore space, the first global competition of this century is being set in a much smaller arena: our DNA.
May 27, 2017
Scientists Surprised to Find No Two Neurons Are Genetically Alike
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience
The genetic makeup of any given brain cell differs from all others. That realization may provide clues to a range of psychiatric diseases.
- By Simon Makin on May 3, 2017