Lifeboat Foundation

Isolated from the Comfrey plant, Allantoin is a popular ingredient in many skincare regimens. According to new research it may increase longevity by mimicking the benefits of calorie restriction.

Calorie restriction is a subject of debate within the longevity community, and on animal models success is variable. However, it remains one of the most proven ways of extending lifespan in many species, and molecules that mimic the effect at the molecular level have also been associated with protective effects — up-regulating repair and stress response mechanisms. One such molecule is resveratrol, which is responsible for the relatively recent red wine hype.

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US army’s report visualises augmented soldiers & killer robots.

The US Army’s recent report “Visualizing the Tactical Ground Battlefield in the Year 2050” describes a number of future war scenarios that raise vexing ethical dilemmas. Among the many tactical developments envisioned by the authors, a group of experts brought together by the US Army Research laboratory, three stand out as both plausible and fraught with moral challenges: augmented humans, directed-energy weapons, and autonomous killer robots. The first two technologies affect humans directly, and therefore present both military and medical ethical challenges. The third development, robots, would replace humans, and thus poses hard questions about implementing the law of war without any attending sense of justice.

Augmented humans. Drugs, brain-machine interfaces, neural prostheses, and genetic engineering are all technologies that may be used in the next few decades to enhance the fighting capability of soldiers, keep them alert, help them survive longer on less food, alleviate pain, and sharpen and strengthen their cognitive and physical capabilities. All raise serious ethical and bioethical difficulties.

Continue reading “Ethics on the near-future battlefield” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=UPiCoKL2hzU

A non-profit organization called “Roots Up” has designed a greenhouse that collects moisture from the air, which then is used to water the plants.

This new design can help farmers in areas where the lack of proper temperature and rainfall make it difficult to grow crops.

Continue reading “With This Greenhouse It Is Now Possible To Grow Crops In The Desert” »

MIT Media Lab graduate Will Patrick has designed a prototype desktop bioreactor that could enable the production of pharmaceutical drugs at home.

The cylinder-shaped Farma kitchen appliance could be used to grow, measure, filter and dry synthetically designed microbes.

Continue reading “Farma bioreactor could let owners brew drugs at home” »

The explosion of gene-editing methods is transforming medicine, agriculture, and possibly the future of the human species.

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Artificial meat will be on our plates sooner than we may realize.

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Scientists have sequenced the entire genome of the tardigrade, AKA the water bear, for the first time. And it turns out that this weird little creature has the most foreign genes of any animal studied so far – or to put it another way, roughly one-sixth of the tardigrade’s genome was stolen from other species. We have to admit, we’re kinda not surprised.

A little background here for those who aren’t familiar with the strangeness that is the tardigrade – the microscopic water creature grows to just over 1 mm on average, and is the only animal that can survive in the harsh environment of space. It can also withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, can cope with ridiculous amounts of pressure and radiation, and can live for more than 10 years without food or water. Basically, it’s nearly impossible to kill, and now scientists have shown that its DNA is just as bizarre as it is.

So what’s foreign DNA and why does it matter that tardigrades have so much of it? The term refers to genes that have come from another organism via a process known as horizontal gene transfer, as opposed to being passed down through traditional reproduction.

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By 2030 solar energy will have the capacity to meet all of our energy needs. The production of food and clean water will also be revolutionized.

Kurzweil believes solar energy could satisfy 100% our power needs. — CNN

If we could capture one part in ten thousand of the sunlight that falls on the Earth we could meet 100% of our energy needs, using this renewable and environmentally friendly source.

As we apply new molecular scale technologies to solar panels, the cost per watt is coming down rapidly. Already Deutsche Bank, in a recent report, wrote “The cost of unsubsidized solar power is about the same as the cost of electricity from the grid in India and Italy. By 2014 even more countries will achieve solar ‘grid parity.’”

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil: This is your future” »

It’s still early days in the bacteria becomes our food production process. However, several Silicon Valley scientists are creating lab-grown edibles of the truly bizarre or mixing up animal substitutes based on some interesting ingredients. Here are 10 of them.

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