Lifeboat Foundation

I’m not that interested in this on the movie end, because i think most movies already suck, and couldnt really get any worse.

AUDREY HEPBURN DIED in 1993, but in 2013 she nevertheless starred in an advertisement for Galaxy, a type of chocolate bar. She was shown riding a bus along the Amalfi coast before catching the eye of a passing hunk in a convertible. In 2016 Peter Cushing, who died in 1994, reprised his role as the villainous Grand Moff Tarkin in the Star Wars film “Rogue One”. Such resurrections are not new, but they are still uncommon enough to count as news. Yet advances in special effects—and, increasingly, in artificial intelligence (AI)—are making it ever easier to manufacture convincing forgeries of human beings.

In recent months this has led to concern that propagandists will use the technology to generate videos in which political figures appear to say compromising things. A video created by BuzzFeed, a news website, in April shows Barack Obama apparently saying “We’re entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time,” for example. In May a Belgian political party produced a fake video of Donald Trump saying implausible things about Belgium’s climate policy. In both cases the video looks slightly off, and the voice is provided by an impersonator. But the technology is improving fast, prompting a dozen AI researchers to place bets on whether a fake video will disrupt America’s midterm elections later this year. (Tim Hwang, a Harvard academic, is overseeing the wager.)

Continue reading “What if AI made actors immortal?” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nufc8vTsbBY

New video from Undoing Aging 2018: Chandan Sen, The Ohio State University, presenting his work on Tissue Nanotransfection: Reprogramming the Tissue Microenvironment in vivo.

ANNOUNCING THE LONGEVITY FILM COMPETITION

Please join in the crusade of eliminating age-related disease by making a video, and not only potentially help save lots of lives, but also win the first prize of $10,000! Second prize is a trip to meet Dr. Aubrey de Grey! This international (short) film competition is presented by the SENS Research Foundation, the International Longevity Alliance and Heales. The winning film will be chosen by our remarkable jury. For more information on how to compete and to sign up please visit www.longevityfilmcompetition.com

You’re probably familiar with the feeling of slight disappointment that you may have when a good thing—say, a nice trip—is over. Just as you say that it’s too bad that the experience is already finished, someone will probably say that you had a good time nonetheless; an innocent, fitting expression to cheer you up a little bit. This phrase can be harmlessly used in a variety of circumstances, but there’s one in which it really doesn’t fit at all, yet people keep using it: when somebody dies of aging.

Not quite the same thing

In the summer of 2011, my 99-year-old grandmother was dying. She was relatively fine one day, and then on the next day, for no apparent reason, she was in bed, barely conscious. Throughout the subsequent month, she never got out of bed; all her physical necessities were being taken care of by my aunt, who was assisting her day and night. She was drip-fed for the entire month until her death. The doctors couldn’t really do anything for her, and my aunt, stressed to her limit, was torn between the sight of the non-life her mother was going through and the thought that suspending the drip feed would possibly have been the more humane choice. The drip was never suspended, and eventually, my grandmother died.

Researchers have manipulated the immune system to respond more aggressively to cancer according to a new study [1].

Manipulating macrophages

We have discussed modulating the immune system multiple times recently, especially in regards to macrophages and manipulating their behavior. Macrophages are part of the innate immune system and carry out a wide variety of tasks, such as clearing away cell debris, engulfing pathogens, facilitating tissue growth, and disposing of senescent cells once other immune cells have destroyed them.

Continue reading “Manipulating the Immune System for Cancer Immunotherapy” »

Life extension genetics.

Many factors contribute to exceptional longevity, with genetics playing a significant role. However, to date, genetic studies examining exceptional longevity have been inconclusive. This comprehensive review seeks to determine the genetic variants associated with exceptional longevity by undertaking meta-analyses.

Meta-analyses of genetic polymorphisms previously associated with exceptional longevity (85+) were undertaken. For each variant, meta-analyses were performed if there were data from at least three independent studies available, including two unpublished additional cohorts.

Continue reading “Review and meta-analysis of genetic polymorphisms associated with exceptional human longevity” »

Following heart attacks, a handful of monkeys regained some of the pumping ability their hearts had lost after being given human embryonic stem cells, according to a study published Monday in Nature Biotechnology.

Scientists have tried for years to develop a stem cell treatment for heart disease caused by lack of blood flow, which contributed to more than 9.4 million deaths worldwide in 2016, according to the World Health Organization.

“We’re talking about the number one cause of death in the world [for humans],” said study author Dr. Charles Murry, director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington. “And at the moment all of our treatments are … dancing around the root problem, which is that you don’t have enough muscle cells.”

Continue reading “Human stem cells give monkey hearts a boost after heart attacks, study says” »

Why on Earth would you ever want to be less than completely healthy?

Recently, Reason of Fight Aging! pointed out psychological research revealing a certain conservatism in terms of what people consider to be the “ideal” levels of happiness, intelligence, longevity, and even health.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that significant numbers of people in the studies weren’t too keen on the idea of living much longer than the average (around 90 years), and even under the assumption of eternal youth, their preference didn’t go past 120 on average; after all, LEAF wouldn’t be in business if the idea of healthy life extension wasn’t so inexplicably frowned upon. What’s really flabbergasting, though, is that even health—health!—is apparently something you can have too much of; on a scale from 0 (“completely unhealthy”) to 100 (“completely healthy”), the average preference gravitated somewhere between 80 and 90. These results provide us with an occasion for reflection.

Continue reading “Too healthy for your own good?” »