The idea is simple. First, they take an arm from a dead rat and put it through a process of decellularization using detergents. This leaves behind a white scaffold. The scaffold is key because no artificial reconstructions come close to replicating the intricacies of a natural one.
On a snowy evening in Brooklyn, New York, sweat is streaming from my pores, rolling down my face, back, and palms. I don’t know what the temperature is here inside the MRI machine, but “summer in the Sahara” seems about right. I keep thinking about how I should have shed my winter-weight pants and button-down shirt.
The lab technician chimes in over a microphone. He reminds me not to move or I’ll need to start the MRI over. Considering I’ve been here for 45 minutes, that doesn’t sound appealing. My eyes sting, and sweat has pooled in weird places. I imagine this is what Chinese water torture feels like. Add to that, I have a gadolinium contrast agent coursing through my body. The substance is supposed to highlight areas of inflammation, but it can also make you feel like you’re itching from within. Read more
From time to time, I come across news covering collaborations between companies which are either promising or surprising. Sometimes both. A future full of science fiction technologies in medicine &…
“With this trend toward long hours and higher pay, what will be the impact on people? Research has identified reduced sleep, increased stress, less happiness, lower productivity, poorer health, and higher chances for injuring yourself and others when the workday expands—implications that can be dangerous in any job, be it specialized or not.” Read more
There is no “…Ego…”, but SELF-INTEREST WITH SELF ESTEEM, fueled only by SELF OWN WILL POWER and hence directed by OWN ETHOS and OWN COGNITION and OWN SENSING.
BY THE WAY:
P.Q. equates to Prudential Quotient or, better yet, to PRUDENTIAL INTELLIGENCE (P.Q.).
This archive file was compiled from an interview conducted at the SENS Research Foundation in Mountain View, California, February 2013.
“The first person to live to 150 is alive today.” That was the promise featured on a billboard from the insurance giant Prudential in the year 2013. The advertisement was perhaps representative of a growing awareness that the possibility of substantially extended human longevity was, if not around the corner, no longer a science fiction daydream. Later the same year, search leader Google established a company, Calico, specifically dedicated to rethinking aging. It seemed as though the existing paradigm, in which thinking about longevity was all well and good — but actually investing in it crossed over into madness — was starting to crumble.
Despite these outward signs of change however, polls indicated that most people were not interested in investing — financially or emotionally — in longevity. Many saw in longevity research the problems implicit in the message of the Insurance billboard: “If I live to 150, won’t I run out of money? Will I ever be able to retire? Wouldn’t dying at 80 or 90 be just fine, really?”
Continue reading “Dr. Aubrey de Grey: When Do You Want to Die?” »
This archive file was compiled from an interview conducted at the SENS Research Foundation in Mountain View, California, February 2013.
About Dr. Aubrey de Grey: The first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, decided in the 200s BC not to die, and assembled China’s best thinkers and searchers to solve the problem of death. Things did not work out for him. As of the early 21st century, historical efforts at reliable health in old age displayed a reliable pattern of failure. While the eventual crystallization of the scientific method and resulting technology had greatly improved many people’s life expectancy, the longest possible lifespan of an individual had proved to be a much more stubborn thing. Dr. Aubrey de Grey shot to controversial prominence in the 2000s, proposing that for the first time in history, developments in a wide variety of fields made it plausible to advocate for health technology which would significantly tackle age-related disease — possibly allowing the old to live with a higher quality of life and the same low ‘risk of death’ as the young.
Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey
SENS Research Foundation:
sens.org/research
This archive file was compiled from audio and video documentation of a gathering of medical professionals, inventors & entrepreneurs, held at Singularity University in California, February 2013. The selected material gives a portrait of a time in which the field of health found itself at a crossroads between the mature medical institutions which had slowly evolved over hundreds of years, and a need to develop and integrate new, more flexible and scalable forms of care. About Future Med: http://futuremed2020.com/ About Singularity University: http://singularityu.org/ GPA on Facebook: on.fb.me/18NiF8z GPA on Twitter: twitter.com/GPA2030
This archive file was compiled from an interview conducted on the campus of Singularity University, February 2013. The interview took place at a time where new artificial intelligence systems, such as IBM’s Jeopardy winning “Watson,” were re-awakening the popular imagination in terms of artificial intelligence becoming a visible part of day to day life. The privacy issues regarding the ‘big-data’ that allowed many AI systems to function was also becoming a significant source of controversy. In this piece, Marty Kohn, MD, chief medical scientist on the IBM Watson Medical Team, gives insight into his personal thoughts and feelings regarding how society might both accept and reject the artificial intelligence advances of the coming years.
About the Speaker:
IBM:
researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=us-marty.kohn
FutureMed:
futuremed2020.com/marty-kohn/
