Lifeboat Foundation

First published in 2016, predictors of chronological and biological age developed using deep learning (DL) are rapidly gaining popularity in the aging research community.

These deep aging clocks can be used in a broad range of applications in the pharmaceutical industry, spanning target identification, drug discovery, data economics, and synthetic patient data generation. We provide here a brief overview of recent advances in this important subset, or perhaps superset, of aging clocks that have been developed using artificial intelligence (AI).

It sounds like science fiction: a device that can reconnect a paralyzed person’s brain to his or her body. But that’s exactly what the experimental NeuroLife system does. Developed by Battelle and Ohio State University, NeuroLife uses a brain implant, an algorithm and an electrode sleeve to give paralysis patients back control of their limbs. For Ian Burkhart, NeuroLife’s first test subject, the implications could be life-changing.

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Cholesterol does not cause heart disease in the elderly and trying to reduce it with drugs like statins is a waste of time, an international group of experts has claimed.

A review of research involving nearly 70,000 people found there was no link between what has traditionally been considered “bad” cholesterol and the premature deaths of over 60-year-olds from cardiovascular disease.

Published in the BMJ Open journal, the new study found that 92 percent of people with a high cholesterol level lived longer.

Music has proven time and again to be an important component of human culture. From its ceremonial origin to modern medical usage for personal motivation, concentration, and shifting mood, music is a powerful balm for the human soul. Though traditional “music therapy” encompasses a specific set of practices, the broader use of music as a therapeutic tool can be seen nowadays as doctors are found recommending music for a wide variety of conditions.

CHICAGO, July 2 (Xinhua) — With a light-spinning device inspired by the Japanese art of paper cutting, researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) have detected microscopic twists in the internal structure of plant and animal tissue without harmful X-rays.

The approach is the first that can fully rotate terahertz radiation in real time, and could open new dimensions in medical imaging, encrypted communications and cosmology, according to a news release posted on UM’s website on Monday.

With an eye to exploring how chirality may help distinguish tissues, the researchers gathered everyday biological materials to look for differences in the absorption of clockwise- or counter-clockwise-rotating radiation in the terahertz spectrum. They studied a maple leaf, a dandelion flower, pork fat and the wing case of an iridescent beetle.

Thomas Durcan’s lab is growing 3D mini-brains in the search for a cure for Parkinson’s disease. Over the next year he is giving all his lab’s protocols, methods and results away.

A new method enables researchers to test algorithms for spotting genes that contribute to a complex trait or condition, such as autism.

Researchers often study the genetics of complex traits using genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In these studies, scientists compare the genomes of people who have a condition with those of people without the condition, looking for genetic variants likely to contribute to the condition. These studies often require tens of thousands of people to yield statistically significant results.

GWAS have identified more than 100 genomic regions associated with schizophrenia, for example, and 12 linked to autism. Results are often difficult to interpret, however. Causal variants for a condition may be inherited with nearby sections of DNA that do not play a role.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) recorded at least 51 new cases of the Ebola virus since the beginning of the week, while two screening tents in Kasese, a Ugandan village that shares a border with the DRC, were burned after Ugandan workers detected a high fever in a Congolese boy trying to gain entry into Uganda.

Since the outbreak started nearly a year ago in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, DRC, neighboring countries have screened travelers through hundreds of points-of-entry (POE) screening sites.

On Wednesday, officials quoted in a Ugandan newspaper said the fires started after a teenage boy entering Uganda from the DRC tested positive for a high fever and was taken to a hospital in DRC.

David Sinclair PhD is a biologist and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging and author of the forthcoming book “Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To”.

This conversation is about the science behind aging and David’s research on the biology of lifespan extension, treating diseases of aging and extending human lifespan.

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