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Best DNA Tests for Health and Longevity

Has anyone here done a DNA test for longevity? I’m curious if you have any experiences with specific companies you can share. I researched 7 different big ones and am trying to decide which to go with.


Note: This is the second in our series of posts about the best DNA tests for health and longevity. To better understand the basics of DNA and the different types of DNA tests on the market please go back and read the first piece on The Benefits of Genetic Testing for Longevity.

Affiliate Disclaimer: Longevity Advice is reader-supported. When you buy using links on our site, we may earn commissions.

Getting a DNA test just to discover your ancestry is like buying a sports car just to drive it on 25 MPH roads to pick up groceries.

SpaceX receives approval to operate Starlink ground stations in Australia

SpaceX rolled-out Starlink beta internet service in northern United States and southern Canada in October. To date, SpaceX has deployed around 888 internet-beaming satellites out of the 4,409 that will operate in low Earth orbit. SpaceX is looking forward to connecting locations around the world where internet connection is unreliable and non-existent. Earlier this year, SpaceX engineers said Starlink is capable of beaming internet connection to remote areas on Earth; 60 Starlink satellites have the capability to beam low-latency, high-speed broadband internet to 40,000 users streaming high-definition videos simultaneously. Starlink customers receive service via a phased-array antenna dish and Wi-Fi router device. Additionally, SpaceX will build hundreds of ground stations that will receive the satellite’s communication. The stations are the linking factor between user terminals and data center for the Starlink network.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) which regulates telecommunications service, granted SpaceX a telecommunications license to offer internet on August 7th this year. SpaceX recieved approval to operate ground stations on October 26. ACMA granted SpaceX licenses to operate a total of 24 Starlink ground stations in Australia, according to a document published by the regulatory agency.

Approximately 2.5 million individuals in Australia still lack access to internet at home due to the service being either too expensive or unavailable in the rural location they reside in. Connecting rural areas around the globe to the network provides benefits to civilization as a whole. The Internet provides an equal chance for everyone to have access to education and job opportunites at their fingertips. Amid the Coronavirus outbreak, the digital divide among communites became more apparent, many students had to study from home but their households did not have internet service. SpaceX hopes to close the digital divide in rural areas worldwide. As more satellites are deployed to orbit, SpaceX will expand broadband coverage to Australia and the rest of the planet in 2021.

Root Bacterium to Fight Alzheimer’s

Summary: A bacterium found in the soil close to the roots of ginseng plants, appears to significantly dissociate the protein aggregates associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: Wiley

A bacterium found among the soil close to roots of ginseng plants could provide a new approach for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. Rhizolutin, a novel class of compounds with a tricyclic framework, significantly dissociates the protein aggregates associated with Alzheimer’s disease both in vivo and in vitro, as reported by scientists in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

AI Camera Mistakes Soccer Ref’s Bald Head For Ball

Hello World.

I’m Imagination.

In this video, I’m going to talk about how an AI Camera Mistakes Soccer Ref’s Bald Head For Ball. Technology and sports have a fairly mixed relationship already. Log on to Twitter during a soccer match (or football as it’s properly known and as well as people tweeting ambiguous statements like “YESSS” and “oh no mate” to about 20,000 inexplicable retweets, you’ll likely see a lot of complaints about the video assistant referee (VAR) and occasionally goal-line technology not doing its job. Fans of Scottish football team Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC experienced a new hilarious technological glitch during a match last weekend, but in all honesty, you’d be hard-pressed to say it didn’t improve the viewing experience dramatically.

The club announced a few weeks ago it was moving from using human camera operators to cameras controlled by AI. The club proudly announced at the time the new “Pixellot system uses cameras with in-built, AI, ball-tracking technology” and would be used to capture HD footage of all home matches at Caledonian Stadium, which would be broadcast directly to season-ticket holders’ homes. The AI camera appeared to mistake the man’s bald head for the ball for a lot of the match, repeatedly swinging back to follow the linesman instead of the actual game. Many viewers complained they missed their team scoring a goal because the camera “kept thinking the Lino bald head was the ball,” and some even suggested the club would have to provide the linesman with a toupe or hat.

With no fans allowed in the stadium due to Covid-19 restrictions, the fans of Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC and their opponents Ayr United could only watch via the cameras, and so were treated to mostly a view of the linesman’s head instead of any exciting moments of the match that were occurring off-camera, though some fans saw this as a bonus given the usual quality of performance. The cognitive capabilities of current architectures are very limited, using only a simplified version of what intelligence is capable of. For instance, the human mind has come up with ways to reason beyond measure and logical explanations to different occurrences in life. What would have been otherwise straightforward, an equivalently difficult problem may be challenging to solve computationally as opposed to using the human mind. This gives rise to two classes of models: structuralist and functionalist. The structural models aim to loosely mimic the basic intelligence operations of the mind such as reasoning and logic. The functional model refers to the correlating data to its computed counterpart. The overall research goal of artificial intelligence is to create technology that allows computers and machines to function intelligently. The general problem of simulating (or creating) intelligence has been broken down into sub-problems. These consist of particular traits or capabilities that researchers expect an intelligent system to display. That’s all for today.

Thanks for watching.

Stanford develops CRISPR ‘lab on a chip’ for detecting COVID-19

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a CRISPR-based “lab on a chip” to detect COVID-19, and are working with automakers at Ford to develop their prototype into a market-ready product.

This could provide an automated, hand-held device designed to deliver a coronavirus test result anywhere within 30 minutes.

In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the test spotted active infections quickly and cheaply, using electric fields to purify fluids from a nasal swab sample and drive DNA-cutting reagents within the system’s tiny passages.

An Amazonian Tea Stimulates the Formation of New Neurons

Summary: DMT, a natural component of ayahuasca tea, promotes neurogenesis, a new study reports. Researchers found DMT was capable of activating neural stem cells and promoted the formation of new neurons.

Source: Complutense University of Madrid.

One of the main natural components of ayahuasca tea, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), promotes neurogenesis (the formation of new neurons) according to research led by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

Seeing the Future: Longevity Research and Glaucoma (Video)

Dr David Sinclair (Harvard) : “I want to mention one thing that nobody except the insiders would know, is that I was at a conference a couple weeks ago with all 15 of us talking about this reprogramming work, and a lot of it is not published yet. I’ve seen things that make my head spin, the ability to turn back aging in a whole animal,…”


On October 27, 2020, Glaucoma Research Foundation presented the 2020 Weston Lecture featuring a talk by world-renowned Harvard Medical School genetics researcher and best-selling author David Sinclair, PhD, AO discussing longevity research and glaucoma.

Julian Beinart: A life of carefully chosen words

Professor Emeritus Julian Beinart, an internationally celebrated architect and longtime MIT professor known for his highly influential course on urbanism, died on Oct. 2 due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 88.

“Julian Beinart’s best ideals were the best ideals of this department,” says Nicholas de Monchaux, head of the MIT Department of Architecture. “A tireless student of form, he believed architecture’s role in the city also made it inextricable from politics. His legacy — in South Africa, the U.S., and beyond — also reminds us that the professional obligation of architects to the city stands alongside the civic demands on every one of us, architect or not.”

“Julian’s strengths came from an old-school faith,” says Arindam Dutta, professor of architectural history at MIT. “He believed cities were somehow designed artifacts, and in being so, they could be designed better. It was his task to train designers for this job.”

NASA finally makes contact with Voyager 2 after longest radio silence in 30 years

There’s never been a radio silence quite like this one. After long months with no way of making contact with Voyager 2, NASA has finally reestablished communications with the record-setting interstellar spacecraft.

The breakdown in communications – lasting since March, almost eight months and a whole pandemic ago – wasn’t due to some rogue malfunction, nor any run-in with interstellar space weirdness (although there’s that too).

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