Lifeboat Foundation

With yesterday’s terrible shooting tragedy, I’m hearing lots of calls for more gun control to reduce violence in the US. But that’s essentially impossible to accomplish. There are 300 million guns in America. Congress faces a statistical impossibility to make a real dent in gun control and possession (politicians saying otherwise are playing you for votes—the gov is not going to go house to house to collect guns). HOWEVER, better ways to combat terrorism and gun violence could be achieved through better medicine and figuring out better ways to keep wounded peope alive. We should focus our energy and science money on treating trauma victims (and also on prevention of mental disease and sociopaths). Also, drones can be designed to seek out shooters in public places in 30 seconds and stop what they’re doing (instead of letting them shoot for 10 minutes). Why don’t major public venues and events have them yet? Ask you government? Demand better responses so our society is safer. Also, entreprenuers, get out there and do something about this. Hotels would pay big money for see-through-wall technology that would alert staff that someone has 20 weapons in a room. Lots of this tech is already here. All these terrorism and gun violence issues can be best figured out by tech and science. Stop sending prayers, and instead send some engineers and technologists to solve the problems. This tragic ongoing violence will continue until tech and science solves it.

“If you make the human body virtually indestructible, being wounded loses some of its relevance.”

America is reeling in shock from multiple shooting tragedies. The national feeling is that the violence is increasing in frequency and there’s no end to the angst.

Continue reading “To Combat Radical Violence in America, We Need Radical Medicine” »

Muscle from a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Fibrous scar tissue is in blue and healthy muscle is in pink. CONBOY LAB AND MURTHY LAB While promising, applications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing have so far been limited by the challenges of delivery—namely, how to get all the CRISPR parts to every cell that needs them. In a study published today (October 2) in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers have successfully repaired a mutation in the gene for dystrophin in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy by injecting a vehicle they call CRISPR-Gold, which contains the Cas9 protein, guide RNA, and donor DNA, all wrapped around a tiny gold ball.

The authors have made “great progress in the gene editing area,” says Tufts University biomedical engineer Qiaobing Xu, who did not participate in the work but penned an accompanying commentary. Because their approach is nonviral, Xu explains, it will minimize the potential off-target effects that result from constant Cas9 activity, which occurs when users deliver the Cas9 template with a viral vector.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a degenerative disease of the muscles caused by a lack of the protein dystrophin. In about a third of patients, the gene for dystrophin has small deletions or single base mutations that render it nonfunctional, which makes this gene an excellent candidate for gene editing. Researchers have previously used viral delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 components to delete the mutated exon and achieve clinical improvements in mouse models of the disease.

Continue reading “Nonviral CRISPR Delivery Using Gold Nanoparticles a Success” »

Forget editing embryos. We’re nearly ready to use CRISPR to change DNA inside our own bodies to treat many disorders, from hepatitis B to muscular dystrophy.

Want to live longer? Here’s one way.

Summary: One in four Americans with type 2 diabetes doesn’t know they have the disease. Walking around with untreated diabetes more than doubles your risk of stroke, heart attack, and early death. Add years to your life by knowing your status, and then managing the condition. Type 2 diabetes can be treated with inexpensive tablets. This article provides a two-minute online assessment, which shows if you are at risk.

Today, one in eight adult Americans has diabetes, according to the latest report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Amazingly, one in four of them doesn’t know they have the disease. Walking around with untreated diabetes more than doubles your risk of severe health complications, including stroke, heart attack, and early death. You can add years to your life by managing type 2 diabetes, a disease which can be treated with inexpensive tablets.

Continue reading “Avoid Diabetes Deadly Effects by Early Action” »

By treating one of the root causes of aging – senescent cells – a new class of drugs, known as senolytics, has the potential to treat a wide range of age-related diseases rather than the traditional approach of dealing with them one at a time.

Today we are going to take a look at what senescent cells are, how they contribute to age-related diseases and a new review by the Mayo Clinic that shows what we can do about this problem. We all age, but the research suggests that we may not have to suffer from age-related ill health.

A great initiative by Laura Katrin Weston one of our amazing volunteers. She is supporting research fundraising using the wonderful artwork she produces at Black Cat Studios.

Black Cat Studios is a small private recording, music production and art studio in Leicestershire, UK, providing a range of services for musicians, broadcasters, and game developers. It is really great to see the community starting to use their talents and passions outside of longevity to help support research. All proceeds will go to Lifespan.io and we will use them to support cutting-edge medical research projects such as MouseAge.

Laura will be producing artwork based on 31 themes all with a longevity or transhumanist flavor to them based on this list:

This year we want to continue this tradition by doing something special, making a video to showcase you, our community, as it is only with your outstanding help that we have been able to accomplish so much in such a short period of time.

To learn more visit our website today: https://www.leafscience.org/longevity-month-2017-tell-us-your-story/

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Tattoos are fast becoming more than just a means of self-expression: soon they could be used for more practical applications, like tracking blood alcohol levels or turning the skin into a touchscreen. Now, a team from Harvard and MIT has developed a smart ink that could make for tattoos that monitor biometrics like glucose levels, and change color as a result.

Currently, bodily biomarkers can be monitored through a wardrobe-load of wearables, but they usually need batteries for power and wireless communication systems to transmit data. Using biosensitive inks (bio-inks), the Harvard and MIT design is self-contained, and since it works on simple chemical reactions it doesn’t require power for any data processing or transmission.

Continue reading “Color-changing tattoos monitor blood glucose at a glance” »