Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,458

Evolutionary theory predicts that reproduction entails costs that detract from somatic maintenance, accelerating biological aging. Despite support from studies in human and non-human animals, mechanisms linking ‘costs of reproduction’ (CoR) to aging are poorly understood. Human pregnancy is characterized by major alterations in metabolic regulation, oxidative stress, and immune cell proliferation. We hypothesized that these adaptations could accelerate blood-derived cellular aging. To test this hypothesis, we examined gravidity in relation to telomere length (TL, n = 821) and DNA-methylation age (DNAmAge, n = 397) in a cohort of young (20–22 year-old) Filipino women. Age-corrected TL and accelerated DNAmAge both predict age-related morbidity and mortality, and provide markers of mitotic and non-mitotic cellular aging, respectively. Consistent with theoretical predictions, TL decreased (p = 0.031) and DNAmAge increased (p = 0.007) with gravidity, a relationship that was not contingent upon resource availability. Neither biomarker was associated with subsequent fertility (both p 0.3), broadly consistent with a causal effect of gravidity on cellular aging. Our findings provide evidence that reproduction in women carries costs in the form of accelerated aging through two independent cellular pathways.

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Wearable medical technology is designed to be small and lightweight to minimize additional burden on medical Airmen and the warfighter, whether they are on a remote battlefield or aboard an aircraft.

“Wearables provide greater accessibility,” said Dr. David Burch, a research biomedical engineer and the medical technology solutions team lead for the En Route Care Medical Technology Solutions Research Group, 711th HPW. “An aircraft has a very tight space and weight limit to maintain performance, and battlefield medics need to carry everything they use. Wearables provide accessibility to the human in a way that is better form, fit, and function.”

One wearable device that achieves that accessibility is a tissue oxygenation sensor, developed jointly with a private company. This small, soft, injectable sensor lets medics determine if a patient is able to be medically evacuated by assessing how well their blood transports oxygen to tissue.

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Often only a few years separate the tinfoil hats from the millionaires to be. I was writing the piece on the Youbionic arm and thinking of how we will use 3D printing to augment human beings. Clearly augmenting the human body with mechatronics would be a good idea. The flesh is weak but stepper motors are strong! Oh how we will eeck, ooow, brrrr whine in our old stepper augmented age. Machines could very well fill the gaps once our bodies start failing us. But, will old people homes really be filled with Borg grandmas?

Will your grandad get that night vision upgrade he’s always wanted so he can deer hunt whenever he damn pleases? Would it be a good idea if I on a whim replaced my tennis elbow with a tennis racket? We never get the future right and most of our visions of mechatronic augmentations of humans are either a bit Johhny Cab or they’re ruined by that tiara Geordi was wearing across his face in Star Trek. I know he can’t see it, but someone should have told him really.

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This is part of our ongoing series of articles that discuss the Hallmarks of Aging. Published in 2013, the paper divides aging into distinct categories (“hallmarks”) of damage to explain how the aging process works and how it causes age-related diseases. Today, we will be looking at the hallmark of cellular senescence.

What are senescent cells?

As you age, increasing numbers of your cells enter into a state known as senescence. Senescent cells do not divide or support the tissues of which they are part; instead, they emit a range of potentially harmful chemical signals that encourage nearby healthy cells to enter the same senescent state. Their presence causes many problems: they reduce tissue repair, increase chronic inflammation, and can even eventually raise the risk of cancer and other age-related diseases.

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Like a team in a science fiction movie, the six-lab squad funded by a 2017 MEDx Biomedical research grant is striking in its combination of diverse skills and duties.

The project is led by Kafui Dzirasa, MD’09, Ph.D.’07, HS’10-’16, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and assistant professor in neurobiology and neurosurgery; and Nenad Bursac, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering and associate professor in medicine. Their team includes: Marc Caron, Ph.D., James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology, professor in neurobiology and medicine; Fan Wang, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology; Christopher Kontos, MD, HS’93-’97, professor of medicine and associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology—all at Duke University School of Medicine—and Jennie Leach, Ph.D., associate professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, along with a cadre of committed graduate students, postdocs, and technicians.

Dzirasa’s background in engineering informs his approach to the study of neuropsychiatric illness and disease. In the summer of 2016, he and members of his lab were discussing the challenge of precisely monitoring .

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We have now launched the Rejuvenation Roundup Podcast, a monthly podcast accompanying our regular Rejuvenation Roundup digest. Check out the first episode of this new show hosted by Ryan O’Shea from Future Grind.

Brought to you by Nicola Bagalà, the Rejuvenation Roundup is our monthly digest, which takes a look at the big news stories involving the industry and helps keep you informed of current developments in the aging research field. Hosted by Ryan O’Shea of the Future Grind podcast, the Rejuvenation Roundup podcast is a regular podcast that complements the monthly written Roundup articles that we publish here on the blog. The podcast aims not to replace the regular written Roundup articles but to offer a deeper dive into some of the key stories, and it includes quotes and interviews from industry leaders. We suggest enjoying both written and podcast versions every month!

Ryan covers a variety of topics from a busy July in the rejuvenation biotechnology field, including the placement of “ageing-related” into the 11th revision of WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) along with insights from industry leaders about developing news in the field. You can find the accompanying July Rejuvenation Roundup article here, where Nicola brings you more industry news not covered in the podcast.

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845 pages in length, the report aims to outline the history, present state and future of the Longevity Industry in the United Kingdom, profiling hundreds of companies, investors, and trends, and offering guidance on the most optimal ways in which UK longevity industry stakeholders, as well as government officials, can work to strengthen the industry, and allow it to reach its full potential as a global longevity science and preventive medicine hub. The report uses comprehensive infographics to distill the report’s data and conclusions into easily understandable portions, and interested readers can get a quick understanding of the report’s main findings and conclusions in its 10-page executive summary.

This special regional case study follows-up on the content and general outline of the Longevity Industry made by our consortium in the previous Longevity Industry Landscape Overviews, including Volume I “The Science of Longevity” (750 pages), and Volume II “The Business of Longevity” (650 pages), published earlier this year.

These ongoing analytical reports are part of a collaborative project by The Global Longevity Consortium, consisting of the Biogerontology Research Foundation, Deep Knowledge Analytics, Aging Analytics Agency and the Longevity. International platform.

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The strange case of a young boy who had a large section of his brain removed shows just how good the human brain is at repairing itself — or at least making the most of a tough situation. Beyond being just a lump of tissue that named itself, the brain is also a kind of wonderful, wet computer that’s capable of rewiring itself in response to new experiences like taking drugs, forming new memories, and making friends. In extreme cases, like that of a 6-year-old boy who had about one-sixth of his brain removed, the brain can even adapt to getting cut apart.

Doctors documented the boy’s case in a paper published July 31 in the journal Cell Reports. They report that despite the boy having a significant portion of his brain removed, including the portion associated with visual processing, the boy has developed into a healthy 10-year-old. And while he still can’t see in the left side of his field of vision, his brain has reconfigured some of the lost connections so that he is able to recognize people’s faces. All in all, the doctors see it as a successful procedure, as well as evidence of the brain’s plasticity — its ability to adapt — when it comes to higher-order functions.

“He is essentially blind to information on the left side of the world. Anything to the left of his nose is not transmitted to his brain, because the occipital lobe in his right hemisphere is missing and cannot receive this information,” Marlene Behrmann, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and the corresponding author on the paper, tells New Scientist.

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