Lifeboat Foundation

Recently, we spoke to Shai Efrati MD, Chair of Aviv Clinics’ Medical Advisory Board and Founder and Director of the world-leading Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research, about the longevity and healthspan benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). The Aviv Medical Program is designed for individuals experiencing cognitive and physical decline because of a variety of conditions, including stroke, post-COVID and age-related cognitive decline, Aviv also has an increasing number of clients who wish to improve their cognitive and physical performance and increase their healthspan.

One of Aviv’s patients is Patti Finnegan, a senior living in The Villages in Florida, and we sat down with her to find out what HBOT entails for the patient.

Longevity. Technology: At Longevity. Technology, we often cover therapies and treatments that have been developed or launched, discussing the science behind them and the possible results for the patient. What is less common, however, is to hear from the patients themselves – how did they find the experience and has it made a difference? What starts in a test tube or a white board ends up in a person, so it is important to retain a focus on the end user; after all, while patient population data is important, improving outcomes for actual people is the key goal behind longevity science – real people living longer, healthier lives.

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Continue reading “I’ve Got A Big Problem In My Oral Microbiome (Serratia marcescens), But Also A Plan To Reduce It” »

Are democratic societies ready for a future in which AI algorithmically assigns limited supplies of respirators or hospital beds during pandemics? Or one in which AI fuels an arms race between disinformation creation and detection? Or sways court decisions with amicus briefs written to mimic the rhetorical and argumentative styles of Supreme Court justices?

Decades of research show that most democratic societies struggle to hold nuanced debates about new technologies. These discussions need to be informed not only by the best available science but also the numerous ethical, regulatory and social considerations of their use. Difficult dilemmas posed by artificial intelligence are already… More.

Even AI experts are uneasy about how unprepared societies are for moving forward with the technology in a responsible fashion. We study the public and political aspects of emerging science. In 2022, our research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison interviewed almost 2,200 researchers who had published on the topic of AI. Nine in 10 (90.3%) predicted that there will be unintended consequences of AI applications, and three in four (75.9%) did not think that society is prepared for the potential effects of AI applications.

Continue reading “Experts alone can’t handle AI — social scientists explain why the public needs a seat at the table” »

A former Google executive who helped pioneer the company’s foray into artificial intelligence fears the technology will be used to create “more lethal pandemics.”

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder and former head of applied AI at Google’s DeepMind, said the use of artificial intelligence will enable humans to access information with potentially deadly consequences.

Continue reading “Ex-Google executive fears AI will be used to create ‘more lethal pandemics’” »

Female kidneys are known to be more resilient to disease and injury, but males need not despair. A new USC Stem Cell-led study published in Developmental Cell describes not only how sex hormones drive differences in male and female mouse kidneys, but also how lowering testosterone can “feminize” this organ and improve its resilience.

“By exploring how differences emerge in male and female kidneys during development, we can better understand how to address sex-related health disparities for patients with kidney diseases,” said Professor Andy McMahon, the study’s corresponding author, and the director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

First authors Lingyun “Ivy” Xiong and Jing Liu from the McMahon Lab and their collaborators identified more than 1,000 genes with different levels of activity in male and female mouse kidneys, in a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The differences were most evident in the section of the kidney’s filtering unit known as the proximal tubule, responsible for reabsorbing most of the nutrients such as glucose and amino acids back into the blood stream.

An essential protein that acts as a gatekeeper for calcium entering cells promotes the growth of oral cancer and generates pain, according to a new study published in Science Signaling led by researchers at New York University College of Dentistry.

Targeting this protein—the ORAI1 calcium channel —could provide a new approach to treating oral cancer, which causes persistent pain that worsens as it progresses.

“Our results show that the ORAI1 channel fuels the growth of oral cancer tumors and produces an abundance of molecules that, once secreted, interact with neurons resulting in an increased sensitivity to pain,” said Ga-Yeon Son, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Pathobiology at NYU College of Dentistry and the study’s first author.

The current crop of AI robots has made giant leaps when it comes to tiny activities.

There are robots performing colonoscopies, conducting microsurgeries on blood vessels and nerve cells, designing circuit boards, constructing delicate timepieces and conducting fine touch-up operations on fading, aging classical paintings by the masters.

Continue reading “Targeted stiffening yields more efficient soft robot arms” »

As scientists get better at interpreting the language of the brain, they get closer to not just treating disease, but also enhancing our senses and our intellects. Should they go there?

Other questions to the experts in this canvassing invited their views on the hopeful things that will occur in the next decade and for examples of specific applications that might emerge. What will human-technology co-evolution look like by 2030? Participants in this canvassing expect the rate of change to fall in a range anywhere from incremental to extremely impactful. Generally, they expect AI to continue to be targeted toward efficiencies in workplaces and other activities, and they say it is likely to be embedded in most human endeavors.

The greatest share of participants in this canvassing said automated systems driven by artificial intelligence are already improving many dimensions of their work, play and home lives and they expect this to continue over the next decade. While they worry over the accompanying negatives of human-AI advances, they hope for broad changes for the better as networked, intelligent systems are revolutionizing everything, from the most pressing professional work to hundreds of the little “everyday” aspects of existence.

One respondent’s answer covered many of the improvements experts expect as machines sit alongside humans as their assistants and enhancers. An associate professor at a major university in Israel wrote, “In the coming 12 years AI will enable all sorts of professions to do their work more efficiently, especially those involving ‘saving life’: individualized medicine, policing, even warfare (where attacks will focus on disabling infrastructure and less in killing enemy combatants and civilians). In other professions, AI will enable greater individualization, e.g., education based on the needs and intellectual abilities of each pupil/student. Of course, there will be some downsides: greater unemployment in certain ‘rote’ jobs (e.g., transportation drivers, food service, robots and automation, etc.).”