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Category: science – Page 123

Our exclusive interview with Sci-Hub is now available on Facebook for your viewing pleasure. We discuss with Alexandra how scientific progress is being held back by publishers keeping research behind paywalls.

In this interview Alexandra Elbakyan, creator of the controversial academic paper database Sci-Hub, discusses the importance of making scientific information freely available to all.

She goes on to explain why having open access to scientific knowledge, even if it means circumventing paywalls, is a fundamental right that benefits both individuals and society as whole.

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Philadelphia, PA, USA / Moscow, Russia — Bioquark, Inc., (www.bioquark.com) a life sciences company focused on the development of novel bio-products for regeneration, disease reversion, and healthy aging, and Moscow based, Lakmus LLC, a diversified investment company with business interests in pharmacies, restaurants, and real estate, announced a multi-disciplinary research collaboration with the FSBI Zakusov Institute of Pharmacology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (http://www.academpharm.ru/), and the Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (http://www.infran.ru/), to jointly study the pharmacotherapeutic longevity enhancement properties of its combinatorial regenerative biologic candidates.

“We are very excited about this continued collaboration with Lakmus,” said Ira S. Pastor, CEO, Bioquark Inc. “The disciplined development of our combinatorial biologic candidates (Bioquantines) for healthy longevity enhancement, represents another important step in our continued evolution as a company focused on a broad range of therapeutic products and services in the regenerative healthcare space.”

Throughout the 20th century, natural products formed the basis for a majority of all pharmaceuticals, biologics, and consumer healthcare products used by patients around the globe, generating trillions of dollars of wealth. However, many scientists believe we have only touched the surface with what the natural world, and its range of organisms, which from a health and wellness perspective are much further advanced than human beings, has to teach us.

The integration of a complex set of newer research disciplines, including interkingdom signaling, semiochemical communication, and evolutionary biology, as well as significant recent activity in the areas of the microbiome, are highlighting a myriad of new ways that non-human bio-products can affect the human genome for positive transitions in health and wellness dynamics.

“Bioquark has spent several years studying the natural ability of many species to turn back biological time in order to maintain health, fitness, and survival, developing a broad understanding of the combinatorial biochemical approaches they use to control nested hierarchies of disease (i.e. gene, cell, tissue, organism, environment),” said Dr. Sergei Paylian, Founder, CSO, and President, Bioquark Inc. “This research initiative is one more step in the path in allowing humans to recapture these capabilities to effectively counter our unfortunate progression into aging, disease and degeneration.”

About Bioquark, Inc.

Bioquark Inc. is focused on the development of natural biologic based products, services, and technologies, with the goal of curing a wide range of diseases, as well as effecting complex regeneration. Bioquark is developing both biological pharmaceutical candidates, as well as products for the global consumer health and wellness market segments.

A BAE railgun system is undergoing multi-shot rep-rate operations at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, in Virginia. Railgun firing test will continue over the next three years. The railgun system has been tested at Dahlgren’s railgun advanced research facility since November. The Navy has successfully tested a next-generation 32-megajoule railgun.

The US Navy is gradually increasing the railgun firing rate and energy level.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on seapower and projection forces, said * the pulsed power units, the batteries are getting smaller and are getting more efficient * more shots are being fired without having to replace the barrel.

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In April, Scientists based in Philadelphia unveiled an artificial womb undergoing testing on fetal lambs. With a prediction from one of the researchers that the technology could be ready for human testing in three to five years, artificial wombs suddenly became the most unexpected rage of 2017. But what sort of artificial wombs might realistically be a part of healthcare in the near future?

In this video series, the Galactic Public Archives takes bite-sized looks at a variety of terms, technologies, and ideas that are likely to be prominent in the future. Terms are regularly changing and being redefined with the passing of time. With constant breakthroughs and the development of new technology and other resources, we seek to define what these things are and how they will impact our future.

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The concept of repairing age-related damage to prevent diseases is now mainstream and openly talked about by most acadmics.

Earlier this year the second Scripps Florida Symposium was held and now this open access paper reports on the event. The title of of the event was ‘Advances in Therapeutic Approaches to Extend Healthspan’ and was held on January 22nd–25th, 2017 at The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida.

It is once again very refreshing to see that the focus of the researchers here is now firmly on intervening on the various aging processes in order to prevent or treat age-related diseases. Less than a decade ago suggesting addressing the aging processes to treat disease as a preventative form of medicine would have jepordised the chances of funding, or even damaged a researcher’s career prospects. Now the majority of researchers are engaged in exploring the potential of increasing healthspan (the period of life spent free of age-related disease) with the aim of delaying or preventing age-related diseases.

The taboo of talking about doing something about aging

Whilst there is still resistance in academia to talk in public about the potential of these therapies leading to not only healthier but also longer lives, it is nonetheless a step in the right direction. The discussion has changed dramatically in the last decade and the taboo of targeting the aging process has largely been banished, this in our view is a good thing. Only the most conservative scientists cling to the idea that nothing can be done about aging despite the mountains of evidence suggesting otherwise.

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This film was compiled from audio of a discussion futurist FM-2030 held at the University of California on February 6th, 1994. In this discussion 2030 laid out an overview of his ‘transhuman’ philosophy and held a back and forth with other people present in the discussion. Discussion and debate included items such as the value of researching ‘indefinite lifespan’ technologies directly as opposed to (or in addition to) more traditional approaches, such as researching cures for specific diseases.
The excerpts in this archive file present a sort of thesis of FM 2030’s transhuman ideas.

About FM 2030: FM 2030 was at various points in his life, an Iranian Olympic basketball player, a diplomat, a university teacher, and a corporate consultant. He developed his views on transhumanism in the 1960s and evolved them over the next thirty-something years. He was placed in cryonic suspension July 8th, 2000. For more information about FM 2030, view the GPA Archive File: ‘Introduction to FM 2030′ or visit some of the following links:

Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM-2030

Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies:
ieet.org/index.php/tpwiki/Transhuman

The New York Times:
nytimes.com/2000/07/11/us/futurist-known-as-fm-2030-is-dead-at-69.html

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On a geopolitical level, science is also a crucial agent of soft power between nations. Going back decades, scientific collaborations have tempered tensions between Russia and its rival nations, and allowed cooler heads to prevail. In 1975, astronaut Thomas Stafford and cosmonaut Alexey Leonov shook hands in space as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which reflected the policy of détente, or easing of strained relations, between the US and the USSR. The International Space Station (ISS), the crown jewel of science partnerships, is directly descended from this symbolic gesture.

I took a five-day tour of Russia’s leading scientific research centers. This is what I saw.

They call them the “golden brains.” Perched 22 storeys high, they engulf the top floors of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) headquarters in southwest Moscow. Somehow both geometric and wildly rampageous, the copper and aluminum sculptures look like the kind of long-lost technologies that protagonists stumble across on deserted alien worlds in Mass Effect.

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