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Rain Design isn’t the first company to fall victim to the aggressive techniques Amazon uses to achieve market dominance. Although its retail site is the most visible of its business strands, the $740bn company has quietly stretched its tentacles into an astonishing range of unrelated industries. Google and Facebook might have cornered the online advertising market, but Amazon’s business successes now include groceries, TV, robotics, cloud services and consumer electronics.


With its profound knowledge of its customers, Amazon can move into almost any sector – striking fear into the hearts of rivals. And the $740bn company is ‘just getting started’

By and in San Francisco

Tue 24 Apr 2018 11.32 EDT Last modified on Tue 24 Apr 2018 17.00 EDT.

News Brief: Researchers have created a miniaturized device that can transform electronic signals into optical signals with low signal loss. They say the electro-optic modulator could make it easier to merge electronic and photonic circuitry on a single chip. The hybrid technology behind the modulator, known as plasmonics, promises to rev up data processing speeds. “As with earlier advances in information technology, this can dramatically impact the way we live,” Larry Dalton, a chemistry professor emeritus at the University of Washington, said in a news release. Dalton is part of the team that reported the advance today in the journal Nature.

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A team of researchers, including professor Steve Horvath, the pioneer of the epigenetic clock, report in this new paper about an improved version of that clock [1]. His original epigenetic clock measures the age of a person by looking at DNA methylation patterns; these patterns correlate closely with the actual age of a person, with a margin of error of around two years or so.

Since the original clock was first created, work has continued on refining the process and how aging is measured. In terms of aging biomarkers, it is generally considered the gold standard, given how reliable it is as a way to determine biological age.

While chronological age is linked to the likelihood of us developing age-related diseases and dying, it is important to distinguish the difference between chronological age and biological age. Individuals of the same chronological age may not age in quite the same way or even at the same rate, showing differences in their susceptibility to different age-related diseases.

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An interview from the recent Ending Aging conference in Berlin with Keith Comito which we did in collaboration with Anna Dobryukha from Komsomolskaya Pravda.


The Undoing Aging conference, a collaboration between the SENS Research Foundation and Michael Greve’s Forever Healthy Foundation, took place on March 15–17 in Berlin, which saw many researchers, advocates, investors, and other important members of the longevity community gather together to learn about the latest progress in rejuvenation biotechnology.

As we had arranged a travel grant for Anna Dobryukha, one of the best Russian journalists writing about aging, longevity, and rejuvenation research, to join us, it made sense to collaborate with her on the most interesting interviews. Anna works for Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of the largest Russian publishing houses, which has a newspaper, a radio station, and a website with over 40 million readers. Anna has also published an article based on this and other interviews taken during the conference which you can find here.

During the conference, Anna and Elena interviewed LEAF president Keith Comito about crowdfunding and the challenges we face as full-time advocates in the field. Anna (A), Keith (K), Elena Milova (E), and Steve Hill (S) were all present and can be identified by the corresponding letters in the dialogue below.

Scientists at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine have conducted experiments and found that stem cell implants in the brains of mice can stop aging and help the treated animals remain fitter for longer.

What part of the brain controls aging?

The experiments have helped researchers identify that a part of the brain called the hypothalamus is intimately involved in the aging process. The investigators hope to launch trials in humans to see whether similar treatments with neural stem cells can prolong the life of treated individuals.

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