Lifeboat Foundation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VPh6SAO0I&list=PLEBF14…p;index=46

And, who said we didn’t have motion pictures with color and sound together before 1931!

Believed to be the first ever, or at least oldest surviving, film produced with both color and sound. The color was made by hand-painting the individual frames of originally black & white film. The sound came from an accompaniment of a sound-on-cylinder recording of Benoit Constant Coquelin’s voice reciting one of Cyrano’s speeches.

Continue reading “Cyrano de Bergerac (1900) — The 1st Movie w/ both Sound & Color — Clement Maurice” »

A few end of year thoughts on why the incoming Trump Administration should make a crewed lunar return its first priority.

A few reasons why the incoming Trump Administration should make a crewed return to the Moon its first space priority. NASA astronauts should once again trod the regolith.

Interesting…

It might not work at all, but if the thrust is real and we detect no reaction, could the discrepancy be due to dark matter?

Of all the potentially apocalyptic technologies scientists have come up with in recent years, the gene drive is easily one of the most terrifying. A gene drive is a tool that allows scientists to use genetic engineering to override natural selection during reproduction. In theory, scientists could use it to alter the genetic makeup of an entire species—or even wipe that species out. It’s not hard to imagine how a slip-up in the lab could lead to things going very, very wrong.

Rejuvenating the immune system offers hope for Alzheimer’s patients and removal of plaques.

Alzheimer′s disease (AD) is characterized by deposition of amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuroinflammation. In order to study microglial contribution to amyloid plaque phagocytosis, we developed a novel ex vivo model by co‐culturing organotypic brain slices from up to 20‐month‐old, amyloid‐bearing AD mouse model (APPPS1) and young, neonatal wild‐type (WT) mice. Surprisingly, co‐culturing resulted in proliferation, recruitment, and clustering of old microglial cells around amyloid plaques and clearance of the plaque halo. Depletion of either old or young microglial cells prevented amyloid plaque clearance, indicating a synergistic effect of both populations. Exposing old microglial cells to conditioned media of young microglia or addition of granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) was sufficient to induce microglial proliferation and reduce amyloid plaque size. Our data suggest that microglial dysfunction in AD may be reversible and their phagocytic ability can be modulated to limit amyloid accumulation. This novel ex vivo model provides a valuable system for identification, screening, and testing of compounds aimed to therapeutically reinforce microglial phagocytosis.

For years, scientists have known that Gliese 710 will come excruciatingly close to our Solar System in about a million years. An updated analysis suggests this star will come considerably closer than we thought, during which time it’s expected to spawn dangerous cometary swarms.

Non-profit research ultimately benefits for-profit companies and is an essential part of the development chain of any therapy.

Companies like Unity Biotech have taken non-profit research and are developing it for-profit, this is the only way that therapies will make it to market and pay for the huge costs involved in development. You may have concerns that our current crowdfunding project is with a for-profit company so here is CellAge to answer this question.

Continue reading “CellAge Campaign Q&A: Are You a For-Profit Company? | Lifespan.io” »

The body is under constant invasion by microbes so rejuvenation of the immune system and reduction of imflammation is a big priority for rejuvenation biotechnology.

Recent publications have proposed that aging should be classified as a disease (Bulterijs et al., 2015; Zhavoronkov and Bhullar, 2015; Zhavoronkov and Moskalev, 2016). The goal of this manuscript is not to dispute these claims, but rather to suggest that when classifying aging as a disease, it is important to include the contribution of microbes.

As recently as ~115 years ago, more than half of all deaths were caused by infectious diseases, including pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections, and diphtheria (Jones et al., 2012). Since then, the establishment of public health departments that focused on improved sanitation and hygiene, and the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines allowed for a dramatic decrease in infectious disease-related mortality (Report, 1999). In 2010, the death rate for infectious diseases was reduced to 3% (Jones et al., 2012). Simultaneously, as infectious disease-related mortality rates have decreased, global lifespan has increased from ~30 to ~70 years (Riley, 2005).

Continue reading “Classifying Aging As a Disease: The Role of Microbes” »

Millions of commercial drones may be in the air by 2020. This could make near-instant airborne delivery a reality. But what are the hidden costs? A multidisciplinary team of RAND experts is looking into it: http://r.rand.org/37ch