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The REAL danger of AI… wink
Robots (Emily Blunt, Mikey Day) meant to deliver food repeatedly malfunction during a presentation.
Oct 19, 2016
Russian scientist makes anti-aging breakthrough
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: innovation, life extension
Oct 19, 2016
NASA Offers Prize Money for 3D-Printed Habitat Ideas
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: 3D printing, economics, habitats, space travel
NASA is offering $1.1 million in prize money in Phase 2 of the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge for new ways to build houses where future space explorers can live and work.
The three-part competition asks citizen inventors to use readily available and recyclable materials for the raw material to print habitats.
Phase 2 focuses on the material technologies needed to manufacture structural components from a combination of indigenous materials and recyclables, or indigenous materials alone. NASA may use these technologies to construct shelters for future human explorers to Mars. On Earth, these same capabilities could also be used to produce affordable housing wherever it is needed or where access to conventional building materials and skills is limited.
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Oct 19, 2016
Scientists Accidentally Discover Method to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Ethanol
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: climatology, sustainability
Oct 19, 2016
CRISPR-based startups rush to IPO and don’t seem to care that we don’t know who officially owns CRISPR
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: biotech/medical, genetics
CRISPR Therapeutics—a Swiss startup hoping to harness the gene-editing technology it’s named after to develop treatments for genetic illnesses like sickle-cell anemia and cystic fibrosis— went public today (Oct. 19), raising $56 million in its initial public offering. It’s the third CRISPR-related biotech to IPO this year despite a pitched battle over who owns the patent to the breakthrough technique.
The market for CRISPR (short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic sequences”) is projected to be worth more than $5.5 billion by 2021, nearly double its current value, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets. The potential of the cheap, easy-to-use technology—which could do everything from creating a mushroom that doesn’t brown to curing cancer by cutting and pasting snippets of DNA—has companies rushing to develop new applications even though no one knows who will ultimately control it.
“It’s a race,” says Fabien Palazzoli, head of biotech intellectual property (IP) analytics for the consulting firm IPStudies. “It’s a race for the IPO, for the scientific results, for the FDA recommendation, for the IP.”
Oct 19, 2016
Scientists Can Now See More Sharply Than Anyone Thought Possible
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in category: futurism
Oct 19, 2016
ECB Wants To Curb Bitcoin Use Over Fears It May “Lose Control Over Money Supply” | Zero Hedge
Posted by Odette Bohr Dienel in categories: bitcoin, economics, governance, law
” … the ECB urged EU lawmakers to tighten proposed new rules on digital currencies such as bitcoin …”
Oct 19, 2016
PGC-1α Gene Therapy Slows Alzheimer’s Progression in Mouse Model
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, health, life extension, neuroscience
PCG-1α therapy shows promise in treating age-related decline.
It is always a good idea to look closely at the biochemistry involved in any potential Alzheimer’s disease therapy that shows promise in mouse models. There is perhaps more uncertainty for Alzheimer’s than most other age-related conditions when it comes to the degree to which the models are a useful representation of the disease state in humans — which might go some way towards explaining the promising failures that litter the field. In the research here, the authors are aiming to suppress a step in the generation of amyloid-β, one of the proteins that aggregates in growing amounts and is associated with brain cell death in Alzheimer’s disease. They achieve this goal using gene therapy to increase the level of PGC-1α, which in turn reduces the level of an enzyme involved in the production of amyloid-β. Interestingly, increased levels of PGC-1α have in the past been shown to produce modest life extension in mice, along with some of the beneficial effects to health associated with calorie restriction.
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