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Jul 30, 2016

Mars City Design wants to 3D-print prototypes of Martian habitats in the Mojave Desert

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, habitats, space

Growing up in Jakarta’s polluted slums, Vera Mulyani loved building things. As a child, she dreamed of becoming an architect.

More than two decades later, Mulyani is a self-proclaimed “Marschitect,” and spends her time brainstorming how human life might be sustained on the red planet. After studying at École d’Architecture de Nantes in France and at New York Film Academy, in January 2015 she founded Mars City Design, a think tank of sorts aimed at developing blueprints for the first self-sustaining city on Mars.

Earlier this month, Mars City Design raised $30,382 on Kickstarter to realize the next phase of its mission: Within the next three years, the group wants to 3D-print three to-scale habitat prototypes of Martian cities at Reaction Research Society’s test area in the Mojave Desert.

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Jul 30, 2016

Tesla Launches Gigafactory | Tesla Motors

Posted by in categories: business, Elon Musk, energy, environmental, physics, solar power, transportation

“Building the world’s largest factory to accelerate a sustainable energy future.”

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Jul 30, 2016

Aubrey de Grey — An End to Aging?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsNNUEx5OkU&t=0s

A fairly recent video where Aubrey de Grey talks about the future of regenerative medicine and how we will treat age related diseases.


Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation gives a lecture and answers questions in Spain, April 2016.

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Jul 30, 2016

Norway to build world’s first floating underwater traffic tunnels

Posted by in category: transportation

Norway has hatched ambitious plans to install the world’s first floating underwater tunnels to help travelers easily cross the nation’s many fjords. At present, the only way to travel across the bodies of water involves taking a series of ferries – an inconvenient and time-consuming process. The “submerged floating bridges” would consist of large tubes suspended under 100 feet of water, and each one will be wide enough for two lanes of traffic.

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Jul 30, 2016

Pancreatic cell transplantation: a breakthrough for type 1 diabetes?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

In a new study, pancreatic islet cell transplantation has shown promise as an effective treatment alternative for type 1 diabetes patients with severe hypoglycemia.

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Jul 30, 2016

An artificial pancreas is crowdfunding’s first $100 million unicorn

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, internet, transhumanism

When Beta Bionics needed idealistic investors it found them on the Web.

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Jul 30, 2016

Researchers find a male hormone that reversed cell aging in a clinical trial — “Cellular elixir of youth”

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Telomerase, an enzyme naturally found in the human organism, is the closest of all known substances to a “cellular elixir of youth.” In a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Brazilian and US researchers show that sex hormones can stimulate production of this enzyme.

The strategy was tested in patients with genetic diseases associated with mutations in the gene that codes for telomerase, such as aplastic anemia and pulmonary fibrosis.

READ MORE ON AGÊNCIA FAPESP

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Jul 30, 2016

Afonso Silva from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke gave a great talk at #NeuroFutures16 on multimodal neuroimaging of brain anatomy and function

Posted by in categories: futurism, neuroscience

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Jul 29, 2016

Google Fiber plans to use cheap wireless tech to beat the cable guys

Posted by in category: futurism

CFO Ruth Porat gives the unit a shout-out.

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Jul 29, 2016

Smart bricks would enable walls capable of generating electricity, clean water and oxygen

Posted by in categories: biological, habitats, robotics/AI

A lot of things are becoming “smart” these days, but bricks might not be something you’d expect to be added to the list. On the way to buildings that act like “large-scale living organisms,” scientists at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) are developing smart bricks that would make use of microbes to recycle wastewater, generate electricity and produce oxygen.

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs), which will be embedded in the bricks to give them their “smart” capabilities, have proven handy in the past, with researchers demonstrating how they can be used to generate electricity from human urine, dead flies or just plain old mud.

“Microbial fuel cells are energy transducers that exploit the metabolic activity of the constituent microbes to break down organic waste and generate electricity,” says Ioannis Ieropoulos, professor at UWE Bristol’s Robotics Laboratory. “This is a novel application for MFC modules to be made into actuating building blocks as part of wall structures. This will allow us to explore the possibility of treating household waste, generating useful levels of electricity, and have ‘active programmable’ walls within our living environments.”

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