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Many battery scientists are interested in the potential of lithium sulfur batteries because, at least in theory, they offer a high energy density at relatively low cost. However, lithium sulfur batteries face a number of challenges, including the low electrical conductivity of sulfur and the tendency of the cathode to expand significantly in size during the discharge cycle—a tendency that prevents the cathode material from being packed as densely in the battery as scientists would like.

To combat these problems and bring lithium sulfur batteries closer to reality, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Oregon State University have developed a new made of that is encapsulated by graphene.

To make the material, Argonne chemists Jun Lu and Khalil Amine heated and then exposed it to carbon disulfide gas, a common industrial solvent. The creation of lithium sulfide, as well as the graphene encapsulation, happened spontaneously.

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Currently have telomerase which can immortalize human cells in a petri dish. Currently we have stem cells and we can take regular cells even from someone who is 100 years old and we can deprogram the cells back to a pluripotent stem cell state. This is effectively de-aging the cells. There is an effort by some researchers (not Dr West) to achieve partial reprogramming of cells. This would be to use the reprogramming mechanisms to de-age cells while retaining differentiation.

Dr West mentions in the fifth video that he strongly disapproves of current stem cell treatment centers.

Dr. West notes that people did not believe that immortalizing human cells (even in a petri dish was possible). This was a belief held until the 1980s. Even Dr. Hayflick thought it was extremely unlikely to be achieved. Hayflick had found over 300 changes in the cells as they divided and reached their limit of division.

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From 2008–2011, Sandia National Labs and Northrop Grumman designed nuclear drones that would be able to fly for many months.

China has put $3.3 billion into making new highly compact nuclear reactors which would also use for nuclear powered drones.

The potential impact of nuclear-powered drones can be seen by comparing them with existing aircraft such as the MQ-9 Reaper, which is used extensively in Afghanistan and Pakistan in operations against insurgents. The Reaper presently carries nearly two tonnes of fuel in addition a similar weight of munitions and other equipment and can stay airborne for around 42 hours, or just 14 hours when fully loaded with munitions.

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Recently pharma firms have released new diabetes treatments, including one in the past week. What’s more, a promising new therapy that attacks the cause of type 2 diabetes at its roots is in the development pipeline.

Summary: Recently pharmaceutical firms have released new diabetes treatments, including one in the past week. Moreover, a promising new therapy that attacks the root cause of type 2 diabetes is in the development pipeline. [This article first appeared on the LongevityFacts.com website. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

The CDC recently shocked the public when they reported that 40% of Americans walking around today would develop type 2 diabetes.

Many people develop type 2 diabetes as they age because their body’s response to insulin – the hormone that controls sugar levels – gets weaker.

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In a paradigm shift, scientists are starting to regard respiratory disease as a disease of aging and scientists at the Mayo Clinic reversed symptoms of a lung disease in mice using age-reversing senolytic compounds. In addition to senolytics, researchers are developing other treatments for respiratory conditions such as gene therapy.

Summary: In a paradigm shift, scientists are starting to regard respiratory disease as a disease of aging and scientists at the Mayo Clinic reversed symptoms of a lung disease in mice using age-reversing senolytic compounds. In addition to senolytics, researchers are developing other treatments for respiratory conditions such as gene therapy. [This article first appeared on the website LongevityFacts.com. Author: Brady Hartman.]

All of us – both smokers and non-smokers alike – will lose significant lung capacity as we age. Scientists at the Mayo Clinic have developed a promising treatment that rejuvenates the damaged lungs of mice using anti-aging compounds called senolytics.

The Mayo Clinic researchers showed evidence linking the biology of aging with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a disease of aging that impairs lung function and causes fatigue, shortness of breath, declining quality of life, and, ultimately, death. The Mayo Clinic team showed that the lungs of human IPF patients are full of senescent cells, and treatment with senolytics reversed symptoms of the lung disease in mice. Moreover, because senolytics have general age-reversing effects, the Mayo researchers hope to test the therapy on seniors with IPF as well as other lung diseases of aging.

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Elizabeth Parrish is a proponent of controversial ideas. Rankled by barriers to trials on potential life-enhancing treatments, she used herself as a guinea pig and says the results have borne fruit – but she has irked the science community in the process.

Experimenting on herself didn’t go down well with scientists, but Elizabeth Parrish is convinced gene therapy can increase the length and quality of our lives, and wants early approval for treatments to stem ‘planet’s biggest killer’.

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Christmas carol songwriters should be relieved to hear that they can keep their jobs for a little while longer. It turns out that artificial intelligence hasn’t quite mastered the art of their job.

In a Dec. 21 entry on her personal AI blog, Janelle Shane, a research scientist in industry and machine-learning hobbyist in her spare time, chronicles her journey of trying to teach a neural network to generate Christmas lyrics.

I trained a neural network to write Christmas carols and it got confused. In retrospect I should have seen this coming. http://aiweirdness.com/post/168770625987/christmas-carols-ge…al-network pic.twitter.com/XueoR4V5cC

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Roads of the future could be lit by glowing trees instead of streetlamps, thanks to a breakthrough in creating bioluminescent plants. Experts injected specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, which caused it to give off a dim light for nearly four hours. This could solve lots of problems.

The chemical involved, which produced enough light to read a book by, is the same as is used by fireflies to create their characteristic shine. To create their glowing plants, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) turned to an enzyme called luciferase. Luciferase acts on a molecule called luciferin, causing it to emit light.

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Despite being battered by Hurricane Maria, and facing a decrease in funding from the U.S. government, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico is still going strong, and is now up and running again, following a series of repairs. And with the near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon having just flown by our planet, Arecibo has just sent back images that are supposed to represent the highest-resolution photos of the asteroid, which help reveal some important details about the object.

According to a press release from NASA, the radar images were taken by the Arecibo Observatory Planet Radar last Saturday, December 16, and generated the day after, as asteroid Phaethon 3200 had its close encounter with Earth. At the time of its closest approach, the object was only 1.1 million miles away from Earth, or less than five times the distance separating our planet from the moon. The images have resolutions estimated at about 250 feet per pixel, making them the best-quality photos of the asteroid that are currently available, Phys.org added.

Based on Arecibo’s radar images, scientists believe that 3200 Phaethon is substantially larger than once estimated, with a diameter of approximately 3.6 miles, or 0.6 miles larger than what previous studies had suggested. That also makes Phaethon the second largest near-Earth object classified as a “potentially hazardous asteroid,” or a comparatively large asteroid that orbits much closer to Earth than most others do. The images also suggest Phaethon has a spheroidal shape, with a number of peculiar physical features that scientists are still trying to understand in full. These features include a concave area believed to be several hundred meters wide, and a dark, crater-like area located near one of its poles.

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