Behold the power of the protein Lin28a.
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“His body, along with the others, will remain frozen indefinitely, with enough ongoing financial support to sustain its current state, news.com.au reported.
Last year, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate successfully froze and reanimated a rabbit brain”.
Since his death, James Bedford’s body has been cryogenically frozen and awaiting reanimation on the edge of the Sonaran Desert in Arizona. This week marks the 50th year of Bedford’s deep freeze, making him the oldest “de-animated” human being on earth.
Bedford’s body is stored in the Alcor Life Extensions Foundation in Scottsdale, where it’s kept alongside 146 other frozen bodies, news.com.au reported.
A quick look at synthetic biology and its potential for health and treating age-related diseases.
All living organisms contain an instruction set that determines what they look like and what they do. These instructions are encoded in the organism’s DNA within every cell, this is an organism’s genetic code (or “genome”).
Mankind has been altering the genetic code of plants and animals for thousands of years, by selectively breeding individuals with desired features. Over time we have become experts at viewing and manipulating this code, and we can now take genetic information associated with the desired features from one organism, and add it into another one. This is the basis of genetic engineering, which has allowed us to speed up the process of developing new breeds of plants and animals.
More recent advances however have enabled scientists to create new sequences of DNA from scratch. By combining these advances in biology with modern engineering, chemistry and computer science, researchers can now design and construct new organisms with cells that perform new useful functions. This “customised” cell biology is the essence of synthetic biology.
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Some exciting news from Lifespan.io about their current senescent cell therapy campaign.
While the CellAge campaign has done a great job thus far, with over 200 backers raising $11,000+ to better target dysfunctional “senescent” cells in the body, many supporters have let us know that the holidays, along with other concurrent fundraisers, have made it challenging to contribute.
In response we have decided to announce a 1-month extension for the CellAge campaign, and give the generous members of our community greater opportunity to support this important research.
If you are unfamiliar with the project: CellAge is developing tools to better target and remove harmful senescent cells that accumulate in the body with age and play a role in various diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and osteoarthritis, and which also complicate recovery after certain treatments like chemotherapy. Having the ability to selectively remove these cells is a critical component in the fight against age-related diseases and an important tool towards lifespans that are both long and healthy.
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According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum isn’t empty at all. It’s actually filled with quantum energy and particles that blink in and out of existence for a fleeting moment — strange signals that are known as quantum fluctuations.
For decades, there had only ever been indirect evidence of these fluctuations, but back in 2015, researchers claimed to have detected the theoretical fluctuations directly. And now the same team says they’ve gone a step further, having manipulated the vacuum itself, and detecting the changes in these strange signals in the void.
We’re entering the territory of high-level physics here, but what’s really important in this experiment is that, if these results are confirmed, the researchers might have just unlocked a way to observe, probe, and test the quantum realm without interfering with it.
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Sounds pretty neat, eh? Wouldn’t it be nice never to have to worry about running out of fuel or charge ever again? And also to not have to pay for it would be even better! Well, that is potentially what is about to happen over in Israel right now as testing continues into electric roads that can wirelessly charge electric vehicles as they’re moving along.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is in its crucial developmental stages and the government doesn’t seem to be to keen on shaping the way forward, according to experts during a senate inquiry into the dawn of AI.
The senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, under the helm of Texas Senator (R) Ted Cruz, convened November 30 to discuss the state of AI research and development, and its policy effects and implications on commerce. According to experts present at the hearing, the government isn’t doing much to provide guidelines and directions on AI research.
The experts, including Microsoft Research’s managing director Eric Horvitz, believe the government is in a unique position to shape the future of AI – especially since AI is still in its developmental stages. Horvitz said AI innovation can help in areas such as homelessness and addiction where there’s not much investment from the industry yet — which the government can help pursue.
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