Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

Russian biophysicist Alexei Karnaukhov wants to stop our natural aging process with the help of gene therapy, and he successfully completed the first part of his experiment to increase longevity.

NASA Offers Prize Money for 3D-Printed Habitat Ideas

Posted by Karen Hurst in 3D printing, economics, habitats, space travel

Oct 19
2016

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.

Scientists Accidentally Discover Method to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Ethanol

Posted by Shane Hinshaw in climatology, sustainability

Oct 19
2016

The new method could play a key role in helping scientists take carbon dioxide out of the air to fight climate change.

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 biotech/medical, genetics

Oct 19
2016

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.”