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Excercise is the best low cost activity you can do as part of your personal longevity strategy. Here we see data showing it can improve resistance to oxidative stress.


Researchers digging deeper into the mechanisms by which exercise produces benefits have found that it improves the resistance of blood vessels to oxidative stress. With age the presence of oxidizing molecules and oxidative modification of proteins, preventing correct function, increases for reasons that include damage to mitochondria, the power plants of the cell. Oxidative damage to molecular machinery is somewhere in the middle of the chain of cause and effect that starts with fundamental forms of damage to cells and tissues and spirals down into age-related diseases. Near all of this oxidation is repaired very quickly, the damaged molecules dismantled and recycled, but in most contexts more of it over the long term is worse than less of it.

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Thermoelectric generators convert heat or cold to electricity (and vice-versa). Normally solid-state devices, they can be used in such things as power plants to convert waste heat into additional electrical power, or in small cooling systems that do not need compressors or liquid coolant. However the rigid construction of these devices generally limits their use to flat, even surfaces. In an effort to apply thermal generation capabilities to almost any shape, scientists at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea claim to have created a thermoelectric coating that can be directly painted onto most surfaces.

Variously known as the Peltier, Seebeck, or Thomson effect, the thermoelectric effect is seen in semiconductor devices that create a voltage when a different temperature is present on each side or, when a voltage is applied to the device, it creates a temperature difference between the two sides. In this instance, the new paint created by the UNIST researchers is used specifically to heat a surface when a voltage is applied.

The specially-formulated inorganic thermoelectric paint was created using Bi2Te3 (bismuth telluride) and Sb2Te3 (antimony telluride) particles to create two types of semiconducting material. To test the resultant mixture, the researchers applied alternate p-type (positive) and n-type (negative) layers of the thermoelectric semiconductor paint on a metal dome with electrodes at the top and the base of the dome.

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Artificial intelligence and machine learning are predicted to be part of the next industrial revolution and could help business and industry save billions of dollars by the next decade.

The tech giants Google, Facebook, Apple, IBM and others are applying artificial intelligence to all sorts of data.

Machine learning methods are being used in areas such as translating language almost in real time, and even to identify images of cats on the internet.

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Some of the biggest names in the business are teaming up to secure the future of virtual reality.

Google, Sony, Oculus, Samsung, Acer and HTC have combined their efforts in order to create a healthy and equal industry for virtual reality hardware and software to develop and expand. The result is the Global Virtual Reality Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the growth of the virtual reality industry by providing educational resources, connecting developers with necessary resources and much more.

“The organization will foster dialogue between public and private stakeholders in VR around the world and make education and training material available to the public. Working groups will be organized around important topics for the industry, enabling us to produce relevant research and guidance. We will also host and participate in international discussions on important topics in VR to shape the public discussion on the technology. Ultimately, the group will develop best practices and share them openly.”

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