Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Nov 25
2016

Some Adaptive Immune Cells Become More Innate-Like in the Aged Immune System

Destroying and replacing the immune system is one of the approaches to treat the aging process.

Fightaging! provides some commentary about the immune system in relation to aging. Addressing the decline of the immune system is one of the approaches SRF is interested in and is a cornerstone of rejuvenation biotechnology.

“Understanding exactly how aging progressively harms the intricate choreography of the immune response is a massive project, and nowhere near completion. It is possible to judge how far along researchers are in this work by the side effect of the quality of therapies for autoimmune disease, which are malfunctions in immune configuration, and largely incurable at the present time. From a practical point of view, and as mentioned above, the best prospects for effective treatments in the near future involve destroying and recreating the immune system. That works around our comparative ignorance by removing all of the problems that researchers don’t understand in addition to ones that they do.”

#sens #aging

Nov 25
2016

The road is long but we can get there

This gives a very simple summary of the process of drug development.

The development process from Pre-Clinical testing to an approved product we can use is a long one. A global average of 17 years with the US being 12 years is the historical norm for new drugs and therapies to be developed.

#aging #crowdfundthecure

Nov 25
2016

Commercial harvesting of stem cells under way

A laboratory in Lanarkshire has started harvesting stem cells from children’s teeth.

It’s hoped the cells can be used in a cure if the children develop a disease later in life.

The American company BioEden will cryogenically store the cells in return for a monthly fee.

Relatively few stem cell therapies are currently in use but hundreds more are being researched.

Nov 25
2016

We are pleased to share an update on our research in 3D capture and algorithms

We took the technology out of the studio and into a car – making Holoportation truly mobile. To accomplish this, we reduced the bandwidth requirements by 97%, while still maintaining quality. This new mobile Holoportation system greatly increases the potential applications of real-time 3D capture and transmission.

Nov 25
2016

For the First Time, Living Cells Have Formed Carbon-Silicon Bonds

Scientists have managed to coax living cells into making carbon-silicon bonds, demonstrating for the first time that nature can incorporate silicon — one of the most abundant elements on Earth — into the building blocks of life.

While chemists have achieved carbon-silicon bonds before — they’re found in everything from paints and semiconductors to computer and TV screens — they’ve so far never been found in nature, and these new cells could help us understand more about the possibility of silicon-based life elsewhere in the Universe.

After oxygen, silicon is the second most abundant element in Earth’s crust, and yet it has nothing to do with biological life.

Nov 25
2016

15 Percent of Big Banks Will Be Using Blockchain by 2017, Says IBM

In Brief:

IBM surveyed 200 global banks and financial institutions as part of two recently released studies.
The widespread use of Blockchain could lead to more secure, efficient banking experiences.

Recent reports by IBM have revealed that by 2017, 15 percent of big banks worldwide and 14 percent of major financial institutions will be using Blockchain technology.

Nov 24
2016

DARPA developing robots to fix and maintain satellites that are one tenth of the distance to the moon

DARPA is developing robotic support and maintenance of geosynchronous Earth orbit satellites with the Phoenix and GEO programs

The traditional process of designing, developing, building and deploying space systems is long, expensive and complex. These difficulties apply especially to the increasing number of expensive, mission-critical satellites launched every year into geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), approximately 22,000 miles above the Earth. Unlike objects in low Earth orbit (LEO), such as the Hubble Space Telescope, satellites in GEO are essentially unreachable with current technology.

DARPA’s Phoenix program seeks to change this paradigm and reduce the cost of space-based systems by developing and demonstrating new satellite assembly architectures and delivery systems. Phoenix is currently focusing on two primary technical areas of research:

Nov 24
2016

Understanding Machine Learning [INFOGRAPHIC]

Machines are now able to learn and evolve without human intervention. Here’s how it works, and what it means for the future of humanity.

Nov 24
2016

Universities’ AI Talent Poached by Tech Giants — By Daniela Hernandez and Rachael King | The Wall Street Journal

“Alphabet Inc.’s Google division last week hired the director of Stanford University’s artificial intelligence lab to lead a new AI unit, the latest in a long line of academic stars in artificial intelligence lured away by tech giants.”

Nov 24
2016

Gravity may have chased light in the early universe

By Michael Brooks

It’s supposed to be the most fundamental constant in physics, but the speed of light may not always have been the same. This twist on a controversial idea could overturn our standard cosmological wisdom.

In 1998, Joao Magueijo at Imperial College London, proposed that the speed of light might vary, to solve what cosmologists call the horizon problem. This says that the universe reached a uniform temperature long before heat-carrying photons, which travel at the speed of light, had time to reach all corners of the universe.