Lifeboat Foundation

A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future. 2016 Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Short Film.

World of Tomorrow Episodes Two and Three are now streaming in our YouTube Members Section.

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For millennia, scientists and technologists have been scouring the natural world for clues on how to live longer. But is anyone any closer to finally defeating aging?

As the 3rd presenter during the morning session of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery Meeting, “Emerging Concepts,” Saranya Wyles, MD, PhD, assistant professor of dermatology, pharmacology, and regenerative medicine in the department of dermatology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, explored the hallmarks of skin aging, the root cause of aging and why it occurs, and regenerative medicine. Wyles first began with an explanation of how health care is evolving. In 21st-century health care, there has been a shift in how medical professionals think about medicine. Traditionally, the first approach was to fight diseases, such as cancer, inflammatory conditions, or autoimmune disorders. Now, the thought process is changing to a root cause approach with a curative option and how to rebuild health. Considering how to overcome the sequence of the different medications and treatments given to patients is rooted in regenerative medicine principles.

For skin aging, there is a molecular ‘clock’ that bodies follow. Within the clock are periods of genomic instability, telomere attrition, and epigenetic alterations, and Wyles’ lab focuses on cellular senescence.

“We’ve heard a lot at this conference about bio stimulators, aesthetics, and how we can stimulate our internal mechanisms of regeneration. Now, the opposite force of regeneration is the inhibitory aging hallmarks which include cellular senescence. So, what is cell senescence? This is a state that the cell goes into, similar to apoptosis or proliferation, where the cell goes into a cell cycle arrest so instead of dividing apoptosis, leading to cell death, the cell stays in this zombie state,” said Wyles.

Artificial intelligence models are being used to try to predict the future of artificial intelligence research. Thankfully, none of them say we are due an AI apocalypse.

Physicists are (temporarily) augmenting reality in order to crack the code of quantum systems.

Calculating the collective behavior of a molecule’s electrons is necessary to predict a material’s properties. Such predictions could one day help scientists create novel drugs or create materials with desirable qualities like superconductivity. The issue is that electrons may become ‘quantum mechanically’ entangled with one another, which means they can no longer be treated individually. For any system with more than a few particles, the entangled network of connections becomes outrageously difficult for even the most powerful computers to unravel directly.

Now, quantum physicists from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) in New York City have found a workaround. By adding extra “ghost” electrons in their computations that interact with the system’s actual electrons, they were able to simulate entanglement.

A recent book explores what they’re telling one another in different locations.

Lessons from COVID vaccine development and approval can aid the process.

According to Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, the founders of the German company BioNTech, mRNA vaccines that can help target cancer could be ready for use before the end of this decade, The Guardian.

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AI image generator Dall-E2 is about to find a new host. Microsoft will integrate the AI-based image generator with Microsoft Designer, a video-making tool to be available within the Microsoft Office suite. Till recently, Dall-E2 which is looked down upon as an app meant for only playing around with text prompts will be a part of Microsoft’s AI graphic design app. Designers and video makers who find it difficult to search for unique images can now leverage Microsoft’s Designer app to compose videos with imagery of their choice. Microsoft’s venture is seen as a step toward competing with design major Canva, which boasts more than 100 million active users. During the Ignite Conference held recently, Microsoft announced that it would integrate Dall-E 2 into the yet-to-be-released Designer app as well as existing Bing and Edge.