Lifeboat Foundation

Now, though, new research is helping us understand this strange dusty environment and paving the way for safer Mars missions in the future — like a crewed landing and possibly even a permanent settlement.

The problem of dust

Mars’s surface is covered in fine particles of dust. With its smaller size than Earth, it has lower gravity – around one-third of the gravity here – and a thinner atmosphere, which is around one percent of the density of Earth’s atmosphere. That means it is easy for winds to form and to pick up those dust particles, blowing them into a dust storm.

Great article by the great Steve Hill. One little thing:

“The life extension community unfortunately does have a reputation for being long on promises and short on delivery. With what is now decades of research, there are still no effective therapies against aging.”

Continue reading “Life Extension and Anti-Aging Have a Branding Problem” »

The sunspot, called AR2975, has been shooting out flares of electrically charged particles from the sun’s plasma soup since Monday (March 28). Sunspots are areas on the sun’s surface where powerful magnetic fields, created by the flow of electrical charges, knot into kinks before suddenly snapping. The resulting release of energy launches bursts of radiation called solar flares, or explosive jets of solar material called coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

Related: Strange new type of solar wave defies physics

Cannibal coronal mass ejections happen when fast-moving solar eruptions overtake earlier eruptions in the same region of space, sweeping up charged particles to form a giant, combined wavefront that triggers a powerful geomagnetic storm.

Despite a wealth of knowledge gained in the past three decades concerning the molecular underpinnings of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), progress towards obtaining effective, disease modifying therapies has proven to be challenging. In this manner, numerous clinical trials targeting the production, aggregation, and toxicity of beta-amyloid, have failed to meet efficacy standards. This puts into question the beta-amyloid hypothesis and suggests that additional treatment strategies should be explored. The recent emergence of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing as a relatively straightforward, inexpensive, and precise system has led to an increased interest of applying this technique in AD. CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing can be used as a direct treatment approach or to help establish better animal models that more faithfully mimic human neurodegenerative diseases. In this manner, this technique has already shown promise in other neurological disorders, such as Huntington’s disease. The purpose of this review is to examine the potential utility of CRISPR/Cas9 as a treatment option for AD by targeting specific genes including those that cause early-onset AD, as well as those that are significant risk factors for late-onset AD such as the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) gene.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, CRISPR/Cas9, Gene editing, Treatment, Huntington’s disease, iPSC neurons.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects older adults and is the most common cause of dementia [1]. Currently it afflicts 5.5 million Americans and that number is expected to triple by 2050. At the present time, it is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer, with an estimated 700,000 Americans ages65 years will have AD when they die [2]. In addition, the cost of the disease is substantial with $259 billion health care dollars going to manage the disease currently, and by the middle of the century costs are predicted to soar over $1.2 trillion, which will completely bankrupt the healthcare system in the USA [3]. Worldwide, 47 million people live with dementia and that number is projected to increase to more than 131 million by 2050 with an estimated worldwide cost of US $818 billion [4].

Australia’s first fusion energy company HB11 Energy has demonstrated a world-first ‘material’ number of fusion reactions by a private company, producing ten times more fusion reactions than expected based on earlier experiments at the same facility. The technology utilizes high-power, high-precision lasers to start non-thermal fusion reactions between hydrogen and boron-11 rather than heating hydrogen isotopes to hundred-million-degrees temperatures.

This approach was predicted in the 1970s at UNSW by Australian theoretical physicist and HB11 Energy co-founder Professor Heinrich Hora. It differs radically from most other fusion efforts to date that require heating of hydrogen isotopes to millions of degrees.

Nuclear fusion powers the Sun and other stars as hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, and the matter is converted into energy. The Sun accomplishes fusion by having a huge amount of hydrogen atoms packed into a plasma that’s superheated to tens of millions of degrees at its core. At these temperatures, the hydrogen atoms move so fast and eventually reach speeds high enough to bring the ions close enough together that they smack into each other and fuse, releasing the energy that warms our planet.