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May 21, 2021

Amazon is shutting down Prime Now and folding two-hour deliveries into its main app

Posted by in category: futurism

Amazon says it will be ‘even more seamless for customers’.


Amazon is shutting down its standalone Prime Now delivery app, with its speedy two-hour delivery options moving exclusively into the company’s main app and website, the company announced today. Prime Now services have already moved into the main app in India, Japan, and Singapore, while in other countries Amazon is already directing Prime Now users into its main app and website via a pop-up, CNBC notes. The standalone Prime Now app and website will be retired by the end of the year.

Originally launched in 2014, Prime Now was designed to offer deliveries of essential items within hours rather than days for Prime members. The service was initially available in just a small number of cities, but has since expanded to over 5000 locations around the world, CNBC notes. Writing in a blog post, Amazon’s vice president of grocery Stephenie Landry said shutting down the separate app will “make this experience even more seamless for customers.”

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May 21, 2021

Vulnerabilities in billions of Wi-Fi devices let hackers bypass firewalls

Posted by in categories: encryption, internet

FragAttacks let hackers inject malicious code or commands into encrypted Wi-Fi traffic.

May 21, 2021

Boys Born Very Prematurely May Age Faster as Men

Posted by in category: life extension

**Low birth weight tied to accelerated aging in boys**

A study in Pediatrics found that boys who weigh less than 2 pounds at birth aged faster and were five years older biologically in their early 30s, compared with boys who were born at the same time but whose birth weights were normal. The findings were based on the genes of 45 individuals who were extremely low birth weight and those of 47 whose birth weights were normal.


MONDAY, May 17, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Boys who weigh less than 2 pounds at birth don’t age as well as their normal-weight peers, a long-term study finds.

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May 21, 2021

Is nature continuous or discrete? How the atomist error was born

Posted by in categories: ethics, particle physics

The modern idea that nature is discrete originated in Ancient Greek atomism. Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus all argued that nature was composed of what they called ἄτομος (átomos) or ‘indivisible individuals’. Nature was, for them, the totality of discrete atoms in motion. There was no creator god, no immortality of the soul, and nothing static (except for the immutable internal nature of the atoms themselves). Nature was atomic matter in motion and complex composition – no more, no less.

Despite its historical influence, however, atomism was eventually all but wiped out by Platonism, Aristotelianism and the Christian tradition that followed throughout the Middle Ages. Plato told his followers to destroy Democritus’ books whenever they found them, and later the Christian tradition made good on this demand. Today, nothing but a few short letters from Epicurus remain.

Atomism was not finished, however. It reemerged in 1417, when an Italian book-hunter named Poggio Bracciolini discovered a copy of an ancient poem in a remote monastery: De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), written by Lucretius (c99–55 BCE), a Roman poet heavily influenced by Epicurus. This book-length philosophical poem in epic verse puts forward the most detailed and systematic account of ancient materialism that we’ve been fortunate enough to inherit. In it, Lucretius advances a breathtakingly bold theory on foundational issues in everything from physics to ethics, aesthetics, history, meteorology and religion. Against the wishes and best efforts of the Christian church, Bracciolini managed to get it into print, and it soon circulated across Europe.

May 21, 2021

Mammals can breathe through their intestines

Posted by in category: futurism

On a good day, things exit through the anus. But in rodents and pigs in respiratory distress, oxygen can be absorbed by tissues in the rectum, helping the animals recover, a new study suggests. The scientists behind the research propose that flushing oxygen into the rectum could one day help save human lives if conventional ventilation methods are unavailable.

“It looks like a crazy idea,” says Sean Colgan, a gastroenterologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was not involved in the study. “But if you look at the data, it’s actually a very compelling story.”

Most mammals breathe through their mouths and noses and send oxygen to their body via the lungs. A few aquatic animals, including sea cucumbers and catfish, breathe through their intestines, and the intestinal tissues of humans can readily absorb pharmaceuticals. But no one knew whether oxygen could enter the bloodstream via mammalian intestines.

May 21, 2021

Genetic tricks of the longest-lived animals

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

The secret to longevity is already in the animals around us.


Some species live unexpectedly long lives. By studying how they do it, researchers hope to pinpoint factors affecting human longevity.

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May 21, 2021

Scientists find new human coronavirus that originated in dogs

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Scientists said the findings indicated that the virus likely recently jumped from animals to humans, but stressed that additional studies are necessary.


Scientists have reportedly discovered a new kind of coronavirus that is believed to have originated in dogs – in what may be the eighth unique form of the bug known to cause disease in humans.

Researchers in a study published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal said their findings from patients hospitalized with pneumonia in 2017–2018 underscored the public health threat of animal coronaviruses, Reuters reported.

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May 21, 2021

Fighting Aging With Gene Therapies | Liz Parrish Interview Series Episode 2

Posted by in categories: education, genetics, law, life extension, media & arts

Most important part comes at 1:49 where Liza talks about gene therapies for people to stop people from aging, reaching homeostasis, or even exceeding it a little bit.


In this video Liz introduces BioViva Science and how the company works with its partners in delivering gene therapies.

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May 21, 2021

SETI: how microbes could communicate with alien species

Posted by in category: alien life

A new study argues we should search for microbial life rather than human-like aliens.

May 21, 2021

Proxima Centauri b: Artificial Illumination as a Technosignature

Posted by in categories: innovation, space

Our recent look at the possibility of technosignatures at Alpha Centauri is now supplemented with a new study on the detectability of artificial lights on Proxima Centauri b. The planet is in the habitable zone, roughly similar in mass to the Earth, and of course, it orbits the nearest star, making it a world we can hope to learn a great deal more about as new instruments come online. The James Webb Space Telescope is certainly one of these, but the new work also points to LUVOIR (Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor), a multi-wavelength space-based observatory with possible launch in 2035.

Authors Elisa Tabor (Stanford University) and Avi Loeb (Harvard) point out that a (presumably) tidally locked planet with a permanent nightside would need artificial lighting to support a technological culture. As we saw in Brian Lacki’s presentation at Breakthrough Discuss (see Alpha Centauri and the Search for Technosignatures), coincident epochs for civilizations developing around neighboring stars are highly unlikely, making this the longest of longshots. On the other hand, a civilization arising elsewhere could be detectable through its artifacts on worlds it has chosen to study.

We learn by asking questions and looking at data. In this case, asking how we would detect artificial light on Proxima b involves factoring in the planet’s radius, which is on the order of 1.3 Earth radii (1.3 R) as well as that of Proxima Centauri itself, which is 0.14 that of the Sun (0.14 R). We also know the planet is in an 11 day orbit at 0.05 AU. Other factors influencing its lightcurve would be its albedo and orbital inclination. Tabor and Loeb use recent work on Proxima Centauri c’s inclination (citation below) to ballpark an orbital inclination for the inner world.