Lifeboat Foundation

Third-party cookie trackers live to fight for another year.

Google is announcing today that it is delaying its plans to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser until 2023, a year or so later than originally planned. Other browsers like Safari and Firefox have already implemented some blocking against third-party tracking cookies, but Chrome is the most-used desktop browser, and so its shift will be more consequential for the ad industry. That’s why the term “cookiepocalypse” has taken hold.

In the blog post announcing the delay, Google says that decision to phase out cookies over a “three month period” in mid-2023 is “subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).” In other words, it is pinning part of the delay on its need to work more closely with regulators to come up with new technologies to replace third-party cookies for use in advertising.

Continue reading “Google delays blocking third-party cookies in Chrome until 2023” »

After a devastating year of life on Earth, here’s your chance to get far, far away from it all.

Space flight company Space Perspective has debuted a $125000 package that brings travelers to the edge of our atmosphere on a space-age hot air balloon.

Continue reading “You can ride a hydrogen balloon to outer space for $125K” »

To better understand the role of bacteria in health and disease, National Institutes of Health researchers fed fruit flies antibiotics and monitored the lifetime activity of hundreds of genes that scientists have traditionally thought control aging. To their surprise, the antibiotics not only extended the lives of the flies but also dramatically changed the activity of many of these genes. Their results suggested that only about 30% of the genes traditionally associated with aging set an animal’s internal clock while the rest reflect the body’s response to bacteria.

“For decades scientists have been developing a hit list of common aging genes. These genes are thought to control the aging process throughout the animal kingdom, from worms to mice to humans,” said Edward Giniger, Ph.D., senior investigator, at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the senior author of the study published in iScience. “We were shocked to find that only about 30% of these genes may be directly involved in the aging process. We hope that these results will help medical researchers better understand the forces that underlie several age-related disorders.”

The results happened by accident. Dr. Giniger’s team studies the genetics of aging in a type of fruit fly called Drosophila. Previously, the team showed how a hyperactive immune system may play a critical role in the neural damage that underlies several aging brain disorders. However, that study did not examine the role that bacteria may have in this process.

Circa 2008 😗

Advance could lead to embryonic stem cell lines for treating disease.

China’s first-ever Mars rover was on the move earlier this month, imagery by a NASA spacecraft shows.

The rover, named Zhurong, is part of Tianwen-1, China’s first fully homegrown Red Planet mission, which arrived in orbit around Mars in February. Zhurong separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter on May 14 and touched down on the vast plain Utopia Planitia a few hours later.

China’s prime rocket manufacturer has unveiled a roadmap for the country’s future manned Mars exploration missions, which not only includes manned landing missions but also Mars base building.

Wang Xiaojun, head of the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), outlined the plans in his speech themed “The Space Transportation System of Human Mars Exploration” at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021) via a virtual link, the academy told the Global Times on Wednesday.

After reviewing the successful mission of the Tianwen-1 probe mission, the country’s first interplanetary exploration that achieved a successful orbiting, landing and roving the Red Planet all in one go, Wang introduced the three-step plan for future Mars expedition.

These results suggest that IL-12 and IFN-γ could one day be measured along with other biomarkers to predict future brain health in cognitively normal people–a tool that doesn’t yet exist in medicine.

Summary: Higher levels of two cytokines were associated with slower cognitive decline in aging adults, a new study reports.

Source: Mass General

Continue reading “Inflammatory Proteins May Slow Cognitive Decline in Aging Adults” »

The same bacteria that cause inflammation also trigger weight loss.

A new study investigating how a low-calorie diet alters gut microbial populations is reporting unexpected results. The findings reveal a strange relationship between extreme caloric restriction and increased levels of a pathogenic bacteria linked to inflammatory bowel disease.

The research began by recruiting 80 overweight or obese subjects. Half the cohort were directed to maintain a stable weight for 16 weeks, while the other half completed a medically supervised weight-loss program including eight weeks of a very low calorie diet (800 kcal per day).

Continue reading “Pathogenic gut bacteria linked to weight loss from low-calorie diet” »

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Continue reading “Is Mycelium Fungus the Plastic of the Future?” »