Lifeboat Foundation

Aging is associated with an overall decline in health and increased frailty, and is a major risk factor for multiple chronic diseases. Frailty syndrome, characterized by weakness, fatigue and low physical activity, affects more than 30% of the elderly population. Increasing our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the aging process is a top priority to facilitate the development of interventions that will lead to the preservation of health and improvements on survival and lifespan.

Cumulative evidence suggests that diet and metabolism are key targetable regulators of healthy lifespan. Prof. Haim Cohen, Director of the Sagol Healthy Human Longevity Center at Bar-Ilan University, focuses much of his research on the SIRT6 protein that is involved in regulating many biological processes, such as aging, obesity, and insulin resistance.

In a study just published in the journal Nature Communications, an international team led by Cohen and his Ph.D. student Asael Roichman—together with Prof. Rafael de Cabo, of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health, Prof. Manuel Serrani, of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, and Prof. Eyal Gottlieb from the Technion—report that transgenic mice express high levels of the SIRT6 gene, and show that their life expectancy can be increased by an average of 30% in both males and females. Translated into human terms this means that a 90-year-old could live until nearly 120!

CRISPR-based technologies offer enormous potential to benefit human health and safety, from disease eradication to fortified food supplies. As one example, CRISPR-based gene drives, which are engineered to spread specific traits through targeted populations, are being developed to stop the transmission of devastating diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

But many scientists and ethicists have raised concerns over the unchecked spread of gene drives. Once deployed in the wild, how can scientists prevent gene drives from uncontrollably spreading across populations like wildfire?

Continue reading “Synthetic SPECIES developed for use as a confinable gene drive” »

The patent describes the complexity of the layers of this so-called bulletproof glass.

Franz von Holzhausen throwing a steel ball at the Tesla Cybertruck’s side window and breaking it, despite the fact that it was supposed to deflect it, went viral for all the wrong reasons. However, even though the window failed the ball test, Tesla will still install laminated armored glass on its truck and thanks to newly released patents, we now know more about how this multi-layered glass works.

The patent states that it should be able to withstand a 2 Joule impact, with only a 10 percent chance of failure (that means it has an IK07 impact protection rating). This means it should be not fail when a 0.5 kg (1.1 pound) mass is dropped on it from 40 centimeters (15.8 inches) nine times out of ten.

For reference, we can go back to the HRNet paper. The researchers used a dedicated Nvidia V100, a massive and extremely expensive GPU specially designed for deep learning inference. With no memory limitation and no hindrance by other in-game computations, the inference time for the V100 was 150 milliseconds per input, which is ~7 fps, not nearly enough to play a smooth game.

Development and training neural networks

Continue reading “Intel’s image-enhancing AI is a step forward for photorealistic game engines” »

Spoiler alert: some aren’t making it back alive.

The 22nd SpaceX cargo resupply mission will carry 5000 tardigrades and 128 symbiotic squid to the ISS to study the effect of space travel on the human body.

… A possible new way of saving lives.

It turns out mammals can absorb oxygen through their intestines. Can this provide an alternative to a respirator?

Continue reading “Oxygen Enemas Could Save Lives” »

Elevate your enterprise data technology and strategy at Transform 2021. One of the biggest highlights of Build, Microsoft’s annual software development conference, was the presentation of a tool that uses deep learning to generate source code for office applications. The tool uses GPT-3, a massive language model developed by OpenAI last year and made available to select […].

Global brain activity seen on fMRI, and its connection with cerebrospinal fluid flow weaker in brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease risk or related toxin buildup.

Evidence of sleep-dependent low-frequency (0.1 Hz) global brain activity in the clearance of Alzheimer’s disease-related toxin buildup is presented in research published today (June 1, 2021) in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Xiao Liu and colleagues at The Pennsylvania State University. This neuronal activity was more strongly linked with cerebrospinal fluid flow in healthy controls than higher risk groups and patients, and the findings could serve as a potential imaging marker for clinicians in evaluating patients.

The development of Alzheimer’s disease is believed to be driven by the buildup of the toxic proteins amyloid-β and tau in the brain. The brain’s glymphatic system plays a crucial role in clearing these toxins and previous work has shown a possible relationship between sleep-dependent global brain activity and the glymphatic system by showing this activity is coupled by cerebrospinal fluid flow essential for the glymphatic system.

I believe I posted about Nitric Oxide as treatment for covid19 ages ago. Apparently I was right. It also works under the UK variant, thus showing it can work under others as well.

Results of clinical trials conducted in the United Kingdom have shown that a nitric oxide nasal spray (NONS, SaNOtize) is both a safe and effective antiviral treatment to prevent COVID-19 transmission and symptom duration, as well as reduce symptom severity and damage in those already infected, according to the study authors.

“NONS destroys the virus, blocks entry into and halts viral replication within the nasal cavity, which rapidly reduces viral load. This is significant because viral load has been linked to infectivity and poor outcomes,” said Chris Miller, PhD, RT, chief science officer and co-founder of SaNOtize, in a press release. “There is currently a lack of an antiviral therapy that is effective against COVID-19 and its variants, can prevent or shorten the course of the disease, reduce damage, lower the severity of COVID-19, and can be made widely and readily available to the public.”

Continue reading “Clinical Trial Confirms Nasal Spray Efficacy in Treating, Reducing Transmission of COVID-19” »