Lifeboat Foundation

Medical Ethics and “Futility” (Note: Listen here function)

We breathe about 12 to 20 times a minute, without having to think. Inhale: and air flows through the mouth and nose, into the trachea. The bronchi stem out like a wishbone, and keep branching, dividing and dividing, and finally feeding out into the tiny air sacs of alveoli. Capillaries – blood vessels thinner than hairs – twine around each alveolus. Both the air sac and the blood vessel are tiny, delicate, one cell thick: portals where blood (the atmosphere of the body) meets air (atmosphere of the world). Oxygen passes from air to blood; carbon dioxide, from blood to air. Then, the exhale pushes that carbon dioxide back out the mouth and nose. Capillaries channel newly oxygenated blood back to the heart. That oxygen fuels the body. That’s why we breathe.

Today, these basics of human respiration and metabolism feel obvious – and ventilators, the machines that breathe for sick people, do, too. We have so many medical devices, so of course we’d need, and have, machines that help us to breathe. But there’s a strange, and deeply human, story behind how we learned to breathe for each other. It starts long ago, when we didn’t understand breathing at all. When the body’s failure to breathe was incomprehensible, incurable, and fatal. When we had no way of knowing how badly we needed ventilators to keep people alive through those moments of vulnerability, lest those moments be their last.

Continue reading “The human story of how ventilators came to breathe for us” »

At our first online conference, Ending Age-Related Diseases 2020, Dr. Brian Kennedy of the National University of Singapore discussed the aging population of Singapore, the need for comprehensive healthcare, alpha-ketoglutarate and its effects against frailty in mice, ongoing trials of ketoglutarate in humans, spermidine against obesity, the role of biomarkers, and the importance of keeping people well rather than simply treating them when they are sick.

Honda Motor has unveiled its first electric vehicle for the Japanese market.

Venus is suddenly a new hotspot for astrobiology, but its real value may be in what it teaches us about the evolution of life on our own planet.

#aubreydegrey #ageing #ucaststudios #thetalkspot

The Talk Spot is an interview show where we have guests from all backgrounds on. This episode features returning guest Aubrey de Grey.

Continue reading “Ageing Can Be A Thing Of The Past” »

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has unveiled a rendering of its next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and strike unmanned air vehicle as a proposed replacement of the US Air Force’s MQ-9A Reaper.

But can Nvidia play nice with Apple, Linux, and other ARM partners?

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020, leaders from three quantum computing startups joined TechCrunch editor Frederic Lardinois to discuss the future of the technology. IonQ CEO and president Peter Chapman suggested we could be as little as five years away from a desktop quantum computer, but not everyone agreed on that optimistic timeline.

“I think within the next several years, five years or so, you’ll start to see [desktop quantum machines]. Our goal is to get to a rack-mounted quantum computer,” Chapman said.

But that seemed a tad optimistic to Alan Baratz, CEO at D-Wave Systems. He says that when it comes to developing the super-conducting technology that his company is building, it requires a special kind of rather large quantum refrigeration unit called a dilution fridge, and that unit would make a five-year goal of having a desktop quantum PC highly unlikely.

Walter Reed researchers say based on what they’ve learned about COVID so far, you need to get a flu shot.

Scientists leading the Army’s coronavirus vaccine effort say this year’s flu shot is critical because they do not yet know whether getting the flu will make it likelier someone catches COVID-19.