Lifeboat Foundation

Every year, we’re reminded to return to the pharmacy for a flu shot. Why can’t we have a flu vaccine that offers long-term protection, like those for measles or polio? That’s because the influenza virus continuously evolves, so the immune response we build up one year might not work the next year—or even on the version of the flu you catch the same year. As a result, the virus remains dangerous: last year, it caused more than 60,000 deaths in the United States alone.

New findings, published in Cell, reveal why making a general-purpose vaccine that guards against all versions of the flu is so hard: Instead of improving its memory of the previous version of virus, the immune system develops its response to the new virus variant from scratch, mostly using immune cells that have no memory of the virus.

“If we can figure out how to help the immune system to keep building on what it has already learned, we could develop better vaccines for highly evolving viruses like the flu, or HIV, or Hepatitis C,” says Gabriel D. Victora, assistant professor at Rockefeller.

P53 is the most famous cancer gene, not least because it’s involved in causing over 50% of all cancers. When a cell loses its p53 gene—when the gene becomes mutated—it unleashes many processes that lead to the uncontrolled cell growth and refusal to die, which are hallmarks of cancer growth. But there are some cancers, like kidney cancer, that that had few p53 mutations. In order to understand whether the inactivation of the p53 pathway might contribute to kidney cancer development, Haifang Yang, Ph.D., a researcher with the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center—Jefferson Health probed kidney cancer’s genes for interactions with p53.

Earlier work found that PBRM1—the second most mutated gene in kidney cancer—could interact with p53. However, other researchers were unable to definitively show that it was truly an important mechanism in kidney cancer.

Rather than looking at the p53 protein itself, first author Weijia Cai a postdoc in Dr. Yang’s lab and other collaborators looked at an activated version of p53, one that is studded with an additional chemical marker—an acetyl group—at many specific spots.

Marcos López de Prado has been at the forefront of machine learning innovation in finance. The New-York based Spaniard was the first-ever head of machine learning at AQR, one of the world’s largest investment management firms, before he left earlier this year to start his own firm, which sells machine learning expertise and algorithms to Wall Street.

Science, not speculation, is the right way to invest, a top expert tells TIME.

Anxious Astronaut has suffered an anxiety attack in space. It could be debilitating, they’re not sure. And unlike, say, a broken arm, it is not immediately visible to Anxious’ co-workers. Anxious Astronaut is good at hiding their problem, which is how they got through the screening process on Earth. But Anxious Astronaut needs to be operating at peak functionality, which Anxious Astronaut knows, which is making them more stressed, and they haven’t even acknowledged to themselves that they’re undergoing a silent crisis. Stress is tough.

Anxious Astronaut does not want to give up their duties, so they’re not taking time to self-evaluate. And besides, any human diagnosis is millions of miles of way, considering Anxious Astronaut and their team are halfway to Mars. So how can Anxious Astronaut’s team figure out what’s wrong? A biosensor. A small, nearly invisible biosensor placed on Anxious Astronaut’s forehead has detected unusually high cortisol, which the body releases when stressed. The data is shared with the medical staff on the mission, and Anxious is able to have their workloads reduced until they’re feeling up to snuff.

Thanks to developments in biosensors that NASA and outside group NextFlex are working on today, Anxious or Unhealthy Astronaut might be able to figure out what’s ailing them at speeds unimaginable today.

A global movement.

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Aubrey de Grey will be the opening speaker at our launch meeting. He will discuss the need for an organized Health and Life Extension movement and related topics. Q and A to follow.

Continue reading “Aubrey de Grey Speaks on Organizing the Movement” »

Next time you eat a blueberry (or chocolate chip) muffin consider what happened to the blueberries in the batter as it was baked. The blueberries started off all squished together, but as the muffin expanded they started to move away from each other. If you could sit on one blueberry you would see all the others moving away from you, but the same would be true for any blueberry you chose. In this sense galaxies are a lot like blueberries.

Since the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding. The strange fact is that there is no single place from which the universe is expanding, but rather all galaxies are (on average) moving away from all the others. From our perspective in the Milky Way galaxy, it seems as though most galaxies are moving away from us – as if we are the centre of our muffin-like universe. But it would look exactly the same from any other galaxy – everything is moving away from everything else.

To make matters even more confusing, new observations suggest that the rate of this expansion in the universe may be different depending on how far away you look back in time. This new data, published in the Astrophysical Journal, indicates that it may time to revise our understanding of the cosmos.

The most detailed map of the observable universe to date.

Many health experts are looking at feeding the bacteria in our gut things like pre-biotics and probiotics, but health experts suggest we should consider the fungi even viruses that live in our gut or microbiome in order to thrive.

Could a cryptographic system rooted in chaos theory herald an age of “absolutely unbreakable” encryption?