Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists with the New Horizons mission gathered together in Texas yesterday to discuss the latest findings about MU69. This distant Kuiper Belt object—which bears a striking resemblance to a flattened snowman—is turning out to be even weirder than we imagined.

After NASA’s New Horizons zipped past Pluto on July 14, 2015, mission planners sent the spacecraft on a trajectory towards 2014 MU69, a distant trans-Neptunian object (TNO). Aside from its location in the Kuiper Belt and a distinctly reddish hue, virtually nothing was known about the object, which was first spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope just five years ago.

An intriguing new study, led by scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder, suggests an aging gut microbiome may be somewhat responsible for the degradation in cardiovascular heath that tends to appear as we grow older. The study is yet another addition to the growing body of evidence affirming the role gut bacteria plays in age-related disease.

Mayon is a near-perfect cone; its steep, forested slopes look rather like a bull’s eye when viewed from above.

NASA has a unique vantage point for observing the beauty and wonder of Earth and for making sense of it. The images in this book tell a story of a 4.5-billion-year-old planet where there is always something new to see.

“We’ve left Mike to the last of these announcements, but he’s a prime example of “last but not least” — indeed, he is the only speaker we’ve invited who was also an invited speaker last year. That’s no accident: this exploding and immensely diverse field boasts a huge number of stellar researchers, such that I could happily fill the program without repetition even if the meeting lasted a week. But Mike is the ultimate pioneer in our field: he was the first rejuvenation researcher, by well over a decade, to make a success of taking early-stage work into the private sector. He’s still at the absolute forefront of this crusade, and I’m eager to learn what he has to say this year”, says Aubrey de Grey.

https://www.undoing-aging.org/news/dr-mike-west-to-speak-at-undoing-aging-2019

#undoingaging #sens #foreverhealthy

Science has a problem (especially theoretical physics). Here’s how you can help.

[I have gotten numerous requests by people who want to share Appendix C of my book. The content is copyrighted, of course, but my publisher kindly agreed that I can make it publicly available. You may use this text for non-commercial purposes, so long as you add the copyright disclaimer, see bottom of post.]

Both bottom-up and top-down measures are necessary to improve the current situation. This is an interdisciplinary problem whose solution requires input from the sociology of science, philosophy, psychology, and – most importantly – the practicing scientists themselves. Details differ by research area. One size does not fit all. Here is what you can do to help.

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In Nature Neuroscience, researchers present a new method to grow a cerebral organoid from human stem cells that exhibits axon outgrowth with specific tract-like patterns. Read the paper here: https://go.nature.com/2HMQxtF

The last two decades have seen a great upswing in commercial space endeavors with hundreds of new companies formed and a few prominent billionaires entering the fray. This is all good, but it remains devilishly hard to make money in space without tapping into government space markets. Nevertheless, I’m a firm believer that the commercialization of space is absolutely essential for the growth of the space economy and achieving all of the goals we espouse for human activities in space.

So, what do I mean by commercial space? This has been a great topic of debate ever since NASA initiated the commercial cargo and commercial crew programs. There are many definitions and which is appropriate depends on the context. The real distinction is between the public sector and the private sector. Any given space activity can include a mixture of both elements. The purest form of commercial activity takes place entirely within the private sector. It is performed by private-sector companies for the benefit of private-sector customers using private-sector capital. Something like Direct TV would be an example.

At the other end of the spectrum is a pure public-sector activity where the activity is performed entirely by public-sector agencies using public-sector employees, entirely funded by public funds for a public purpose. An example would be SLS, but even it is not purely public as several private sector companies are employed. In between are all manner of hybrids involving a mix of investment funds, executing entities and customers.

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After three decades, the Pentagon is betting big on their belief that a dream of the Star Wars initiative may now be closer to a practical concept.

This new method could open a major avenue towards the full regeneration of body parts.

A new study has revealed a method of switching the early growth response of DNA on and off, opening the future possibility of regenerating human body parts with the use of genetic editing.

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