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Jun 18, 2019

One of Earth’s First Cities Suffered the Same Issues Metropolises Face Today

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health

“I am committed to the notion that the past predicts the present,” Larsen tells Inverse, “and we need to understand that past to understand the world we live in now.”

Larsen has had a longstanding interest in the health and lifestyle of early farmers — those who were working around the Neolithic transition from hunting and gathering to farming. So when Ian Hodder, Ph.D., an archeologist who leads the Çatalhöyük Research Project, invited him to join the project in 2004, he quickly accepted the opportunity.

This new study is based on 25 years of findings linked to the human remains found in Çatalhöyük. Dating of remains shows that the population there grew to its peak in the period from 6,700 to 6,500 B.C. and then declined rapidly. That decline is likely linked to the evidence of disease and malnutrition Larsen and colleagues found in the remains.

Jun 18, 2019

The Future of Pensions – Article

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, geopolitics, life extension, policy, transhumanism

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party features this article by Nicola Bagalà and Michael Nuschke of the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF), originally published on the LEAF site on May 15th, 2019. The article brings attention to and responds to concerns related to the impacts of increased longevity on pension systems, a possible result of our mission of ending age-related diseases, which the U.S. Transhumanist Party supports as part of our policy goals.

~ Brent Reitze, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, June 15th, 2019

If you work in social security, it’s possible that your nightmares are full of undying elderly people who keep knocking on your door for pensions that you have no way of paying out. Tossing and turning in your bed, you beg for mercy, explaining that there’s just too many old people who need pensions and not enough young people who could cover for it with their contributions; the money’s just not there to sustain a social security system that, when it was conceived in the mid-1930s, didn’t expect that many people would ever make it into their 80s and 90s. Your oneiric persecutors won’t listen: they gave the country the best years of their lives, and now it’s time for the country to pay them their due.

Jun 18, 2019

Cause of hardening of the arteries—and potential treatment—identified

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

A team of UK scientists have identified the mechanism behind hardening of the arteries, and shown in animal studies that a generic medication normally used to treat acne could be an effective treatment for the condition.

The team, led by the University of Cambridge and King’s College London, found that a molecule once thought only to exist inside cells for the purpose of repairing DNA is also responsible for hardening of the arteries, which is associated with dementia, , and stroke.

There is no current treatment for hardening of the arteries, which is caused by build-up of bone-like calcium deposits, stiffening the arteries and restricting to organs and tissues.

Jun 18, 2019

Can probiotics and other factors be used reliably to benefit health?

Posted by in categories: food, genetics, health

Steven Finkel tells the story of a close family member who had a discomforting health issue—the kind you don’t discuss at the dinner table.

“She went and chose a bunch of yogurts with active culture,” he says. The first yogurt—call it Yogurt A—made her constipated, and Yogurt B gave her diarrhea. “It’s like Goldilocks,” he adds, before concluding her tale of woe with a happy ending: “Yogurt C made her feel great.”

Hoping to understand how three versions of one food could cause such dissimilar reactions, the relative contacted Finkel, who is professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife and an expert on bacterial physiology, genetics and evolution.

Jun 18, 2019

Facebook Introduces New “Libra” Digital Currency With Landmark White Paper

Posted by in categories: business, cryptocurrencies

Fox Business adds:

Facebook’s new cryptocurrency platform could provide the embattled social media giant with a new revenue stream of historic proportions as it contends with a possible federal antitrust probe and continued scrutiny over its data privacy practices.

[…]

Jun 18, 2019

For most of history, humans got smarter. That’s now reversing

Posted by in category: futurism

We were gaining three IQ points per decade for many, many years. Now, that’s going backward. Could this explain some of our choices lately?

Jun 18, 2019

In Japan, This Engineer Is Designing a Miniature Rover to Make the Moon Habitable

Posted by in categories: economics, space

By finding water on the moon, startup Ispace envisions a bustling lunar economy by 2040.

Jun 18, 2019

A New Global Currency

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, finance

Today, Facebook is coming together with 27 organizations around the world to start the non-profit Libra Association and create a new currency called Libra.


Libra is a global cryptocurrency built on blockchain to promote financial inclusion. Libra is digital, mobile, stable, fast, cheap and secure. Read the Libra White Paper.

Jun 18, 2019

UNITY Biotechnology Reports Promising Topline Data from Phase 1 First-in-human Study of UBX0101 in Patients with Osteoarthritis of the Knee

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

It’s a start. So far so good, senolytics.


SAN FRANCISCO, June 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — UNITY Biotechnology, Inc. (UNITY) [NASDAQ: UBX], a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to extend healthspan by slowing, halting or reversing diseases of aging, today announced promising results from its first-in-human Phase 1 study of UBX0101 in patients with moderate to severe osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. The study demonstrated that UBX0101 was safe and well-tolerated. Improvement in several clinical measures, including pain, function, as well as modulation of certain senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) factors and disease-related biomarkers was observed after a single dose of UBX0101.

Jun 18, 2019

Today, Facebook is coming together with 27 organizations around the world to start the non-profit Libra Association and create a new currency called Libra

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, finance, mobile phones

Libra’s mission is to create a simple global financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people around the world. It’s powered by blockchain technology and the plan is to launch it in 2020. You can read more about the association here: https://libra.org/&h=AT0Vpgfo9yMWI9A93aDq0V-7D3PwK9TiZGZ…la1VStESZA

Being able to use mobile money can have an important positive impact on people’s lives because you don’t have to always carry cash, which can be insecure, or pay extra fees for transfers. This is especially important for people who don’t have access to traditional banks or financial services. Right now, there are around a billion people who don’t have a bank account but do have a mobile phone.