Lifeboat Foundation

Centauri Dreams returns with an essay by long-time contributor Alex Tolley. If we need to grow a much bigger economy to make starships possible one day, the best way to proceed should be through building an infrastructure starting in the inner Solar System and working outward. Alex digs into the issues here, starting with earlier conceptions of how it might be done, and the present understanding that artificial intelligence is moving at such a clip that it will affect all of our ventures as we transform into a truly space-faring species. Under the microscope here is a company called SpaceFab, as Alex explains below, and the potential of ISRU — in situ resource utilization. Emerging out of all this is a new model for expansion.

by Alex Tolley

Continue reading “Bootstrapping the Solar System Economy” »

Izpisúa, Blasco, De Grey, and Magalhães meet in Madrid at the end of summer at the first “International Longevity and Cryopreservation Summit.” The conference lasts two days and is held in the CSIC, attracting prominent scientists, futurists and freaks, as conference organizer and Vidaplus President Txetxu Mazuelas, refers to them. The scientific world and the futuristic world inevitably clash. One of the most heated debates is on the cryopreservation of human beings – a kind of plan B that puts humans on ice while they work out the secret to eternal life.

Could we live to 140? 1,000? Is there a limit? Scientific research into extending the human lifespan is being backed by Silicon Valley giants such as Google and Facebook.

Lyme disease is exceedingly difficult to treat, due to its well-known shape-shifting (pleomorphic) abilities, with conventional antibiotics often failing to produce a long-term cure. Could the commonly used natural plant Stevia provide a safer, and more effective means to combat this increasingly prevalent infection?

A promising new preclinical study has revealed that whole stevia leaf extract possesses exceptional antibiotic activity against the exceedingly difficult to treat pathogen Borrelia Burgdorferi known to cause Lyme disease. The study found.

Japanese scientists discover 50km-long cave beneath #moon’s surface http://bit.ly/2ipl0mx @JAXA_en

Ecns.cn is the official English-language website of China News Service (CNS), a state-level news agency sponsored and established by Chinese journalists and renowned overseas Chinese experts on October 1, 1952.As an English-language website, Ecns.cn aims to provide all aspects of online news, including in-depth coverage, feature stories and visual content, with topics such as current events, art, lifestyle, people and travel.

“Scientists and philosophers… had always assumed that the world worked by physical laws, and if you could measure initial conditions accurately enough, those laws would let you predict the future indefinitely. As James Gleick described it in his book Chaos: Making a New Science, this view was very wrong.”

“There was always one small compromise, so small that working scientists usually forgot it was there, lurking in a corner of their philosophies like an unpaid bill. Measurements could never be perfect,” he wrote. “Scientists marching under Newton’s banner actually waved another flag that said something like this: Given an approximate knowledge of a system’s initial conditions and an understanding of natural law, one can calculate the approximate behaviour of the system. This assumption lay at the philosophical heart of science.”

“Today we know how wrong this assumption was. The Three Body Problem is now recognized as a classic example of a chaotic system. Like the butterfly that causes a hurricane by flapping its wings, it is exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions. The tiniest tweak can have massive consequences down the line.”

Continue reading “How Chinese scientists used a supercomputer to solve the ancient puzzle called the Three Body Problem” »

Mistaken extrapolations, limited imagination, and other common mistakes that distract us from thinking more productively about the future.

Genome editing technologies have revolutionized biomedical science, providing a fast and easy way to modify genes. However, the technique allowing scientists to carryout the most precise edits, doesn’t work in cells that are no longer dividing — which includes most neurons in the brain. This technology had limited use in brain research, until now. Research Fellow Jun Nishiyama, M.D., Ph.D., Research Scientist, Takayasu Mikuni, M.D., Ph.D., and Scientific Director, Ryohei Yasuda, Ph.D. at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) have developed a new tool that, for the first time, allows precise genome editing in mature neurons, opening up vast new possibilities in neuroscience research.

This novel and powerful tool utilizes the newly discovered gene editing technology of CRISPR-Cas9, a viral defense mechanism originally found in bacteria. When placed inside a cell such as a neuron, the CRISPR-Cas9 system acts to damage DNA in a specifically targeted place. The cell then subsequently repairs this damage using predominantly two opposing methods; one being non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), which tends to be error prone, and homology directed repair (HDR), which is very precise and capable of undergoing specified gene insertions. HDR is the more desired method, allowing researchers flexibility to add, modify, or delete genes depending on the intended purpose.

Coaxing cells in the brain to preferentially make use of the HDR DNA repair mechanism has been rather challenging. HDR was originally thought to only be available as a repair route for actively proliferating cells in the body. When precursor brain cells mature into neurons, they are referred to as post-mitotic or nondividing cells, making the mature brain largely inaccessible to HDR — or so researchers previously thought. The team has now shown that it is possible for post-mitotic neurons of the brain to actively undergo HDR, terming the strategy “vSLENDR (viral mediated single-cell labeling of endogenous proteins by CRISPR-Cas9-mediated homology-directed repair).” The critical key to the success of this process is the combined use of CRISPR-Cas9 and a virus.

Researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have used liquid metal to create two-dimensional materials no thicker than a few atoms that have never before been seen in nature.

The incredible breakthrough will not only revolutionise the way we do chemistry but could be applied to enhance data storage and make faster electronics. The “once-in-a-decade” discovery has been published in Science.

The researchers dissolve metals in liquid metal to create very thin oxide layers, which previously did not exist as layered structures and which are easily peeled away.

Continue reading “Liquid metal discovery ushers in new wave of chemistry and electronics” »

Researchers have developed a technique that enables gene editing on neurons — something previously thought to be impossible. This new tool will present amazing new opportunities for neuroscience research.

Technologies designed for editing the human genome are transforming biomedical science and providing us with relatively simple ways to modify and edit genes. However, precision editing has not been possible for cells that have stopped dividing, including mature neurons. This has meant that gene editing has been of limited use in neurological research — until now. Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI) have created a new tool that allows, for the first time ever, precise genome editing in mature neurons. This relieves previous constraints and presents amazing new opportunities for neuroscience research.