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Dec 19, 2017

Embryos have full human regeneration and possibly radical life extension

Posted by in categories: futurism, life extension

Nextbigfuture interviewed Michael West, CEO of the startup AgeX for nearly three hours today. The key to human regeneration is from week 3 to week 8 after fertilization of the egg when we are an embryo. In week one and week two, we are a zygote. After week, we are fetus.

Nextbigfuture will follow up this article with several more articles with information from the interview. This article will provide the core of the AgeX approach to full regeneration and radical life extension.

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Dec 19, 2017

Bio-programming toolkit maker Asimov launches with $4.7M from Andreessen Horowitz

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, nanotechnology

Biotech is one of today’s many hot frontiers of technology, but one thing holding it back is that it’s significantly less amenable to traditional computing techniques than other areas. A new startup called Asimov, spun off from research at MIT, is working on bridging the gap between the digital and the biological by creating, essentially, a set of computer-aided biology design tools. It’s a prescient enough idea that it has attracted $4.7 million in seed funding.

The problem that Asimov addresses is this. Say you’re a pharmaceutical company trying to make a tiny biocompatible machine that holds a certain amount of medication and releases it when it senses some other molecule.

In order to do so, you’d have to — well, among about a million other things — design what amounts to a logic gate and signal processor that works at the molecular scale. This is a daunting prospect, as creating molecular machinery is a labor-intensive process often involving creating thousands of variations of a given structure and testing them repeatedly to see which works.

Continue reading “Bio-programming toolkit maker Asimov launches with $4.7M from Andreessen Horowitz” »

Dec 19, 2017

FDA Just Approved The First-Ever Gene Therapy For an Inherited Disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

In a historic move, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a pioneering gene therapy for a rare form of childhood blindness, the first such treatment cleared in the United States for an inherited disease.

The approval signals a new era for gene therapy, a field that struggled for decades to overcome devastating setbacks but now is pushing forward in an effort to develop treatments for haemophilia, sickle-cell anaemia, and an array of other genetic diseases.

Yet the products, should they reach patients, are likely to carry stratospheric prices – a prospect already worrying consumer advocates and economists.

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Dec 19, 2017

There may be a volcano forming under New England, scientists warn

Posted by in category: futurism

If you’re looking for a volcano there’s a number of places you’d probably check first, like Hawaii or even Yellowstone National Park, but new data suggests you might want to turn your attention to the northeastern United States. Researchers from Rutgers University just revealed that a large swelling of hot rock is bubbling up under New England, and it may be the first hints that a new volcano is forming under our feet.

The findings are incredibly interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which because the east coast of the United States isn’t exactly a hotbed of potentially dangerous geological activity. Despite that, the data is undeniable, and it seems as though there is definitely something rising up from deep within the Earth in the region.

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Dec 19, 2017

Paving the way for a non-electric battery to store solar energy

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Materials chemists have been trying for years to make a new type of battery that can store solar or other light-sourced energy in chemical bonds rather than electrons, one that will release the energy on demand as heat instead of electricity — addressing the need for long-term, stable, efficient storage of solar power.

Now a group of materials chemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by Dhandapani Venkataraman, with Ph.D. student and first author Seung Pyo Jeong, Ph.D. students Larry Renna, Connor Boyle and others, report that they have solved one of the major hurdles in the field by developing a polymer-based system. It can yield energy storage density — the amount of energy stored — more than two times higher than previous polymer systems. Details appear in the current issue of Scientific Reports.

Venkataraman and Boyle say that previous high energy storage density achieved in a polymeric system was in the range of 200 Joules per gram, while their new system is able to reach an average of 510 Joules per gram, with a maximum of 690. Venkataraman says, “Theory says that we should be able to achieve 800 Joules per gram, but nobody could do it. This paper reports that we’ve reached one of the highest energy densities stored per gram in a polymeric system, and how we did it.”

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Dec 19, 2017

Conference announces Program and Speakers

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

2018 announces Program and Speakers!

This conference is focused on the cellular and molecular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control, It will mirror the structure of SENS, with sessions devoted to each strand and to the enabling technologies that multiple strands will rely upon. Sessions will cover a wide range of topics across the damage-repair spectrum.

Further details are given below:

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Dec 19, 2017

Great Support During Project For Awesome 2017

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

The 2017 Project for Awesome (P4A) has ended, and what a weekend it has been! We have had a significant number of videos created in support of our work, and the encouragement from the community has been superb. It is very inspiring to hear what people have to say about the importance of our work and why they appreciate the work we do. Today, we wanted to have a look at some of the great videos created by the LEAF team and our awesome community.

LEAF President Keith Comito led the charge during P4A and talks about our motivations and our vision for a world without age-related diseases. Science is making huge leaps in progress, and we no longer have to accept age-related diseases as inevitable.

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Dec 18, 2017

The Origin of Our First Interstellar Visitor

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, space travel

We were recently visited by a traveler from outside our solar system. This is the first time we’ve ever seen an object that came to us from interstellar space. It’s name is ‘Oumuamua. Check out http://curiositystream.com/spacetime

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Dec 18, 2017

Using Nanotechnology, not Water, to Clean Solar Panels

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, particle physics, solar power, space, sustainability

Although solar panels might appear bright and shiny, in desert environments, where they are most frequently installed, layers of dust and other particles can quickly coat their surface. These coatings can affect the panels’ ability to absorb sunlight and drastically reduce the conversion of the sun’s rays into energy, making it necessary to periodically wash the panels with water. But often, in areas like Nevada, water resources are scarce.

Consequently, NEXUS scientists have turned their attention toward developing technologies for waterless cleaning. NASA has already been using such techniques to wash panels in the lunar and Mars missions, but their developed methodologies prove too expensive for widespread public application. NEXUS scientist Biswajit Das of UNLV and his team are aiming to develop a water-free cleaning technology that will be cost-effective for large-scale photovoltaic generation, whereby they look to nanotechnology, rather than water, to clean the panels. “Our mission is to develop a waterless, or at least a less-water cleaning technique to address the effect of dust on solar panels,” Das says. “Once developed, this method will significantly reduce water use for the future PV generation.”

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Dec 18, 2017

Could A.I. Write a Novel Like Hemingway?

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Artificial Intelligence has come a long way in a short time. So at what point will it be able to emulate the great artists and writers of our time?

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