Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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In order to remain healthy and functional, cells have a number of maintenance systems that help them to dispose of metabolic waste and unwanted proteins. Autophagy is perhaps the best-known example of how cells purge their waste, and another is the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS). Researchers are working on ways to boost the activity of the UPS to improve cellular health.

The ubiquitin-proteasome system

During normal cellular function, proteins being constructed in the cell can sometimes become misfolded and start to accumulate over time, which can cause the cell to become dysfunctional and encourage diseases such as Alzheimer’s to develop as the system gums up with bent and broken proteins.

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It’s something straight out of a Marvel comic book: giving test subjects the ability to see infrared light, similarly to how night-vision goggles work — but without the awkward and bulky apparatus.

Scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China injected tiny nanoparticles that bind to the retina into the eyeballs of test mice, granting them what the researchers called “super vision.”

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Michelle Khine is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Nine months ago, her newborn son was hospitalized for complications during childbirth and was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). While in the NICU, her son was connected to several machines that were supplying oxygen and monitoring his breathing.

A biomedical engineering research team from the University of California has developed a new wearable respiratory sensor to monitor children with chronic pulmonary conditions. The design was built with inspiration from a favorite childhood toy, Shrinky Dinks.

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Welcome to the sixth edition of our new newsletter, DeepSpace! Each Tuesday, I’ll be taking a deep-dive into the most exciting developments in commercial space, from satellites and rockets to everything in between. If you’d like to receive DeepSpace and all of our newsletters and membership benefits, you can become a member for as little as $3/month here. Just […].

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Your genome literally identifies you, but researchers and genetic firms keep saying that DNA data is anonymous. It’s a privacy scandal waiting to happen.

By Chelsea Whyte

EVERY person in the world is issued with a unique code before they are even born. Governments, insurance firms and indeed pretty much anyone can use this code to catalogue us throughout our entire lives. This isn’t a sci-fi dystopia – it is just genetics.

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Besides that, everyone living much, much longer would cause many other problems. Where do the children of these centenarians live?

Until workable life-preserving technology is available, immortality enthusiasts are also obsessed with staying healthy – some fast on certain days, others watch calories, most exercise – so they are around long enough to benefit from emerging anti-aging science.

In 2019, the quest for everlasting life is, largely, though not always, more scientific. Funded by Silicon Valley elites, researchers believe they are closer than ever to tweaking the human body so that we can finally live forever (or quite a bit longer), even as some worry about pseudoscience in the sector.

Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on a range of techniques, from attempting to stop cells aging, to the practice of injecting young blood into old people – a process denounced as quackery by the Federal Drug Administration this week.

Continue reading “Is Silicon Valley’s quest for immortality a fate worse than death?” | >